Terminally ill back euthanasia bill
ATess Nichol
terminally ill woman says if Act’s euthanasia bill doesn’t pass its next reading, she may travel to Wellington to give Parliament a piece of her mind. Bobbie Carroll is 64 and dying of blood cancer.
She is one of five advocates for the Act party’s End of Life Choice Bill to appear on video in a new campaign, #MyLifeMyChoice.
New Zealander of the Year Dr Lance O’Sullivan; Lecretia Seales’ widower, Matt Vickers; David Seymour (not the MP), who has motor neurone disease; and Rachel Rijpma, who has Huntington’s disease, feature on the remaining four videos.
Vickers was married to Wellington lawyer Seales, who asked the High Court in March 2015 for the legal right to have a doctor help end her life.
She wanted the right to choose to not die a painful death. On June 5, soon after being told her court bid had failed, she died, aged 42.
During emotional speech at a news conference in Auckland yesterday, Carroll said she alone should choose when her life would end.
“It is cruel to allow anyone to die in a vegetative state.”
Dying after becoming so sick you could not speak or recognise loved ones was not dying with dignity, Carroll said.
She and her partner Julia Woodhouse “fought like billy-o” for marriage equality and they would do the same now.
What she feared most was dying alone — if she could choose, she’d have a party to celebrate her death, surrounded by her partner of 40 years, their children and grandchildren.
“It would be horrific if an [the bill] didn’t go through. Horrific. I’d probably go down to Wellington,” she said.
HPleas to listen David Seymour shares a name with the Act leader fronting the bill and has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
“I’ll go with you,” he said to Carroll. The pair shook hands on it.
The Whangarei resident, who travelled to Auckland with his wife, Rachel, for the launch of the My Life My Choice campaign, said people who had not been diagnosed with a terminal illness needed to listen to those who had on the subject of assisted dying. “I believe we need the choice.” Seymour said his future would entail a deterioration eventually leaving him bedbound, dependent on the care of others. At that point, he wanted to be allowed to die. Act leader and Epsom MP David Seymour said he hoped Kiwis would be moved by the “courage and determination” of those in the campaign videos. “The goal of this campaign is to continue highlighting the inadequacy of our current laws as a select committee deliberates on my End of Life Choice Bill.” The party would be rolling each video out on social media over the next week or so and each video ended asking the public to call their local MP to express support for the bill. To see Rachel Rijpma’s video go to nzherald.co.nz Lance O’Sullivan adds support In his campaign video, O’Sullivan explains that his support of the bill stems in part from learning after the death of a young terminally ill patient that she had wanted him to end her suffering.
Her mother had not passed the message on, because it was illegal for O’Sullivan to act on the request.
“We can allow people to have the opportunity to die with complete dignity.” ‘My life, my choice’ Huntington’s sufferer Rachel Rijpma’s video is the first of the five to be released.
Huntington’s disease is inherited and causes the progressive degeneration of the brain’s nerve cells. Sufferers often sway continually and have trouble moving and speaking.
In her short video, Rijpma says she wants to know when she will die and have her family around her, rather than dying from choking or pneumonia. “My life, my choice,” she says. Rijpma, whose speech is heavily impaired, practised her lines for a week before filming to get them right.