Mixed messages

Changing the rules

Patricia Butler (It’s democracy, letters February 13) indicates that the EOLC Act is about avoiding “suffering at the end of our lives.” Most would assume she means physical pain in terminal illness.

But does she realise Canada, which introduced euthanasia in 2016, is already considering extending it to people suffering only from mental illness? A Quebec court also recently struck down their requirement that the person’s natural death must already be ‘reasonably foreseeable.’ Quebec took just four short years to undermine the restricting of euthanasia to terminal illness cases.

What mental illness might prompt a teenager, for instance, to want to die? Perhaps deep depression from an accident confining him to a wheelchair. I know three such young men who with love and support, won through to new lives. Yet if society offers euthanasia instead, some in despair may choose it.

That is why the EOLC Act is so alarming. One of its qualifying conditions, ‘unbearable suffering,’ is subjective and open to interpretations other than physical pain.

Palliative care is managing physical pain ever more effectively. It is the answer, not introducing euthanasia, which inevitably would be extended ever more widely.

Let Canada’s experience sound a clear warning to voters in the coming referendum. BERT JACKSON

Hamilton

The first casualty

When interviewed after the failure of his Death with Dignity Bill in 2003, Peter Brown said that the strongest opposition had come from the Catholic Church and the medical profession.

One could at least respect the sincerity of such opposition had it been honest, but in the campaign against voluntary assisted dying, Catholic opposition continues to be grossly economical with the

Martin Hanson dismisses the concerns of Michelle Pereira and others who are concerned about what effect the End of Life Choice Act might have on suicide rates in this country. Perhaps he should pay attention to those who are actually dealing with our own youth suicide epidemic.

Dion Howard, a nurse and

truth. Some of the most extreme distortions have been perpetrated by Ken Orr, winner in 2010 of the Papal Medal for services to the Catholic Church. The following quotes are from The Gisborne Herald:

“The community should be grateful that we have an MP like Mr O’Connor, who believes that Parliament has no authority to decide who shall live and who shall die” (Sept 17, 2017).

“We now have Parliament acting as God in considering the End of Life Choice Bill, that will empower the strong to kill the weak and decide who shall be allowed to live” (Feb 17, 2018).

“Such a referendum that asks the people of New Zealand to decide who shall be allowed to be killed by their doctor, and who may be permitted to live, would be unjust and a crime against humanity.” (Jan 4, 2019).

And a press release after passing of the Third Reading of the End of Life Choice Bill (November 13, 2019) said: “Parliament . . . has given permission for the killing of those whose lives are considered not worthy of living,” and has “legislated for doctors to become state-funded serial killers.”

And here’s Cardinal Pell in a therapist who has spent 20 years working with young people, told the select committee that many of the young people he worked with were intelligent and articulate, and followed discussions on the proposed law. Some were using justifications of euthanasia to inform their own decisions.

He added he had instances of

letter of May 8, 2013, on behalf of the Catholic bishops of New South Wales regarding the euthanasia Bill before the New South Wales Parliament: “Despite talk of ‘dignified death,’ dignity is not served by telling the old and dying, through our laws, that they would be better off dead and we would be better off if they were dead.”

Such distortions come close to lying, and most people will deride them as the desperate ploys of those who have no rational arguments.

More likely to escape public scrutiny are privatelycommissioned opinion polls in which cunningly worded questions can increase the number of respondents giving the desired answer.

Over the last two decades, opinion polls have consistently shown about 70 per cent of Kiwis support the right of terminally ill people to end their suffering by voluntary assisted dying, and this has been repeatedly pointed out by supporters of the End of Life Choice Act. So when, on May 19, 2019, Euthanasia-Free NZ issued a media release headlined ‘New Poll Shows Less Support for Euthanasia,’ citing a drop from 70 per cent to 57 per young people quoting Exit International methods on how to take your own life.

Howard also said that the Scottish Parliament rejected their similar Bill on the basis that it would be impossible to avoid the danger of mixed messaging.

MARY APPLEBY

Auckland

cent as evidence that the tide was turning, Mario Mendonza devoted a letter to the Otago Daily Times (January 24) to direct readers’ attention to it.

The poll was conducted by Curia Market Research, and was commissioned, unsurprisingly, by Euthanasia-Free NZ, which stated that “57 per cent of respondents said they think doctors should be allowed to kill their patients and 29 per cent disagreed.”

Tendentiously-worded questions can yield the desired result. Respondents were asked, ‘Do you think a doctor should be allowed to give deadly drugs to deliberately kill a patient?’ The phrase ‘deliberately kill,’ while technically accurate, is worlds away from most people’s understanding of the intent of the End of Life Choice Act. I imagine Euthanasia-Free NZ had enough political sense not to ask, ‘Do you think doctors should be allowed to murder their patients?’

It is said that the first casualty in war is truth. In the social ‘war’ over the right of terminally ill people to avoid further suffering, Catholic abuse of truth has ranged from the

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