Rosemary McLeod: From Scammers to Euthanasia Advocates, These Are Dark Days in Old Ladydom

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OPINION: These are perilous times for tottering toward old ladydom. The women's mags cut your life support at 50 unless you're Helen Mirren, sooner if you're not, in which case you might as well sign up for the Philip Nitschke death machine, with optional funeral casket.

New Zealand Euthanasia Bill Delayed by Mass Replies

Raymond Huo, MP

An unprecedented surge in public submissions has seen a bill legalising voluntary [and non-voluntary] euthanasia in New Zealand pushed back until next year.

SBS News - An unprecedented outpouring of feedback about a bill legalising euthanasia in New Zealand has seen a potential law change delayed.

The parliamentary committee considering the controversial End of Life Change Bill - which would give people with "a terminal illness or a grievous and irremediable medical condition" the option of assisted dying - has received more than 35,000 submissions already.

Euthanasia Bill Renders Users Sitting Ducks to Their Heirs and Other Predators

Debating Chamber

New Zealand's bill seeking to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia has passed first reading.[1]

The bill's explanatory note claims that patients will be protected by a "comprehensive set of provisions to ensure free choice, made without coercion." In fact, patients who die under the bill will not even be protected against predators who willfully fail to follow the touted provisions.

The bill, paragraph 27(1)(a), provides an offence for a person who "willfully fails to comply with a requirement in this Act." The bill, however, also provides that a person who dies as a result of assisted suicide or euthanasia "is taken for all purposes" as if the person had not died via the Act. The bill, paragraph 25, states:

A person who dies as a result of the provision of assisted dying [assisted suicide and euthanasia] is taken for all purposes to have died as if assisted dying had not been provided.

If legally, assisted dying had not been provided under the Act, then how can the offence in paragraph 27, "willfully fail[ing] to comply with a requirement of the Act," be enforced? The two provisions read together create an oxymoron. The offence in paragraph 27 is thereby rendered unenforceable.

More to the point, with the lack of enforceability, patients will be rendered sitting ducks to their heirs and other predators seeking to benefit from their deaths.

Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA
Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation
www.choiceillusion.org
www.margaretdore.org
1001 4th Avenue, Suite 4400
Seattle WA USA 98154
206 697 1217

Footnote

[1]  "Euthanasia bill passes first reading in Parliament," NZ Herald, 13 Dec, 2017.