Reject State Sanctioned Killing

The Case Against the Prothanasia Bill

Dr Paul Moon has made the following submission, opposing the Prothanasia Bill currently being considered by the NZ Parliament.


I wish to oppose the state sanctioning of medically-assisted dying – as sought in a Petition of Hon Maryan Street – on the following nine bases:

1. While medically-assisted dying may conform to notions of individual rights, it ignores the often traumatic and potentially long-term effects such deaths have, especially on those children related to the person choosing to end their life. The rights of relatives and friends are ignored in the potential legislation for medically-assisted dying, and are left to the person choosing to end their lives. People
in that position are not likely to be in a state of mind to balance rationally the intricacies of the conflicting rights of their decision;

2. From a community perspective, medically-assisted dying diminishes the absolute value of human life by introducing criteria for the legal termination of life. This is the same argument that New Zealand successfully applies against the death penalty;

3. There can be no guarantees that the psychological counselling received by a person considering a medically-assisted death would be adequate.
The too-frequent failure of psychologists in assessing the risks of criminals who are released on parole and go on to commit serious offences is evidence of the subjective and sometimes inadequate assessments that psychologists are able to provide;

4. Ongoing advances in palliative alternatives are increasingly mitigating the need for medically-assisted dying;

5. The sanction of the state in medically-assisted killing implicates all members of the state in these killings. Such state sanction is typically a mark of totalitarian regimes, not enlightened societies;

6. The extension of the role of medical professional to killing people violates the essential principles of the profession. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that those involved in sanctioned killings can suffer long-term detrimental psychological effects;

7. Errors made in the decision to medically-assist in someone’s death, even if only rare, cannot be remedied;

8. The basis for a patient seeking a medically-assisted death can be arbitrary and capricious. There is no standards-based criteria which ameliorate this completely;

9. There can be a risk that creating criteria for medically-assisted deaths would eventually lead to some patients orienting their opinions in favour of the option not out of necessity, but from a tacit expectation that medically-assisted dying is the ‘correct’ choice. The danger of the evolving orthodoxy of the option of medically-assisted dying is a serious one.