Euthanasia bill

Labour MP, Iain Lees-Galloway proposes legislation to allow Doctors to Kill their Patients or Assist in their suicide

Right to Life is disappointed that Labour MP, Iain Lees-Galloway has publicly announced that he is preparing to resubmit to the ballot the highly controversial Private Member’s bill, “End of Life Choice bill” of the defeated Labour MP, Maryan Street. It is understood that the bill will not be amended and that it has wide support among the Labour caucus. Right to Life calls on the members of the Labour caucus to reject a culture of death and promote a culture of life by treating this vile bill with the contempt that it deserves. Have not the Labour Party been already given a clear message from the electorate at the recent election? The Labour Party was proudly founded on an ethos of protecting human life and the vulnerable and the defenceless. Why then, in recent years, has the Labour Party been taken over by those who seek to take away the right to life of those most at risk?

Mr Lees-Gallowy, the community did not elect you to Parliament with a mandate to deliberate on how we could be legally murdered.

It is disappointing that the Labour caucus appear to have forgotten that the primary duty of government is to legislate to protect the right to life of all members of the community and not to legislate for their destruction. Those who seek to govern who do not accept this fundamental principle, disqualify themselves from governing. This noxious bill is a poison chalice. It would be the height of folly for the Labour caucus to allow this evil bill to be placed back in the ballot. Should this happen, Right to Life predicts that the first casualty of this bill will sadly again be the Labour Party, who will face an even greater decline in support at the next election and will be punished by being relegated to a fourth term in opposition.

Euthanasia is all about doctors killing their patients or assisting in their suicide. It is being promoted as a good to be sought, as a humane objective, however if introduced it will inflict lethal violence on the most vulnerable members of our community, the aged, the handicapped, the disabled and the seriously ill. No safeguards will ever prevent it spreading from those who do want it to those who don’t. It is promoted as compassion and loving care; it is not. We are told that we need euthanasia to stop patients dying in intolerable pain. That is false, excellent palliative care is available in New Zealand, no person needs to suffer intolerable pain. Euthanasia is not about control of pain but about disposing of lives deemed not worthy of life. The proposed End of Life Choice bill is, in our opinion, more dangerous than any other euthanasia legislation introduced in other jurisdictions. It provides for any person who is lonely and depressed or who finds life a burden and intolerable to have their life terminated; this is monstrous and to have the implications of this bill hidden in emotive appeals is heinous.

Euthanasia is promoted with arguments designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. There is no dignity in being murdered by your doctor.

Euthanasia is an evil that is part of a culture of death; it is the same culture that inflicts violence against vulnerable women and their defenceless and innocent unborn. We were told in 1977 when the abortion laws were passed that there would be few abortions, that was a lie and today we have abortion on demand with nearly 15,000 children murdered in their mother’s womb each year. We are told by the promoters of a culture of death that there would be few euthanasia cases each year and that only those who wanted euthanasia would be killed. Dr Boer, an academic in the field of ethics at Utrecht University in the Netherland, had argued seven years ago in support of euthanasia, that a ‘good euthanasia law’ would produce relatively low numbers of deaths. Speaking in a personal capacity more recently, he said, that he now believed that the very existence of a euthanasia law turns assisted suicide from a last resort into a normal procedure; we cannot allow this to happen in New Zealand.

Dr Boer, who has since 2005 been a member of a review committee that monitors euthanasia deaths, stated recently to a Select Committee in the House of Lords in the UK, that: Euthanasia is now becoming so prevalent in the Netherlands, that it is ‘on the way to becoming a default mode of dying for cancer patients’. He pleaded with the Committee not to make the same mistake as was made in Holland, where Assisted deaths have increased by about 15 per cent every year since 2008 and where the number could hit a record 6,000 this year. Campaigns for doctor-administered death to be made ever easier ‘will not rest’ until a lethal pill is made available to anyone over 70 who wishes to die.

May God protect our nation and its people from euthanasia and a rapacious culture of death.

Right to Life encourages those opposed to this bill to contact Mr Lees-Galloway and to request that he does not go ahead with re-submitting this dangerous bill to the ballot.

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