For this prohibition (of euthanasia) generates a community that upholds and cares for others at their weakest and most vulnerable. The prohibition against deliberate killing of innocent human life is what impels us to research and practise good palliative care.

It enables trust within patient-carer and patient-relative relationships. It frees the ill person from constantly having to interrogate the hidden motives of those around them, and allows them to accept their care without shame. It says to all of us that, burden or not, we can stop being productive, and allow others to help us.

Without this prohibition, we will see a creeping expansion of candidates for euthanasia. By the time voluntary euthanasia was legalised in the Netherlands in 2002 you didn’t have to be terminally ill to qualify: ”mental torment” sufficed. Those in that country who support euthanasia now argue that elderly people should have the option if they are simply ”tired of life”.

At the other end of life, a Dutch hospital published the Groningen Protocol in 2005 for euthanising newborns – nothing ”voluntary” there.

This creeping expansion simply corrodes a society’s will to fund care and cures for the poor, the elderly, the depressed, the disabled and the otherwise vulnerable.

From today’s Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Cameron, Anglican Ethicist, Euthanasia question needs wider discussion.   In Tasmania, Euthanasia: birth death and life Editorial.