PEOPLE HAVE the right to learn how to peacefully and reliably end their own lives, assisted suicide advocate Dr Philip Nitschke told the audience yesterday at his first public meeting in Dublin.
“Don’t wait until it’s too late, plan ahead and put in place an end-of-life strategy,” he said.
Dr Nitschke said his organisation, Exit International, would set up an embryonic group in Ireland to facilitate further meetings and he would return for more meetings in Dublin and Belfast later this year.
He said four venues had cancelled his booking for the event in recent days and while his organisation had met opposition before, his Irish experience was “a record”.
The Seomra Spraoi social centre in Dublin offered to host the meeting on Thursday evening after the fourth venue cancelled. Mark Malone of the centre said it had no difficulty in hosting the event because it was autonomous and not dependent on State funding.
Youth Defence had been campaigning against the meeting on Facebook and had asked people to contact the office of Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to stop the meeting going ahead.
Before yesterday’s meeting began, a number of gardaí were patrolling the area in the event of a protest, but none occurred. About 40 people, mostly over 50, attended the public meeting as well as a large media contingent.
Dr Nitschke said afterwards the audience was representative of his audiences abroad. “These are not sick people. These are people who have come along because they see that it makes sense to know about ending your life.”
He repeatedly told the audience to plan ahead for their deaths. “If you are well enough to come to this meeting, then you are well enough to plan ahead, provided you know what it is you want to achieve,” he said.
The “tired of life” phenomenon was becoming increasingly common, whereby people had enough of life and wanted to end it, even though they were not ill.
“We are seeing more of it. People are deciding now is the time to die,” he said. Dr Nitschke outlined the options available to people who wished to end their lives and said he would go into greater detail about these options at a closed workshop afterwards. The media was asked to leave before it began.
Dr Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary lethal injection to terminally ill patients. In 1996 he provided the injection to four terminally ill patients in Australia during a brief period when assisted suicide was lawful in the Northern Territory. The Rights of the Terminally Ill Act was overturned after nine months.
James King (72) from Ashtown attended the meeting and said he wanted to end his life if he ever became incapacitated. “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone, especially myself,” he said. “My wife is on the same vein as I am ... If she asked me to do it [end her life], I’d be willing to go to prison for her.”
Another audience member, Joe Davis (69), said he had supported the right to die for the past 40 years. “As an atheist my wishes about dying should be respected.”
