Risk of a contradictory message
Strict path or slippery slope (Dec 5) states that the End of Life Choice Bill permits assisted dying in a manner similar to Oregon, but there are significant differences.
The Oregon law permits assisted suicide only (not euthanasia), and the person ‘‘must be diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months’’.
David Seymour’s bill permits both, and its scope goes well beyond terminal illness. It would allow access to euthanasia for those with an ‘‘irremediable medical condition’’, which will include those suffering mental health conditions. Given the current mental health crisis, this is particularly concerning.
It is now accepted overseas that it is discriminatory to treat patients suffering from mental health conditions differently from other patients with chronic conditions.
Psychiatrists sometimes enforce treatment for patients who want to die because ‘‘they can’t go on’’ due to their physical and/or mental health disabilities.
Enforcing life-saving treatment in one case while allowing statesanctioned death in other cases sends a contradictory message that will ultimately erode our ability to care for our most vulnerable, including those with mental disorders. Euthanasia is unnecessary, unsafe and unwise.
Dr Peter Thirkell, Secretary, Care Alliance
’Safe’ from euthanasia
Strict path or slippery slope (Dec 5) quotes Dr Huhana Hickey. She asks: ‘‘How do we know that we are going to keep people who don’t want to be euthanised safe?’’ The answer is: read the End of Life Choice Bill. It’s only 29 pages of plain English. It is very specific that no-one can request assisted dying for someone else.
Dr Hickey was on television about euthanasia over a year ago. She apparently hadn’t read the bill then, because, hale and hearty in her wheelchair, she claimed she could ‘‘fool the doctors’’.
Was she in ‘‘an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability’’ as the bill (Clause 4(d)) requires? Clearly not. Was she ‘‘experiencing unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that she considers tolerable’’, as the bill (clause 4(e)) requires? Didn’t look like it.
The bill joins these two clauses with the word ‘‘and’’. One or the other is not enough to be eligible. Opponents sometimes overlook this inconvenient fact.
As for being a ‘‘target of unscrupulous people’’, I’d really like Dr Hickey to tell us all how she could arrange an assisted death from which she would benefit, if the provisions of the End of Life Choice Bill were observed. Dianne Cooper, Ka¯ piti
Keep it rational
Columnist Joe Bennett (Nov 28) describes his occasional ‘‘sour moods’’. Perhaps his dyspepsia has infected his thinking.
Constructive criticism addresses particular actions and failings. By lashing out at President Trump and his supporters, Bennett betrays the hatred in his heart. While there is plenty to criticise, is it not better to be rational than violently emotional?
I’m on holiday in New Zealand, but live at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, longtime home of radical politics, gay rights and general bohemianism. Yet many of my friends and acquaintances voted for the president. They include minorities, gays, and transsexuals.
The Mueller investigation has uncovered precious little in two years. It seems to assume a culprit, and to be searching for a crime to pin on him. Perhaps Bennett should recall Jesus’ dictum: that one is not defiled by what goes into one’s mouth, but by what comes out.
Mark Timmerman, New York
Avoiding pregnancy
There is no need to march for ‘‘reproductive rights’’, every woman has the absolute right to not be pregnant with child and to take control of their bodies.
Those women who do not want to be pregnant should refrain from sexual intercourse. Women are victims of a culture that misleads them into believing that sex is for ‘‘fun and recreation’’.
When will women learn that it is men who demand abortion on demand in order that they may exploit women for their own selfish pleasure and have access to abortion as a back-up to failed contraception.
It is sad that the young women marching mistakenly believe that they are feminists. They should realise that the true feminist position is to oppose the violent killing of the unborn, to defend the dignity of women and motherhood. Pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not healthcare. Ken Orr, Christchurch