Right to Life New Zealand

Upholding the sanctity of life in New Zealand and Standing Against the Killing

Will Parliament Challenge the Authority of the Creator?

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Media Release June 17 2019

Right to Life asks, will the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern give moral leadership and protect the vulnerable in our community? Is she going to stand up for the vulnerable and vote against the life threatening End of Life Choice bill [EOLCB] at its second reading?

A yes vote by our parliamentarians at the second reading for the EOLCB would be an unprecedented challenge to the authority of God.

God is the author of life and we are the stewards of the life that He has lovingly entrusted to us. Parliament has usurped the authority of God by deceiving itself that it has the authority to decide who shall live and who shall die. The EOLCB will empower doctors to kill or assist in the suicide of patients.

All authority comes from God and He has delegated His authority to the State to legislate for the protection of the lives of every member of our community from conception to natural death and not to preside over our destruction.

This threat to the right to life of the elderly, the disabled and the seriously ill is a threat to the lives of all and should be a cause of great concern for every person in our community.

It is important to understand the agenda of the euthanasia movement, a movement that has close association with eugenics which decrees that only the fit shall be allowed to live. The agenda is;

  • That the State has authority to decide who shall live and who shall be killed.
  • That doctors be empowered by the State to kill their patients or assist in their suicide.
  • That doctors be required to disregard the Hippocratic Oath and the duty to do no harm. Doctors could be, as in Nazi Germany, required to pledge allegiance to the State by taking an oath, “to the health of the nation.’
  • That doctors be required to disregard their conscience and become agents of the State in terminating the lives of their patients.
  • To normalise suicide as rational and to require acceptance of its citizens that there is a duty to die when one becomes a burden on the State or on the family.

In a 2008 interview, Baroness Mary Warnock, a leading British moral philosopher, said that people suffering from dementia had a duty to commit suicide: “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives, your family’s lives and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Services.”

In 2016 there were 62,827 patients in New Zealand with Alzheimers, costing $1.7 billion in care. By 2050 it is expected that there will be 170,000 patients needing care, costing an estimated $5 billion. These are among our most vulnerable citizens. All of whom would be potential victims of euthanasia.

We should learn from Nazi Germany and the T4 euthanasia programme that started in 1938 which resulted in the killing of an estimated 300,000 disabled and sick German children and adults. It culminated in the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews. Will we learn from history and not make the same mistake?

It is imperative that Parliament uphold its duty to defend life by defeating the contentious EOLCB at its second reading.

Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Homicide and Assisted Suicide are not Health Care

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Media Release 18th May 2019

Right to Life requests that Parliament votes a resounding no to the second reading of the End of Life Choice bill on Wednesday 22nd May. We encourage all those who are concerned about this dangerous bill to continue to contact their MP’s before they vote on Wednesday.

This bill is tilted “The End of Life Choice Bill” to blatantly mislead the pubic. Its intetion is to allow doctors to kill their patients or assist in their suicide. There is a stark contrast in the title, between Seymour’s Bill and the 2001 Dutch euthanasia bill.  This bill was at least honestly and transparently named. It was titled,”The Dutch Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act”. There was no attempt to hide the hideous reality that euthanasia is about doctors inflicting death on their patients or assisting in their suicide.

While the Dutch were at least honest in their description we should learn from their experience of the terrible consequences of passing legislation which authorizes doctors to kill rather than care for their patients. Statistics relating to euthanasia deaths in The Netherlands in 2018 have been released, and are available on the Euthanasia Commission website.

According to the Dutch Euthanasia Commission there were just over 6100 people who were killed in euthanasia in The Netherlands last year, making it responsible for 1 in 25 deaths in the country.

146 People were killed in The Netherlands in 2018 because they were suffering dementia.  Two of these were euthanised even though they were no longer able to communicate their request, with doctors deeming that a previous written request was sufficient to kill them.

67 People were killed because they were suffering from psychiatric disorders.  Alarmingly, in only half of these cases was the reporting physician themselves a psychiatrist.

205 People – or more than one every two days – were euthanised because of an “accumulation of old age disorders.”  These disorders include vision and hearing impairment, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis (described in the report as “wear and tear”, balance problems, and cognitive decline.

The Dutch government supports autonomy and the “right “of those over the age of 70 years of age, who believe that their life is complete, to be provided with doctor assisted suicide. A draft bill has been studied by government since 2016.

Suitable organ donors among those having their lives terminated are encouraged to donate their organs e.g. heart, lungs, kidneys and pancreas. In order to retrieve organs in the best condition doctors are now advocating that the law be changed to allow organs to be retrieved from a patient while tranquilised but still alive. This would be done in a hospital operating theatre to ensure best quality organs. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association done on Belgium euthanasia statistics for 2015 revealed that 10% of patients being terminated could donate at least one organ. It would appear that while the patient’s life was considered of little value his organs were of value.

Parliament has a sacred duty to our Creator, the author of life and the community to legislate to protect the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death. It is always a crime to kill another innocent human being. This dangerous anti-life bill that emanates from a culture of death is a threat to the lives of the most vulnerable in our community, the aged, the disabled and the seriously ill.  Under the guise of compassion, death with dignity and autonomy the End of Life Choice bill seeks to entice our Parliament to legislate to allow doctors to choose who may be allowed to live and who shall die.

These are the potential future consequences if Parliament passed this dangerous EOLCB. This is not the New Zealand that we want for our children and grandchildren.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Failure of Political Leadership. “Choice” The Right to be Killed

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It is disappointing that three of our prominent Parliamentarians should support the contentious and life threatening End of Life Choice bill [EOLCB] of David Seymour.
The Members are, the Prime Minister, Jacinda  Ardern, the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little and the Deputy Leader of the National Party, the Hon Paula Bennett.

The three have publicly stated that they support ‘choice’. The choice they are alluding to is the ‘right’ of a patient to have their doctor kill them with a lethal injection or assist them in committing suicide; self-murder.

These leaders and indeed all Members of Parliament should recognise that their duty is to legislate to protect the lives of every member of the community from conception until natural death and not to preside over our destruction. The Members proclaim the right to ‘choose’ yet are prepared to ignore the 38,707 written submissions with 90.02 per cent opposed to euthanasia and the bill. Why are they ‘choosing’ to impose their will on the community?

The ‘choice’ proposed in this EOLCB is a ravenous wolf in sheeps clothing. The bill undermines the rights of patients and doctors.

The European Court of Human Rights found in 2017 that there is no right to suicide or to assisted suicide under the convention and no positive obligation to provide such. The legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide does not provide individual rights but it gives doctors, or others, the right in law to cause your death.

The bill would threaten the human rights of those who did not choose to be killed. In Holland in 2015 there were 431 patients who were deprived of their life by their doctor without their knowledge or consent. A doctor in Belgium who gives patients a lethal injection, claims that 1,000 patients every year are killed by their doctor without the knowledge or consent of the patient.

The bill undermines the right of doctors to choose to follow their conscience. A doctor who refuses a request from his patient for a lethal injection is required to refer the patient to a doctor who is prepared to kill him.

David Seymour, the ‘high priest of euthanasia’, claims that his bill is all about ‘choice’. This is the same person who seeks to deny his fellow MPs the right to choose to follow their conscience in voting on this bill by seeking to have a binding referendum on the bill to bind their vote to the majority.

Parliament should recognise that David Seymour is seeking to seduce the community to accept homicide and suicide under the smokescreen of choice. Right to Life requests Parliament to defeat this contentious bill at its second reading on 1 May 2019.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Doctors Healers or Killers?

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Media Release Saturday 6th April 2019

The second reading of the End of Life Choice bill in May will present Parliament with a clear choice to either defend the ethics of the medical profession or to change those ethics to allow doctors to kill their patients or assist in their suicide. Should Parliament unwisely and unjustly pass the EOLCB, it will ultimately classify certain persons as having lives not worthy of life. Those persons may then be killed with the permission of the state. This same state will fund the killing as “a health service” and allow for their lives to be terminated in Public Hospitals.

This bill will empower a doctor to deprive a patient of their life without the knowledge of the patient’s family. The bill obliges the doctor to falsely record the underlying condition as the cause of death on the patients death certificate. While the doctor is then obliged to report the death as a euthanasia or assisted suicide death, we know from overseas experience that euthanasia deaths are considerably being under-reported. The doctor’s action in killing the patient or assisting in the patient’s suicide relies solely on the doctor’s self- reporting.

For 2,000 years the medical profession has upheld the Hippocratic tradition to do no harm. The total prohibition against the taking of the life of an innocent human being is the bedrock of both the law and medicine and is enshrined in the Crimes Act 1966. We remove it at our peril.

The state has a solemn duty to protect the inalienable right to life of every human being from conception to natural death. The first duty of the state is to legislate for the protection of the lives of its citizens and not to preside over their destruction. Assisted suicide and homicide are serious crimes and carry sentences of up to 14 years imprisonment on conviction for Assisted Suicide and up to life for Homicide. If passed, the EOLC bill will require a watershed change to our laws for these crimes.

Right to Life believe that members of Parliament who unwisely choose to support this contentious bill should forfeit their right to sit in our Parliament and are likely to pay a high price at the next election in 2020.

Killing is diametrically opposed to the role of physicians as healers. Should the EOLC bill be passed doctors who are opposed to euthanasia will be required to refer a patient seeking euthanasia to a doctor who is prepared to facilitate the killing. This a violation of the right of physicians to follow their conscience to do no harm and to respect the right to life of their patients.

Right to Life believes that if the EOLC bill is passed it will result in doctors who respect the sanctity of every human life and who refuse to participate in the killing of patients, being driven out of the medical profession.

We also believe that in a short time it will be a requirement for candidates to enter medical school to agree to being willing to kill their patients or assist in their suicide.

Parliament should not be seduced by David Seymour’s suggested amendments to the EOLCB to include a national referendum and support for the Palliative Care bill of the Hon. Maggie Barry. These suggestions are nothing but a thin smokescreen which he hopes may help in getting his bill through Parliament.

Right to Life calls upon our legislators to vote down this unprecedented attack on life and to uphold the common good. Our medical profession must be proteced from this dangerous and contentious bill.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

This is the website of Right to Life NZ Inc.
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