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Australia euthanasia advocate promotes assisted suicide with book and video.

Australia euthanasia advocate, Philip Nitschke, was arrested last week by authorities in New Zealand for bringing two copies of the banned book, “The Peaceful Pill” and for promoting assisted suicide there.

Following the arrest, Nitschke showed edited versions of two films and is now risking a $3,000 fine and a possible 10 years in prison if officials find he showed the parts promoting assisted suicide. He admitted that he would help a woman commit suicide who wasn’t terminally ill -- going beyond what some euthanasia proponents propose.

According to The Age newspaper, Nitschke was accused of advising an Australian woman suffering from depression about obtaining suicide drugs from Mexico. The 68-year-old woman eventually followed his instructions and killed herself.
Wesley J. Smith, an attorney and bioethics watchdog in the US, said, “He’s done it before in the Nancy Crick case, in which he admitted that both he and Crick knew she wasn’t terminally ill when he counseled her to commit suicide. And Nitschke wants his suicide pills to be made available to troubled teens.”

Smith also noted that assisted suicide is now available to the depressed in the Netherlands and the Swiss Supreme Court recently created a constitutional right to assisted suicide for the mentally ill.