#9 The Light Under the Bushel

In September 2020, as Tasmania’s Upper House prepared to debate an Assisted Dying bill, an article appeared on the online publication Mercatornet. Above a picture showing a graph of a flatlining heartbeat superimposed over an elderly hand was a headline in big, bold letters:

‘Grandma took her life yesterday. Her doctors helped her.’

The article described a lonely, elderly woman, seemingly abandoned by her family in a Melbourne nursing home during COVID, encouraged by her doctors to end her life using Victoria’s Assisted Dying law.

Photo: the image used by Mercatornet

Within days, it was being promoted by religious groups and The Australian Family Association as a warning to MPs about why they should vote down the Tasmanian bill. 

In this episode, we reveal the truth behind that story. Who was Grandma? Had her family really abandoned her? Was her decision to die her own, or was she encouraged?

And what was it that connected the crusading author and the website that gave her story a global platform?

‘Just to get out of bed, you could tell she was in pain... she was really struggling. My brother said, ‘God, if Mum could have that medicine tomorrow, she would take it.’ Everybody was understanding because we all knew what she'd been through and didn't want her to go through that again.

‘Ruth’s’ daughter ‘Jane’

For more

• Visit Go Gentle Australia gogentleaustralia.org.au
• Audio: Neil Mitchell clashes with former Catholic priest over protest outside Peter Mac Cancer Centre – 3AW Newstalk, 11 April 2019
• Video: Fatal Fraud: A case study of tactics employed against evidence-based public policy initiatives – Go Gentle Australia, August 2019