‘THE SAFEGUARDS ARE INADEQUATE’

As an Anglican priest and disability advocate, Dr John Fox (inset) has been at a few deathbeds.

“I know what disabled life and disabled death looks like and the fairly severe sense of vulnerability that one has,” he said.

Fox, from Christchurch, will vote against the euthanasia referendum this year, saying it puts disabled people and others at risk.

“The safeguards are inadequate, the principle is unsound. And I think underneath all of this is a frightening fear of what it is to be disabled.

“People say ‘I don’t want to be wiped, I don’t want to drool, to be dependent. To me, that’s saying ‘I don’t want to be you’. I have a huge problem with that.”

The 37 year-old has a painful neuromuscular condition, spastic hemiplegia, and believes this would have qualified him for assisted dying under the originally drafted End of Life Choice Act. Eligibility for assisted dying in the legislation has now been narrowed to terminal patients with six months to live.

Fox said no matter how strict the safeguards, legalising euthanasia meant a fundamental shift to accepting that some lives were “not worth protecting”.

If the circumstances were extreme enough, anyone could understand why euthanasia could work in principle, he said.

“But we’re not talking about a thought experiment in a philosophy class. What we’re talking about is an actual category of people and it will be applied down at Middlemore Hospital in real life, in a place where funding is short, where there are bureaucrats and forms and power dynamics and difficulties.”

Even if he were not religious, he would oppose on moral grounds.

“What I would ask people to think about is what disabled life and death is worth. If you wouldn’t do it to a rugby player, if you don’t do it to Dan Carter, you shouldn’t do it to me.”