At the end of July, shortly before Maria Korp succumbed to dehydration and starvation at the hands of her doctors, I wrote the following letter to The West Australian. The editor did not publish it.

Sir, Maria Korp’s public advocate is ensuring the completion of the grisly crime that Tania Herman commenced when she brutally strangled Maria with a strap and left her to die in the boot of a car.

Maria is not imminently dying. She is severely cognitively disabled, but she is breathing on her own, and if she is not starved and dehydrated to death she could live for some time.

It is argued that Maria’s condition is deteriorating and the tube supplying Maria with food and water could cause complications. What cannot be argued is that the removal of the tube will cause her certain death.

The removal of food and water as a means of killing people should alarm all Australians. How quickly the deprivation-killing of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo by starvation in the USA has jumped national boundaries.

We should all fear when a public advocate can convince doctors that killing a patient by deprivation is compassionate.

So, after surviving strangulation and five days in the boot of a car, Maria has now been sentenced, not to just five days without food and water, but to a slow death after perhaps two weeks of deprivation. Shame on the advocate. Shame on the doctors. Shame on the lawmakers who won’t stop this barbarity.