More wanted from assisted-death bill

Supporters of a proposed euthanasia law say it should go further by allowing binding end of life directives from patients to doctors.

Directives made by people earlier in their lives would allow patients to make choices about whether or not they would want to die if left incapable of making that informed decision later in life.

As written, the bill would only allow those who doctors could be certain were understanding the gravity of their decision to make it, meaning patients with dementia were unlikely to be able to access it.

Passionate arguments both for and against David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill were heard by MPs on the first day of oral submissions on the proposed law.

The bill would allow the terminally ill or those with an irremediable medical condition the choice of assisted death, otherwise known as euthanasia. It passed its first reading last December 76 to 44 as a conscience vote.

More than 35,000 submissions have been received on the bill.

End of Life Choice Society campaigner and former Labour MP Maryan Street said end-of-life directives would make the bill much stronger.

‘‘When people are of sound mind and they anticipate their death, which may be from any number of things, they may decide that a diagnosis of dementia or advanced symptoms of dementia, are things that they do not wish to tolerate,’’ Street said. ‘‘I do not understand why people would object to people putting that down when they are of sound mind.’’

Questioned strongly by National MP Maggie Barry on how these symptoms would be recognised, fellow submitter and doctor Jack Havill said there were strong points that could be set and recognised.

‘‘There are good strong endpoints of dementia. One is that you cannot recognise your family or friends. One is that you cannot swallow your food. One is that you cannot go to the toilet by yourself,’’ Havill said. ‘‘These are quite obvious to any fool.’’

Former NZ First MP Peter Brown, who tried and failed to pass a similar bill over a decade ago, told the stories of his wife and father’s painful final days.

‘‘My father and my first wife both wanted it all over,’’ Brown said. ‘‘Some people in this country do die horribly. They are forced to live out the last seconds of their life.’’

He said his father died in pain in the middle of the night instead of with his family at a time of his choosing.

Polling shows that the public is overwhelmingly supportive of the aims of the bill – at least for terminally ill patients with the support of their doctors – while medical doctors are generally against it.

Tawa doctor and chair of the Health Professionals Alliance Catherine Hallagan submitted strongly against the bill.

‘‘It is a bad bill that cannot be fixed,’’ Hallagan said.

She said doctors and other health professionals did not want the law.

No safeguards built into the law would be sufficient to make sure patients were not being coerced into choosing death by family or others.

‘‘Doctors cannot prove that coercion does not exist,’’ Hallagan.

Seymour said earlier yesterday that he welcomed the record number of submissions but Parliament should not mistake it for a de facto referendum, as submitters on contentious conscience issues were usually more opposed than the general public.