Right to Life New Zealand

Upholding the sanctity of Human life and Standing Up for the Vulnerable

Euthanasia Referendum Threat to Hospice Movement

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Media Release Monday 29th June 2020

Right to Life believes that if the euthanasia referendum results in the ‘End of Life Choice’ Act coming into force, which would happen if more than 50% of people vote for it, there is a danger that the  the government could withholding funding for palliative care for hospices in New Zealand. The objective would be to compel hospices against their conscience to allow doctors to kill their patients or assist in their suicide within their hospices.

The 16th June 2020 High Court judgement of Justice J, Mallon in the case of Hospice NZ V the Attorney General highlights the threat to world class palliative care provided by Hospice NZ.

Hospice NZ had sought an urgent hearing in May in the High Court in Wellington to ask three questions. One was on whether New Zealand’s proposed euthanasia law, the subject of a referendum would have the effect of defeating the conscience right of hospices to protect their patients by prohibiting the killing of patients under the End of Life Choice Bill.

Justice Mallon in his judgement supported the right of hospices to prohibit euthanasia, but stated in his decision that there was however nothing to prevent the government authority from withholding health care funding if a hospice refused to allow euthanasia.

The Attorney General submitted to the court, [131] Further, if a DHB determined the most efficient way to fund assisted dying services in its area was to fund a provider who is willing to provide both palliative care and assisted dying services, it must be entitled to do so. Such a decision would not be to discriminate against those holding a conscientious objection. Rather, it would be one of effective allocation of funding to service providers in accordance with the statutory requirement on a DHB that it “seek the optimum arrangement for the most effective and efficient delivery of health services in order to meet local, regional and national needs”.  

So if we consider the judgement we would have to conclude that under it, if a DHB seeking the most optimum arrangement or determined the most efficient way to fund assisted dying services… it must be entitled to do so. The words most efficient way are chilling and do nothing to negate our concerns expressed in the first paragraph of our post.

As it reads there is nothing in the above judgement that would cause any alleviation of our fears.

Let’s be clear, Euthanasia is about doctors killing patients or assisting in their suicide and it is diametrically opposed to the objective of palliative care, to neither hasten nor postpone death.

Euthanasia represents a culture of death. It is incompatible with palliative care which is compatible with a culture of life.  Right to Life believes that the culture of death will not compromise, and will  demand complete subservience. The End of Life Choice would grease the slippery slope and a right to die would ultimately become a duty to die.

There are 33 hospices in New Zealand providing palliative care for those seriously ill, or in a terminal condition. Government funding accounts for 60 per cent of the funding required to maintain hospices.

Right to Life believes that it is the intention of the government to compel Hospices to accept that doctors could kill patients with a lethal dose or assist them to commit suicide. This was clearly indicated in the defeat of the Supplementary Order Paper 295 to the End of Life Choice Bill, moved by the Hon Michael Woodhouse. This SOP sought to amend the End of Life Choice Bill by upholding the right of hospices to “conscientiously object to including euthanasia”, It was shamefully defeated by 68 to 52. (See Sections 58-62 of Hospice-New-Zealand-v-Attorney-General)

This important amendment was opposed by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern and 33 Labour MPs, supported by nine NZ First MPs, eight Green MPs  and 15 National MPs.

Right to Life is firmly of the conviction that if they succeed with the referendum, that it is the government’s intention to incorporate euthanasia as a ‘health service’ in our hospices.

We call on all those who value the lives of our unwell and elderly to vote NO at the coming referendum. The lives of the vulnerable have never been at greater risk.

Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Abortion Referendum Please

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The following article is a guest post from the Average Thief Blog

New Zealand should have three referenda later this year, not two.  There will be referenda on the “conscience issues” of euthanasia (End of Life Choice Bill) and the legalisation of cannabis.  There should also be a referendum for the most difficult conscience issue of all – widely increased access to abortion (Abortion Legislation Bill).

The Government wants New Zealanders to pretend that abortion is not a conscience issue: the effect of the Abortion Legislation Bill is to rebrand abortion as a “health issue”.  According to this view, the pregnant woman is the only person involved: the embryo/foetus is just a mass; the woman suffers from a condition (pregnancy) that is resolved by removing the mass.

It is not necessary here to describe how ludicrous and repulsive this view is; it is enough to point out that it is highly contentious – probably the most contentious moral issue most of us have ever encountered.  Many New Zealanders consider the embryo/foetus to be either a human being or, in terms of its potential, “human enough” to require serious recognition and protection.

The pretence that this morally highly contentious issue is not a conscience issue at all is nothing short of dishonest – and should be rejected out of hand, not only in the interests of reason and common sense but also as a protest against that dishonesty.

This dishonesty was reinforced by the decision to exclude men (so far as possible) from membership of the Select Committee and by the Select Committee’s decision that submitters who oppose the Bill altogether (seeing no way to tweak it into decent shape) would not be permitted to appear before the Committee.  Only those who support increased access to abortion were granted the privilege of a hearing.  To use the machinery of our democracy to reduce public access to democratic processes is profoundly wrong.

As the Bill is not yet law, it remains for Parliament to decide whether abortion is a conscience issue or a health issue.  For that reason, Parliament might (or might not) decide that the decision whether or not to pass the Bill is indeed a “conscience issue” and allow MPs a “personal vote” rather than a “party vote”.  However, Parliament could also make a far better decision – put the matter to a referendum, along with euthanasia and cannabis.

There are compelling reasons why the issue should be resolved by referendum:

1)      It is completely ridiculous to have a referendum on euthanasia, which allows a person to take their own life or to agree to be killed, and not to have a referendum on abortion which, according to many of us, allows a human being to be killed without their consent.  Our law-making processes should not be ridiculous.

2)      A referendum involves voting by secret ballot.  However, when MPs cast a “personal vote”, they do so visibly, without the protection of secrecy.  There may have been times when an MP’s conscience was safe from scrutiny and condemnation – he or she could express a conscientious objection with impunity.  Certainly, this is not the case now.  We see all around us that the ideologies of wokeness govern not only the law but also morality, and are equally dogmatic, condemning and unforgiving in both settings.  We see that a conscientious objection to any woke dictate is “wrong” and is punished severely – for example, by crippling the objector’s career.  MPs are no exception, they are ring-barked by wokeness in general and by hardline feminism in particular.  They are not free, as perhaps they once were, to vote according to their conscience.  We citizen voters are not as yet under siege to the same extent; and, anyhow, we have the security of a secret ballot.  So, the issue should be left to us.

Abortion on demand is a conscience issue that should be addressed by those who are still free to vote with their conscience – the electorate, in a referendum.

Why the End of Life Choice Bill will increase our appalling suicide rate

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Right to Life believes that New Zealanders have a right to be fully informed of the potentially disastrous effect on our appalling suicide rate if we vote yes at the referendum for the introduction of the End of Life Choice Act. It is imperative that the government urgently provide accurate information to the people of New Zealand on the detrimental effect that legalised assisted suicide will have on our appalling suicide rate, currently 685 for 2018/19.

The Minister of Health, the Hon Dr David Clark advised Right to Life in response to our Official Information Act request that, “I can confirm that the Ministry of Health does not have any evidence that the EOLCB will have, or will not have, a causal effect on New Zealand’s suicide rate.”

Right to Life wrote to the Minister of Health on 6 December requesting that the Minister give urgent consideration to directing the Ministry of Health to conduct research into the effect that the EOLCB would have on New Zealand’s appalling suicide rate. The Minister replied on 8 December stating, “thank you for your correspondence. Thank you for taking the time to write.” That was it.

This response contradicts the advice given to the Justice Select Committee considering the EOLCB, in a Departmental Report by the Ministry of Health and Justice. The advice was that, “There is no evidence that assisted dying impacts suicide rates.” This advice to the Select Committee and to Parliament who voted to pass this dangerous life-threatening bill was misleading.

The misleading claim was countered in a respected and comprehensive study conducted in 2015 by David Jones and David Paton of states in the United States that had legalised assisted suicide. Their study found that legalizing Physician assisted suicide [PAS] was associated with a significant increase in total suicides, (including PAS) and no reduction in rates of non -assisted suicide.

It is a serious crime to falsify a death certificate. Death certificates for assisted suicides and death by lethal injection are falsified to disguise the true cause of death. Assisted suicides would not be added to the suicide statistics. Why has government and Parliament colluded to cover up the killing of the vulnerable by allowing the falsifying of death certificates and refusing to acknowledge assisted suicide as suicide?

Right to Life has written to the Minister of Health requesting that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice be asked to undertake detailed research that investigates the possibility of a causal link between suicide rates and the practice of assisted dying. This should include an examination of the change in suicide rates in Belgium and The Netherlands in relation to the recent marked increase in the proportion of deaths from euthanasia in those countries. It should also include an examination of emerging trends in Canada and the Australian State of Victoria.

Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Does David Seymour Support Assisted Suicide for “Completed Life”?

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Right to Life would like to correct the statement made in this media release that the proposal by the government of the Netherlands stated in the first paragraph is in fact a Private Members Bill, not a Government Bill. It is understood that parliamentarian Pia Dijkstra intends to introduce a draft bill in this regard in 2020

Media Release Monday 25th November 2019

Right to Life challenges David Seymour (pictured) who supports “choice” to tell our community whether he supports the current proposal of the The Netherlands government to provide assisted suicide to every person over the age of 75 years of age “who believes that they have completed their life”.

David Seymour is the leading advocate in New Zealand for the death lobby promoting choice for assisted suicide or to receive a lethal injection. Right to Life believes that his contentious anti-life End of Life Choice Bill is but the first step in implementing the ultimate hidden agenda for disposing of the lives of those not considered worthy of living.

Our community must now watch and pay attention as this agenda unfolds in the Netherlands, because our lives and that of our children depend on it. The Dutch government recently announced its intention to introduce legislation next year to provide State funded assisted suicide for any person over the age of seventy-five who believe that their life is complete. It will not be necessary to have a terminal illness or to have even have ill health. The ultimate logical step is for the government to make it a duty to accept assisted suicide on reaching 75. This would be a considerable saving for the Dutch health services and social welfare.

Polling conducted by the Dutch government reveal that the proposal has the support of 55% of the population. Half those polled wanted no age limit, a third wanted a lower limit.

The Netherlands has endured legislation allowing doctors to assist in the suicide of their patients or to give them a lethal injection since 2002. The populace has clearly been seduced by a culture of death. It commenced with accepting the killing of the terminally ill and quickly expanded to include those with depression, Alzheimer’s, dementia, the disabled and even children. Should New Zealand say yes to the referendum on the End of Life Choice Bill at the next election, there is no reason why New Zealand should not stumble blindly in the steps of the Netherlands. If we do not learn from history, the destruction of human life will be the inevitable consequence.

Euthanasia is about doctors killing their patients or assisting in their suicide. It is intrinsically evil; no referendum can legitimise that which is evil. The prohibition against taking the life of another human being is the foundation of the law and medicine. It is always wrong to kill another innocent human being. The approval of the community, even in a referendum, can never make murder acceptable. A referendum is an attempt to seduce and to implicate the whole community in the murder of the vulnerable.

Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Parliament Betrays our Community; refuses to Govern for the Common Good

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Media Release 23rd October 2019

Parliament tonight has shamefully abdicated its responsibility to legislate to protect the vulnerable in society by voting 63 to 57 in favour of a referendum to decide the fate of the Seymour End of Life Choice Bill. When such important matters as life and death are at stake, Right to Life believes that Parliament must itself take responsibility for such decisions, rather than abdicating that responsibility.

The referendum will be conducted at the general election in 2020. Right to Life believes that if the bill passes its third reading in November, the media will continue to misinform the public We believe that they will lead a concerted campaign to persuade our community to support assisted suicide and euthanasia, by voting yes to the referendum.

Parliament has a duty to legislate for the protection of the most vulnerable members of our community the aged, the terminally ill and the disabled. Right to Life commends those Members who voted to defend life by voting to oppose a binding referendum. Right to Life asks if Members who voted for a referendum in Parliament are in Parliament at all. If they are reluctant to take responsibility to protect us, why are they there at all?

The motion for a referendum was moved by Jenny Marcroft of NZ First who declared that if Parliament did not support a referendum, NZ First would vote against the bill, at its third reading. The Hon Maggie Barry in her impassioned  address in Parliament stated that this bill was a “kill bill”, that it was poorly worded and that it was disguised killing under the guise of choice and compassion. The Hon Nick Smith in his moving address said that the bill was “unsound, unsafe and dangerous.”

It is also shameful that Parliament refused to support the amendment of the Hon Tim MacIndoe  to change the name of the  End of Life Choice Bill to the “Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Bill”. The name of the bill is intended to mislead and hide its purpose, which is to allow doctors to assist in the suicide of their patients or to kill them by giving them a lethal injection.

Right to Life earnestly requests Parliament promote a culture of life and oppose a culture of death by voting to defeat this dangerous anti-life EOLCB, on the 13th November.

Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Prime Minister Applauded for Opposing Euthanasia Referendum

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Right to Life applauds the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern for her leadership in upholding the right of Parliament to make laws rather than abdicating that responsibility to the public in a referendum. The issues surrounding euthanasia and in particular the ill-conceived and life threatening End of Life Choice bill, (ELOCB), are still very poorly understood by a great many people.

The Prime Minister rightly disagrees with the Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, who is demanding that a binding referendum be held as a condition of continuing support from NZ First for this bill, which has the full support of the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister was quoted in the NZ Herald as saying, “My view is that a referendum isn’t required to ensure that the voice of New Zealanders has been heard and to reflect the will of Parliament and the people they represent,” she said.

“I will be voting for the bill to continue as it stands.”

Right to Life urges Parliament to support the Prime Minister in opposing an amendment expected to be proposed by David Seymour, or Winston Peters to make the EOLCB subject to a binding referendum.

Euthanasia is about doctors killing their patients or assisting in their suicide, it is intrinsically evil, no referendum can legitimise that which is evil. The prohibition against taking the life of another human being is the foundation of the law and medicine. It is always wrong to kill another innocent human being. The approval of the community, even in a referendum, can never make murder acceptable. A referendum in this regard, is an attempt to seduce and implicate the whole community in the murder of the vulnerable. The most fundamental medical ethic of not killing or helping patients kill themselves must not be reduced to an opinion poll.

Right to Life is implacably opposed to a referendum because it is based on the false and dangerous premise that the community has a right to decide who shall be allowed to be killed. This presumption is a violation of the inalienable right to life of every member of the community.

A binding referendum that resulted in support for the Seymour bill would also impose an intolerable burden on the conscience of parliamentarians who are opposed to the murder of the vulnerable. It would be a serious dereliction of duty for Parliament to support a binding referendum. Parliament must not shamefully shirk its responsibility to protect the lives of the community by cowardly washing its hands and imposing that responsibility onto the community.

Right to Life earnestly requests that our parliamentarians vote to defeat any resolution seeking to impose a binding referendum that would implicate the whole community in the murder of vulnerable people.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Binding referendum on euthanasia tyranny, not democracy

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Maryan Street, president of the End of Life Choice Society previously named the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New Zealand Is promoting support for a binding referendum at the 2020 general election on the End of Life Choice bill [EOLCB] of David Seymour. This proposal is strongly opposed for the following reasons;

it would be a serious violation of Parliamentary democracy. It is the duty of the members of our Parliament to legislate for the protection of the lives of every member of our community, especially the most vulnerable and not to preside over our destruction. The right to life of every person from conception to natural death is protected in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It states in Article 3,” Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” It further states that our rights are universal and inalienable, being inalienable they may not be taken from us nor may we give them up. Our human rights are not conferred on us by the state, by Parliament or by the community, they are conferred on us at conception by our Creator. It is therefore contended that Parliament should not be giving any consideration to a bill that would allow doctors to decide who shall be allowed to live and who may have their lives terminated. Parliament therefore would be acting in dereliction of its duty by abdicating its responsibility to protect our right to life by imposing its responsibility on to the citizens of New Zealand.

A referendum is an important part of our Parliamentary democracy, it is suitable for such issues as changing the nations flag but totally unsuitable for issues of life and death such as the Seymour bill which if passed would allow doctors to kill “terminally ill patients” or assist in their suicide. The EOLCB is currently with the Justice Select Committee which is considering more than 35,000 written submissions and has also heard more than1,800 oral submissions. A careful analysis of the submissions is being conducted by Care Alliance and while not complete, it reveals that more than ninety per cent of submissions are opposed to euthanasia.

The Parliamentary Select Committee has received many expert submissions from the medical profession here in New Zealand and from overseas. Many of these submissions warn of the great dangers that would threaten the most vulnerable members of our community, the aged, the disabled and the seriously ill. The Committee will be reporting back to Parliament in March on the Committee’s recommendations concerning the amendment of the bill or its rejection. The bill will then have its second reading and if passed, it’s third reading to be passed into law. In a Parliamentary democracy we need to trust our Parliament to be fully informed on the implications of this bill and to vote in the best interests of the community. It would be most unwise to subject this contentious bill to an ill informed electorate in a binding referendum. It would also be unjust and immoral to compel Members of Parliament to vote to pass this bill against their conscience at a third reading to comply with the result of a binding referendum.

This bill is but a stepping stone to normalise suicide and the acceptance of a lethal injection to terminate the lives of those considered not worthy of life. A right to die would soon become a duty to die as it is more costly to care for a patient than to kill a patient. It would later extend to include children and those with Alzheimer’s and Dementia We can live without euthanasia.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson,

Right to Life


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