15 June 2021
New voluntary assisted dying (VAD) laws recently passed by South Australia’s Lower House have been embraced by a Murray Bridge family afflicted by a terminal illness.
The House of Assembly last Wednesday voted 33 to 11 in favour of the VAD Bill.
Murray Bridge resident and nurse Jenny Warren said the new laws will now allow her daughter, Ceara, who has metastatic breast cancer, a terminal illness, to return home to South Australia where she can be surrounded by family and friends, The Murray Valley Standard reports.
"I'm over the moon about the legislation being passed, because my daughter will now have a choice," said Jenny, an ANMF (SA Branch) member.
"She had to move to Tasmania where the VAD law is legal. She will be coming home and I now have confidence in when my daughter passes away, she will actually have a choice.
"Whether she will access VAD, is another thing, she may not. She certainly does not have a death wish, but she is very pro-choice, as am I."
The VAD Bill, having been approved in three sittings of Parliament in the last two months, is due to return to the Upper House for a final seal of approval.
The ANMF (SA Branch), with the overwhelming support of our members, has been an active campaigner for the Bill, co-hosting a Candles for Compassion Vigil on the steps of Parliament House and publishing a full-page open letter in The Advertiser calling on our state politicians to pass the Bill.
"There is good evidence that VAD actually tends to preserve the sanctity of life," Jenny told The Murray Valley Standard.
"Suicide rates of terminally ill people are significantly lower in areas that allow VAD, because people take great comfort in knowing there is that option. So there is no need to end it before they become too ill.
"I can't count the people who are terminally ill that have asked me to give them too much morphine because they want to die.
"Someone asking you to help them die, it's ghastly. Some days I've been barely able to make it out of the palliative care room before bursting into tears.
"The hardest thing is that no matter what I do, Ceara is going to die," Jenny told The Murray Valley Standard.
"I'll be there by her side and have to watch it. The conversations are tough, but tougher than that is that she has had to stay in Tasmania with her wonderful husband and choosing between dying over there, the way she wants to, or to come home to her family here in SA and not have any choice at all.
"I'm very excited the legislation has passed, but it's all bitter-sweet."
Class of 2001 Murray Bridge High School alumni, and Jenny's daughter, Ceara Rickard, a psychologist, told The Murray Valley Standard: "I am incredibly relieved this legislation has passed.
"I can now move home with a feeling of freedom knowing I have a choice. My cancer has progressed and I have to start my next lot of treatments soon.
"The clock is ticking for me. I'm greatly relieved, because if it hadn't been passed this time, I don't think I would have had the time to wait for the next time it would come before Parliament."
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