Professor Richard Huxtable:

It is a very important question indeed. I thank the Deputy for asking it. Primarily, a great many of these debates are premised on the ethic of respect for individual autonomy or self-rule. Some jurisdictions remain very much in the camp of what in previous decades we called assisted suicide, where the person or patient takes the final step. In my reading, for example, this certainly seems to be the model in use in Oregon. The sense there is that if the person concerned is taking the final step, he or she is really expressing and exercising his or her autonomy. The Deputy rightly raised the question of what would happen if that person was to lose the physical ability to take the final step himself or herself near to the relevant qualifying time.

There is then the example of the Benelux countries. These have allowed for a model whereby there can be another person who intervenes, such as a doctor, and takes the final step. As I mentioned at the outset, this more closely resembles what we used to call active voluntary euthanasia. This would very much be a question for the committee and the Parliament to consider. I refer to whether there is a desire to consider all these possible situations. This is one of a potential variety of more borderline cases where we might wonder if this person is eligible, then why would that person in that circumstance not be eligible as well. I would turn this matter back over to the committee as legislators to consider how far they want the qualifying criteria to extend.