NZ's "Assisted Death" Bill

Check the Detail

Maggie Barry
National Party MP

As deputy chairwoman of the justice select committee, I've been listening to some very well considered submissions on the controversial euthanasia and assisted suicide bill before Parliament.
There were 36,000 individuals and groups who wrote to Parliament with their views on the End of Life Choice Bill. Ten per cent have indicated that they would like to be heard in person, which the committee has promised to do.

So we have extended the reporting deadline from September to next March. While I will listen attentively and respectfully to everyone's viewpoint, I remain concerned at the lack of adequate safeguards to protect our most vulnerable.

A troubling aspect emerging from the public discussions is the large number of people who say they are in favour of the bill but who admit that they have not actually read it, claiming they don't care about the detail, they just want to have the option.

Have you ever heard of anyone who did not want to die with dignity or be treated with compassion? Rather than being lulled by the wording around this poorly drafted bill, I've been urging people to delve deeper - it's vital to know the details when stakes are so high and protections for the vulnerable so low.

Many incorrectly assume the law only applies to the terminally ill, but it would actually licence doctors to end the life of anyone with a "grievous, irremediable condition".

More Concern Over The Prothanasia Bill Before Parliament

NZ End of Life Choice Bill

Another submission against Unlawful Killing


We oppose the End of Life Choice Bill.

Reasons why.

We are opposed to the End of Life Choice Bill for the following reasons:

1. What we have read and heard from medical people about the way in which such bills have opened-up a Pandora’s box in countries where such legislation has been passed leads us to expect that the same will happen here. A bill which starts off allowing those who wish to end their life to do so, will end up taking the lives of many who do not wish to die. It seems strange that having abolished the death penalty for every crime, we should re-introduce it for the crime of being a burden on society or not being able to contribute anything useful.

2. Such legislation, if it were passed would forever change our relationship with our doctor and with the medical community.

Why Don't You Do Yourself and the Rest of Us a Favour?

"It's Best if You Cark It"

Kylee Black Does Not Want to Die

A terminally ill person has made a submission on the Death Bill now before the New Zealand Parliament's Select Committee.  Kylee Black is terminally ill.  She is a 31-year-old.  She has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome [EDS], a "genetic connective-tissue disorder that is progressive and incurable".

In fighting against and persisting in living with the disease--when there is no hope of a remedy or cure--Black raises the problem of depression.  Who would not get discouraged and depressed with such a bleak outlook preceded by years of pain? 

But Black does not want to die. And she does not want doctors suggesting death as an option to her, especially on her darkest days.  "I personally have seen over 20 specialists through my local district health board. If I was asked to consider my options as things progress by even a handful of these, I would certainly feel very pressured to consider euthanasia."  [NZ Herald]

When professionals such as doctors suggest to a terminally ill patient that it would be better for the suffering patient to die, we have to ask, Better for whom?

The Mess of Pottage That is Euthanasia

To Die Or Not to Die That is the Question

New Zealand is going through yet another debate on "euthanasia".  Another bill to institutionalise "euthanasia" is before the Parliament.  The usual suspects are hard at work pushing it mightily.  Given that New Zealand is a thoroughly pagan society--one where the predominant religion is atheistic secularism--it would appear to be only a matter of time before the death cult has its way.

Euthanasia is underpinned by a philosophical principle which espouses a particular human right.  It rests upon the doctrine that human beings have a right to determine their own deaths.  If human beings have no such right, then euthanasia is a great evil.  But let us assume for the present that they do have such a right.  Let us assume that the right to choose death is one more faux human right dreamed up by pagan philosophers and professional ethicists. Let us assume further that euthanasia is not just a freedom right (people have a right to kill themselves if they chosoe) but it is also a demand right (society must facilitate, assist and enable people to kill themselves).

At present the issue before the country is whether elderly or terminally ill people have a right to take their own lives (either by their own hand, or assisted by others).  Let us repeat: these people have a right to terminate their own lives, say the protagonists--so much so that if any body or institution interfere with their taking their own life, they are breaching the human rights of that person.  In its strongest demand right sense, people have a right to have their self-death funded and facilitated by the state.

The debate is also being framed at present by an appeal to pity.

Euthanasia and the Love of Death

The Netherlands Recommissions the Ovens of Belsen

In Proverbs 8, Divine Wisdom is personified and calls out to human societies everywhere.

Does not wisdom call?
    Does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights beside the way,
    at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
    at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
“To you, O men, I call,
    and my cry is to the children of man.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
    O fools, learn sense.
Hear, for I will speak noble things,
    and from my lips will come what is right,
for my mouth will utter truth;
    wickedness is an abomination to my lips. [Proverbs 8: 1-7]

Wisdom, divine wisdom, is crying out every day to humanity.  But men are weak, stubborn, and foolish.  Men, in vast arrogance, think they can ignore the Living God and forge their own path and make up their own wisdom.  But the cry of Wisdom ends on a final, determinative climax:

For whoever finds me finds life
    and obtains favour from the Lord,
but he who fails to find me injures himself;
    all who hate me love death.

Those who shut their ears to God experience self-inflicted injury; those who hate God's wisdom love death.   At first glance some may advance the idea that "loving death" is a mere figure of speech, possibly an example of hyperbole.  But as humanism gains strength throughout the post-Christian West it is becoming literally true.  There is a growing love of death, as opposed to living and life.

Emma Elliott Freire writes:

Darkness of the Soul

Dutch Champion Legal Murder

Thomas Williams
Breitbart London

A Dutch physician who had family members restrain a struggling woman so she could administer a lethal injection has been cleared of wrongdoing by a review board.

Without consulting the patient, the doctor put a sleep-inducing drug into the woman’s coffee in order to give her the injection, but then the woman woke up and reportedly “fought desperately” to free herself. At this point, family members were summoned to hold the woman down so that the procedure could be completed.

The woman, who was in her 80s and suffered from dementia, had signed an advance directive to be killed “at the right time” though she had not ratified the request recently. According to case documents, she occasionally exhibited “fear and anger” and several times had been found wandering around the nursing home where she was living.

Medical records revealed that the patient had said “I don’t want to die” several times in the days leading up to her death, yet the doctor chose not to speak with her about her earlier request to receive euthanasia.

The Death of Life in Belgium

Too Heavy To Be Borne

In June 2015, The New Yorker published an article by Rachel Aviv, entitled "The Death Treatment:
When should people with a non-terminal illness be helped to die?"

It is a long article, but a very necessary read for anyone who wants an insight into the mindset of secular humanism.  While the article deals specifically with the death culture in Belgium, it implicitly confronts every secularist in the West.  It also exposes what happens when a culture makes death a matter of human wilfulness.

We encourage everyone to read the full piece.  But, below are some excerpts--with a brief commentary.

 In Belgium, euthanasia is embraced as an emblem of enlightenment and progress, a sign that the country has extricated itself from its Catholic, patriarchal roots. Distelmans, [a euthanizer] who was brought up as a Catholic and then rejected the Church, told me that his work is inspired by an aversion to all forms of paternalism. “Who am I to convince patients that they have to suffer longer than they want?” he said.

When a human being is made the final and absolute authority in all things--as secular humanism does--all must bow before the sovereign.

"Those Who Hate Me, Love Death" [Proverbs 8:36]

Moral Clarity in a Murky World

We were encouraged by the following piece from LifeNews.com

American Psychiatric Association Takes Strong Stance Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Michael Cook

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has taken a strong stand against euthanasia. In a formal position statement approved by its board of trustees this month, it says:

This implies that it is not ethical for a psychiatrist to help a non-terminally ill person to commit suicide, either by providing the means or by direct lethal injection, as is being currently practiced in The Netherlands and Belgium.  Although this binds only APA members, the APA is one of the world’s most influential professional bodies. The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) is considering a similar statement.

Dr Mark S. Komrad, of the APA ethics committee, says that the APA is now in a position to formally protest the involvement of Dutch and Belgian psychiatrists in euthanising patients with non-terminal psychiatric disorders.  He fears that Canada and several states in the US are headed in the same direction. Already psychiatric patients are being helped to commit suicide by activist organisations like Final Exit.

A Just Killing

When Evil is Good and Good is Evil

In New Zealand we have a big problem with state sanctioned killing--unless the one killed is "euthanized" or is brutalized by his or her mother and her doctor.  In those two cases, euthanasia and abortion, state sanctioned killing is way cool and righteous, man.  

But executing murderers must never, ever be allowed again.  It belongs to an ignorant, primitive past.  An attorney in the United States, however, puts the matter in perspective:

Big Media is in a tizzy today about the possibility that an inhuman killer might have coughed once or twice as he faced justice for his callous crime. Articles about the execution of Ronald Bert Smith, Jr. in Alabama for the murder of convenience store clerk Casey Wilson tend to focus on whether Smith, the murderer, suffered during his execution. Here is a typical headline: "Alabama Death Row inmate Ronald Bert Smith heaved, coughed for 13 minutes during execution" [by lethal injection].

At an execution, the focus should not be on the murderer.

Appeals to Pity Are Deceptive

Legalise Euthanasia, and Compassionate Society Dies Too

Paul Kelly
Editor-At-Large
The Australian

If you love your parents, respect your children, care for your society and think compassionately about your world then it is time to open your heart and brain to what happens when a jurisdiction legalises killing or, as it is called, euthanasia.

The justification for euthanasia lies in human rights, individual autonomy and relieving pain — all worthy ideas, and that may prompt the question: why then is euthanasia still opposed by most nations, most medical professional bodies around the world and the Australian Medical Association?

The reason is not hard to find. It is because crossing the threshold to euthanasia is the ultimate step in medical, moral and social terms. A polity is never the same afterwards and a society is never the same. It changes forever the doctor-patient bond. It is because, in brutal but honest terms, more people will be put at risk by the legislation than will be granted relief as beneficiaries.

We Know What's Best For You

What the Public Does Not Like It's Going to Get

Last week the Every Life Research Unit in New Zealand put out the following press release:

Kiwis "3-1 Against Euthanasia" Thursday, 11 August 2016, 2:53 pm Press Release: Every Life Research Unit

Thursday, 11 August 2016
Health Select Committee’s Investigation Finds Kiwis 3-1 Against Euthanasia

“Maryan Street and the Voluntary Euthanasia Society wanted to know New Zealanders’ views on legalising assisted suicide,” says Dr Jane Silloway Smith, Director of Every Life Research Unit, “and the people have spoken: at a ratio of about 3 to 1, they have told Parliament not to legalise assisted suicide.”

Dr Smith has been analysing submissions made to the Health Select Committee’s investigation into ending one’s life in New Zealand. She has conducted a random sampling of the 20,576 submissions made public by the Committee thus far. Her analysis has found that 78% of submitters are against legalising assisted suicide, while 22% are in favour of changing the law.

“Submitters to the Health Select Committee have overwhelmingly expressed their opposition to assisted suicide,” comments Dr Jane Silloway Smith. “The very clear ratio against a change in the current law alongside the high number of total submissions shows that there is a strong public political will opposed to assisted suicide.”
ENDS

So, let's just bring our readers up to date.  The secularist "culture of death" has been pushing for the right to kill "suffering" people.

Vast Death Cult

A Civilisation of Orcs

It is apparent that the waning of  Western cultural influence is linked to a rejection of growth and expansion.  There are many evidences of a "love of death" in the Western mindset.  The forms it takes are varied--yet consistent.  Abortion, euthanasia, suicide, volitionally childless couples, falling populations,aging populations, and families limiting children to one are all celebrations of a culture of death.  Couple this with violent crime, and a culture of death seems to stalks the West.

It is apparent that European countries, the UK, the US, New Zealand and Australia cannot now arrest the downward spiral of declining populations, without making up the numbers by migration.  Our secularist culture which long ago threw off the Christ as its king is bearing a fruit consistent with a love of death.  As the Proverbs point out, "but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”  [Proverbs 8:36]

The Bible, however, proclaims that growth and development of God's Kingdom.  "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it", is the first command God gave to Adam and Eve.  [Genesis 1:28].  The prevailing view in the West has reached the point where it openly declaims this command as itself wicked and evil.  As Douglas Kelly observes:

Utopian Madness

Verging On Insanity

The old saw about the genie being let out of the bottle has it that once out, the genie can't be returned; it remains wildly uncontrollable.  Once out, bad consequences follow.  

There is a strong body of evidence to demonstrate that "assisted suicide", when legalised, is just such a genie.  Now, of course, nations that make assisted suicide legal always comfort themselves with the platitude that their particular version will not be misused by the unscrupulous.  After all, the fomenters and the legislators mean well.  They are only thinking kindly of the person suffering as they die.  Their version of assisted suicide is a law of love, dripping with compassion and pity.

But these folk are wilfully naive.  They do not operate on the premise that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked", but rather its opposite: viz, "the heart is truthful above all things and comprehensively righteous."  Given the supposed universal righteousness of men, of course it's reasonable to expect everyone will use a law permitting assisted suicides for the sole and only purpose for which it was intended, which was to reduce the suffering of the dying.

But which premise about men is true?

The Next Domino to Fall? Part II

The Deaths of Two Fathers

Guest Post by Alwyn Poole
The Care Alliance

I had two fathers who died two quite different deaths. One, my birth father (who I never met), chose suicide assisted by a shotgun in his back shed. The other, the one who adopted me and brought me up, died of natural causes in his lounge – at home with his wife – in 2006.

Strangely enough, re the debate on euthanasia, it is the death of the second one I want to address. This should not be a nice trendy issue for someone to try and gain electoral support. It has stunning potential to become a slippery slope for a range of groups in society. It also has the potential to confer power to a group of people (doctors) who are highly fallible in a range of ways.

As I said – my adoptive father died naturally at home. His life almost did not end that way. A few months prior to his death I received a phone call at work that my father was “dying that day”. It was a Tuesday and he was in intensive care in a hospital in a small city in NZ. I had spent time there with him on the Sunday and had left him on the improve and​, apparently, ​ in good spirits.

Ray Poole was 67 years old at the time and had a terminal illness, emphysema, that had progressed.

The Next Domino to Fall? Part I

Riding the Tsunami of Secularism

In Proverbs 8: 35-36 we read:

For whoever finds me finds life
    and obtains favour from the Lord,
but he who fails to find me injures himself;
    all who hate me love death.

The extended context is one of Wisdom being personified.  It speaks of how God's wisdom is immanent throughout the creation.  Consequently, those who "dismiss" God from their lives end up hating life and loving death.  Proverbs 8: 35-36 is a fearful condemnation, for it indicts the smart and intelligent as well as the ignorant and the brutish.

In the West we have seen how this works out at the extreme end of the spectrum.  Literally.  Abortion is a love affair with death and a hatred of new, innocent life.  It deploys an entire infrastructure and industry devoted to death in the name of human rights.  It is celebrated by those who hate God's wisdom as a profound respect for life (the "mother's").  It loves the death of the child.  It cheers and celebrates the murder of the defenceless, innocent child.  Surely our culture hates God.  Surely it loves death.

In New Zealand we are about to debate (and probably legislate) another preference for death over life.  "Assisted dying" is likely to be approved by our Parliament, and made the law of the land.  One can see the logic.

We Did Not See This Coming

Unexpected Mercies

Whilst this has not got great press, it remains an outstanding, unexpected event.  The British Parliament voted overwhelmingly not to "legalise" euthanasia.   We congratulate the United Kingdom.  Regrettably such an outcome is not likely in New Zealand when it finally gets to be debated in our parliament.

Assisted dying bill overwhelmingly rejected by MPs

After a passionate debate, MPs vote 330 to 118 against changing law, in first Commons vote on assisted dying for 20 years

MPs have voted overwhelmingly against changing the law to allow doctors to help terminally ill people end their lives.  In their first vote on the issue for about 20 years, the Commons rejected the assisted dying bill introduced by Rob Marris, a Labour MP who had argued that it was about ensuring peaceful deaths rather than euthanasia.  The debate was heated on both sides, with many MPs drawing on their personal experiences of dying relatives to give weight to their arguments. However, opponents outnumbered supporters by 212, with 330 voting against and 118 in favour. [The Guardian]

The outlook was not good.  Hence our joyous surprise.

The Death of Life

Isolation Wards and "Assisted" Death

By some counts it is inevitable that "euthanasia" or "assisted dying" will become legal in New Zealand.  Why not?  Since it is perfectly legal to kill the life of an innocent child, provided the act is done in the dark of the womb, why not self-killing assisted by "doctors"?   How can secular atheistic society claim the one, and deny the other.  After all, the will of the one (the mother) has been recognised in law as being sovereign over the will of the yet-to-be-born.  Why ought not the same person have an equally sovereign will over whether they themselves live or die?

When man is made the centre of existence, an autonomy unto himself, death and suffering follows.  And so it has come to pass--and will come to pass, unless we repent.  But, let none be in doubt that the human suffering will be enormous.  Tim Stanley explains why: