The number of terminally ill people accessing voluntary assisted dying and the number of practitioners willing to support them are steadily increasing, the latest report from Tasmania’s VAD Commission says.

Sixteen terminally ill Tasmanians chose medical assistance to die in the first six months of the state's voluntary assisted dying (VAD) law, a new report reveals.

Mary-Kate shares the story of her husband's assisted death after he was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer in September 2021

We who are dying are the people whose voices should be listened to in this discussion. My very existence challenges so many of the misconceptions about voluntary assisted dying, writes Ceara Rickard.

Today I feel the wind, rain and sun on my face for the very last time in my 57 short years of life. I enter the Gibson Unit at St John’s Hospital and I surrender myself to the elements of the inevitable. 

"You wouldn’t let your dog suffer the way I am suffering." Those were the words my maternal grandfather said to my mum shortly before he died of cancer in 1985.

Full circle to 2016 and my mum was saying the same to me. She had been a strong advocate for euthanasia from when she had to watch her father dying by small degrees over weeks and weeks of endless pain.