The Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 (NT) was a controversial law legalising euthanasia passed by Australia's Northern Territory in 1995 and, for all practical purposes, nullified in 1997 by the federal Parliament. Dr Philip Nitschke, the first doctor in the world to administer legal, voluntary euthanasia, founded EXIT International in response to the overturning of the Act.
While voluntary euthanasia had previously been condoned officially in the Netherlands and the US state of Oregon, the act was the first time that a legislative assembly passed a law explicitly legalising euthanasia.
Read more about Rights Of The Terminally Ill Act 1995: Provisions of Act, Reaction To Act, Use of Act, Overturning of The Act
Famous quotes containing the words rights of, rights, ill and/or act:
“Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a country.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colours would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Old age equalizes—we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)