Professor Ben White:

The Senator is right, in that those are the two key values – there are others, of course – that tend to be balanced in this setting. One of the things in the context of life was to unpack what “life” meant. Does “life” mean life at all costs? People attach different values or weights to life. For us, if someone has autonomy – the person is able to make the decision – and is terminally ill, we thought that was a sufficient balance to permit access to assisted dying. Another key consideration for us was compassion and the relief of suffering.