‘Too early’ for assisted death answers

A judge says it’s too early to clarify how conscientious objection rights for assisted dying might work in hospices.

Hospice New Zealand, an umbrella organisation for all hospice services, wanted answers about how conscientious objection would operate if the End of Life Choice Act was accepted in the referendum in September.

It hoped the answers would help inform debate on the referendum, and it wanted voters to be clear what they were being asked to decide.

Hospice NZ was opposed to euthanasia or assisted suicide and a cornerstone of its care was to neither hasten nor postpone death.

It took a case to the High Court in Wellington asking for declarations on the legal position but Justice Jill Mallon said in general the questions could not be decided until issues arose against particular facts.

A referendum on whether to put into force the End of Life Choice Act is to be run alongside the general election, and if the vote was ‘‘yes’’ the act would take effect a year after the result was declared.

If it comes into force, it will give the terminally ill who meet certain other criteria, the option of asking for medical help to end their lives.

The act sets out who would help and how. Unless health practitioners had a conscientious objection they had to help when it was requested.

One of the questions Hospice NZ wanted to clarify was what counted as conscientious objection.

The judge said a doctor or nurse’s deeply-felt belief that it was wrong for them to help for personal moral reasons, internal to them, certainly qualified.

Conscientious objection might have a broader meaning but that would have to await argument on specific facts, she said.

Another question was whether hospices could exercise a right of ‘‘institutional’’ conscientious objection.

The judge said hospices and other organisations could refuse to provide assisted dying services. But there also had to be a way for health practitioners to meet their obligations if asked by someone in the care of the hospice or organisation.

It was not for the court to suggest ways those two positions could work together, the judge said.

One of the questions was whether Crown funding for hospices could be declined if they were not offering assisted dying because of conscientious objection.

The judge said questions about funding would have to await a case where the funding process was in issue.