Media Release Sunday 9th April 2017
Those in New Zealand who support the law being changed to allow doctors to kill their patients or assist in their suicide, claim that the law would be strictly enforced and that there would be no danger of it being interpreted to threaten the lives of the vulnerable and defenceless.
Right to Life believes that the actions of the Minister of Health in Quebec should be a wake up call to our community that once the line has been crossed from caring to killing, there is nothing to stop the culture of death from claiming patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia. We believe that claims by Act leader David Seymour and others proposing decriminalizing euthanasia in New Zealand, that there can be adequate legal safeguards to prevent abuse, are completely farcical. Once the line from caring to killing is crossed, then pragmatism will rule. What is unthinkable today will make complete ‘sense’ tomorrow.
Québec extended the boundaries by being the first Canadian Province to legalise euthanasia before the criminal code was amended by defining lethal injection as medical treatment – confined to those patients who were competent. Gaétan Barrette, Québec’s Health Minister, is now considering incrementally extending euthanasia to incompetent people with Alzheimer’s or Dementia who are not dying. Consideration is also being considered by the federal government to extending euthanasia to persons under 18 years of age.
New Zealand must reject Euthanasia; a lethal injection is killing. It is not and will never be health care for our elderly with Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
Should euthanasia be legalized in New Zealand it will ultimately lead to being re-branded as ‘medical treatment’ for those with Alzheimer’s and Dementia. A report from the New Zealand Alzheimer’s Association reveals that dementia is a major and growing health challenge. It estimates there has been a 29% increase in numbers of people with dementia in five years – from 48,182 people in 2011 to 62,287 in 2016. It is predicted 170,212 people will have dementia by 2050. The costs associated with dementia are estimated to have increased by 75% – from $955 million in 2011 to $1,676 million in 2016. In today’s dollars, this could be more than $2.7 billion by 2030.
Again Right to Life warns that if NZ decriminalizes Euthanasia in any of its forms, it will only be a matter of time before we begin to dispose of inconvenient and costly Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients.
Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life.
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