Today, Għaqda Studenti tal-LiÄ¡i (GħSL) published a Policy Paper ’An Insight Into Euthanasia and a Multi-Faceted Examination of Voluntary Medically-Induced Death and Physician-Assisted Suicide’, in which they delved into the different aspects of this delicate issue on many people’s minds.
Being an organisation representing Law Students at the University of Malta, as one would expect, this Policy Paper is one dealing mostly with the legal perspective on the subject matter; including the legislation as it is now in Malta as well as a Comparative Legal Approach. However, GħSL did not stop there. Instead it further delved into the psychological, economical and ethical aspect of the topic.
Perhaps an eye-catching section of this well researched policy paper, is the Survey Analysis on the Public Opinion of the people out there on Euthanasia. This ten page analysis on the survey explores how well-informed people actually are on the topic as well as other issues which follow, such as, who the people think should decide to end one’s life, if Government should offer this service should it be introduced and how much do people storngly believe that we need legislation on Euthanasia.
69.1% of the people who took part in this survey, with 93% of all participants knowing what active euthanasia is, actually agree with legislation of Active Voluntary Euthanasia. These people are of the belief that euthanasia is a means to end one’s life with dignity whilst avoiding excrutiating pain of living in hospital. 21.3% of the respondents are uncertain about whether there should be legislation or not on the topic, mainly due to the fact that they are probably not well-informed enough on the matter to form a strong opinion.
The others who did not agree are of the belief that euthanasia “cheapens the value of human life.” Others even compared this situation with when divorce was legalised a few years back following a referendum. Other people fromed their opinion on euthanasia on the value of the gift of life, believing that there will be people who will take advantage of such legislation, perhaps for monetary reasons such as to get an inheritance.
When asked who is to take a decision as to when to terminate a life, 87.1% answered that only the individual can take such decision followed by a 26.6% of the belief that one’s husband or wife can make the choice. The issue of age also comes into play and the majority were of the opinion that what matters is that the person is of sound mind to take such a serious decision, whilst a good amount of people believe that a perosn must be at least 18 years of age to chose euthanasia.
An interesting question with an 86.2% majority think that a person suffering from a terminal illness will resort to other means to terminate his/her life in the abscence of the option of euthanasia. On the other hand, 58.9% believe that this service, if legalised, should be offered by the Government just like other health services.
Given that it is a controversial topic, perhaps as equally controversial as divorce and spring hunting, when asked if there is the need for a referendum, many people believe that Parliament should go ahead and legislate on the matter without such referendum. In fact, 52.9% believe that Parliament should legislate on the matter.
As it can be clearly seen, GħSL have truly delved into a lot of detail in this policy paper, and if we, as pro-active students and citizens are to form an opinion, it is definitely necessary to be well-informed.
