Euthanasia Discussion

Voluntary Euthanasia - murder or mercy?

In the New Zealand Parliament, right now, a private members bill is being draft to legalize euthanasia. Last night I attended a Discussion hosted at the Wellington Museum with about 150 people attending. The panel was {L to R} : Dr Anne Maclennan, (Palliative Care); Janet Marsland (Voluntary Euthanasia Society): Paul Russell (HOPE); Dr Grant Morris (Law School).

You can find the issues in the debate elsewhere; they would be similar in most western countries. John Kleinsman's article "No case for killing society's most vulnerable" summarizes our present NZ discussion well.  I am only giving a couple of reflections from last night’s meeting.

Turning Doctors into Executioners.

Because the meeting was conducted politely, given the dignified surroundings of the Museum, I did not say this out loud: “You want our doctors to become executions!”

Janet Marsland gave some heart-wrenching cases of people seeking to die and, in all honesty, she said that legalizing the assisting of the terminally ill to die would mean killing them. It was pointed out that we don’t need doctors to do that; some other trained professional could do it!

My thought was, given the legal prescription around mercy-killing, which Grant Morris would want in place, the person coming into the room, no matter how dignified the circumstances, would be acting like an executioner who kills in a humane way by lethal injection.

It is repugnant to me to presume that doctors should carry out that duty. As part of the fabric of our culture we hold dearly to the clause “Do no harm” written in medical codes of conduct. If the Vulnerable, such as the comatose, the mentally impaired and the severely disabled cannot trust our doctors not to yield to pressure to kill them, then we are well on the slope to barbarism.

Protecting the Vulnerable

This brings me to my second reflection, that the law against Euthanasia protects the Vulnerable. As Paul Russell put it: “Patients need to know that their doctor can’t kill them.” Drawing on her experience in palliative care, Anne Maclennan said that it was very rare that a patient has a persistent desire to be euthanized. When it does occur, it is most often because of other issues which can be worked out. She, in particular, inspired me to protect the Vulnerable by seeking to maintain the law as it stands.


For the Dangers see:
The Dangers of Euthanasia: A Statement from the New Zealand Catholic Bishops