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NewsTalk ZB 11 December 2018
Family First Comment: “92% of submissions are against it, UP from 77% during the Health Select Committee’s earlier investigation”!
Once people consider the issue in depth, the opposition is overwhelming.
www.Protect.org.nz

An analysis of public submissions on the End of Life Choice Bill has found a growing number of Kiwis against euthanasia.

A team of volunteers from the Care Alliance, who oppose the bill, have analysed more than 20,000 of the record-breaking 36,000 submissions received.

Secretary Peter Thirkell says their preliminary analysis shows 92 percent of submissions are against it, up from 77 percent during the Health Select Committee’s earlier investigation

“The thing that strikes you is that these are just regular Kiwis for the most part saying what’s important to them. Overwhelmingly, people are quite fearful about
the broader social implications of this bill. That comes through strongly.”

Thirkell says many are concerned about vulnerable people who could be influenced one way or another.

One Christchurch palliative care doctor says she doesn’t support legalising euthanasia.

Doctor Amanda Landers was the former chair of the Kiwi branch of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine.

She says she had to speak to the initial Health Select Committee when the bill was in its infancy and what she learned concerned her.
READ MORE: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/lobby-group-claims-most-new-zealanders-against-euthanasia/

Stuff co.nz 5 December 2018
Family First Comment: Dr Huhana Hickey, who has multiple sclerosis, is one of many who consider the bill unsafe for the disabled, elderly, and the “easy targets for unscrupulous people”. 
#RejectAssistedSuicide 
www.Protect.org.nz

New Zealand is facing a question of life and death. After taking in the nation’s views on legalised euthanasia, the largest-ever parliamentary tour ended in November. Now, Stuff is laying out the arguments and telling the compelling stories surrounding the End of Life Choice bill.

Armed with alarming anecdotes and evidence from overseas jurisdictions, many arguments for legalising assisted death fall on either side of a divide.

It’s a narrow path to escape a painful death; or a “slippery slope” towards broadly sanctioned killing. But how does the End of Life Choice bill compare?

Dr Huhana Hickey, who has multiple sclerosis, is one of many who consider the bill unsafe for the disabled, elderly, and the “easy targets for unscrupulous people”.

“How do we know that we’re going to keep people who don’t want to be euthanised safe?”

It’s the permissive laws of the Netherland and Belgium, which permit euthanasia of minors and infants, that has Hickey most concerned.

“You can put all the safety measures in place, but the laws have a way of changing over time.

“Once you legislate it, you open the door to amendments, alterations, and the bill becoming, basically, an absolute farce in the end.”

Netherlands and Belgium have liberalised since passing law in 2002, after decades of permitting medically-assisted euthanasia.

Though liberalisation hasn’t happened everywhere. US-state Oregon legalised euthanasia strictly for cases of terminal illness in 1998, and hasn’t changed since. Advocacy to include irremediable conditions is now starting to gain traction two decades later.

The End of Life Choice bill permits assisted dying in a manner similar to Oregon, Canada, and Victoria, Australia – all stricter than European regimes.

Yet Hickey sees demonstrable risks. Belgian prosecutors are now conducting the first criminal investigation into a euthanasia case of a women with autism in 2010.
READ MORE:  https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/euthanasia-debate/109071343/what-it-will-take-to-die-setting-a-straight-path-down-the-slippery-slope

Stuff co.nz 3 December 2018
Family First Comment:  For Dr Ian Gwynne-Robson, medical director of Te Omanga Hospice in Lower Hutt, the idea of having to kill someone flies in the face of the medical commandment “first, do no harm”. That’s why, since the End of Life Choice Bill was introduced, he has been a vocal opponent. 
www.Protect.org.nz

As debate rages about whether euthanasia should be legalised, a palliative care expert is urging MPs to spare a thought for doctors who would have to carry out the act.

For Dr Ian Gwynne-Robson, medical director of Te Omanga Hospice in Lower Hutt, the idea of having to kill someone flies in the face of the medical commandment “first, do no harm”. That’s why, since the End of Life Choice Bill was introduced, he has been a vocal opponent.

He says he is acting as a voice of the patients whom the legislation is most likely to affect.

“[When] you’re given a diagnosis of terminal illness, you’re a vulnerable person … All patients referred to me are vulnerable, and it’s my job as a palliative care doctor to advocate for those patients and for their protection.

“Those people are sick, they clearly have other priorities.”

Gwynne-Robson has heard plenty of momentary requests to die.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/euthanasia-debate/108717999/Euthanasia-debate-Is-there-dignity-in-death-or-does-palliative-care-kill

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LifeSite News 26 November 2018
Family First Comment: “People in a hospital waiting room may be afraid, in pain, or depressed, and so particularly vulnerable to the suggestion that having their lives ended is the best solution. The advert makes no mention of palliative care or genuine medical care to help alleviate suffering in ways that do not involve killing.”
#rejectassistedsuicide
www.Protect.org.nz

In yet more evidence of how far Canada has slipped down the euthanasia slippery slope, a hospital in Ontario is advertising “Medical Aid in Dying” in its urgent care waiting room.

Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute writes that a source sent him the above photograph of a public information announcement that appears on a large television screen in a William Osler Health System hospital urgent care waiting room. The same advert can be found on the health system’s website.

Killing, not care
The advert tries to appear compassionate, with an image of a male doctor’s hand gently resting on the arm of a woman in a hospital bed, and the promise to “help eligible patients fulfill their wish to end their suffering.”

However, as Mr Smith points out, people in a hospital waiting room may be afraid, in pain, or depressed, and so particularly vulnerable to the suggestion that having their lives ended is the best solution. The advert makes no mention of palliative care or genuine medical care to help alleviate suffering in ways that do not involve killing.

Just the latest example
This is not the first time health officials in Ontario have been accused of pushing euthanasia instead of life-affirming medical care and support. In March, Roger Foley, a man with an incurable neurological disease started legal action against the attorney generals of Ontario and Canada for offering medically-assisted death without guaranteeing the option to receive proper care. He says the only options offered to him were to return to a healthcare team that provided substandard care, or medically assisted death.

Other developments which show how sanitised legal killing has become in Canada are proposals to take organs from living people who have chosen euthanasia, and to extend it to the the incompetent and mentally ill, and, horrifyingly, to children.

The advert shows that not only is deliberate killing being normalised, it is becoming a reasonable, and even preferred method of alleviating suffering.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/canada-govt-pushes-euthanasia-ads-in-hospital-waiting-rooms

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NZ Herald 26 November 2018
Family First Comment: So much for ‘safeguards’. You can’t undo ‘killed’!
#rejectassistedsuicide
www.protect.org.nz

Three doctors who certified a woman as autistic so that she could die by euthanasia are set to go on trial in Belgium.

The sisters of Tine Nys told investigators that her suffering was caused instead by a broken heart after a failed relationship, and that she had falsely claimed to be autistic to two doctors and a psychiatrist.

She had told them her suffering was “unbearable and incurable” so that she could qualify for euthanasia under Belgian law, the Daily Mail reports.

Nys was given a lethal injection in April 2010, just two months after her diagnosis of autism, and died aged 38. Her sisters and her parents were at her bedside.

Campaigners in the UK say the case highlights the dangers of introducing euthanasia here.

Nys’s family claims that the law was broken because she was never treated for autism and so it had not been established that she was suffering unbearably and incurably – the key criteria for a mercy killing to go ahead.

The three doctors have been charged with failing to comply with the legal conditions for euthanasia and poisoning. If found guilty they are almost certain to face jail.
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12166390

NewsHub 19 November 2018
Family First Comment:  If being ‘conservative’ means being against drugs and for life, then be 100% ‘conservative’, Simon.
www.ChooseLife.nz
www.SayNopeToDope.nz 
www.RejectAssistedSuicide.nz 

On Monday morning AM Show host Duncan Garner quizzed the 42-year-old on a few thorny topics currently before Parliament.

Euthanasia
The End of Life Choice Bill from ACT leader David Seymour is currently in select committee after passing its first reading in November last year. Mr Seymour says it will allow eligible people to “end their lives in peace and dignity, surrounded by loved ones”.

Mr Bridges voted against the Bill even being read, but didn’t vote on whether it should go to select committee. When it comes up for its second reading, Mr Bridges says he’s “likely to vote against it”.
“It’s simply because I do believe life’s important,” he told Garner.

“What’s also true is I’ve looked around and I’ve seen research on what’s happened in other parts of the world, and it is a bit of a thin edge of the wedge in my view. That is you start narrow, but you see people who perhaps aren’t at that very serious end of pain and suffering and illness receiving it, and I worry about that.”

Different forms of euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal in various European countries and US states, Canada, Japan and Colombia.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/11/how-liberal-is-simon-bridges-really.html

Detroit Free Press 21 October 2018
Family First Comment:  “Randy Hillard has travelled more in the past eight years than he has his entire life. South America. Dubai. Singapore. Sydney. But if he went through with his plan to go to Switzerland in 2010, those trips wouldn’t have happened. That’s because eight years ago, Hillard was determined to kill himself through an assisted-suicide organization overseas.” 
#rejectassistedsuicide 
www.protect.org.nz

Randy Hillard has traveled more in the past eight years than he has his entire life.

South America. Dubai. Singapore. Sydney.

But if he went through with his plan to go to Switzerland in 2010, those trips wouldn’t have happened. That’s because eight years ago, Hillard was determined to kill himself through an assisted-suicide organization overseas.

He was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer just a few months before he went on a quest to kill himself. He suddenly realized he had become obsessive when he began planning his funeral.

“It was one rather pathetic way of asserting some control over my life,” said Hillard. “Cancer was going to kill me, and I did not intend to die yet.”

Hillard abandoned the idea after he heard about a drug called Herceptin. His oncologist at University of Michigan’s Rogel Cancer Center suggested he give it a try.

Back in 2010, the drug had just recently been approved for stomach cancer patients and promised a slightly longer life expectancy — 11 to 13 months longer. It was a long shot: Only 20 percent of cancer patients have the HER-2 protein surrounding the cancer cell targeted by the drug.

Hillard’s metastatic tumors had that specific protein. And eight years later, it still puzzles him … well, the statistics do. Stomach cancer at his stage has an 18-percent survival rate, and, not to mention, is one of the most uncommon cancers in America.

“I wake up every day shocked at how non-dead I am,” he said.
https://www.freep.com/story/life/2018/10/21/stage-4-stomach-cancer-randy-hillard-michigan/1674173002/

In the past 100 years, over 4,000 razors have been designed to shave yourself. There have been 0 designed with the intent to shave someone else. Until now. Gillette introduces the first razor designed for assisted shaving.

This is assisting care, not killing.
www.rejectassistedsuicide.org.nz

NZ Herald 22 September 2018
Family First Comment: Just as well euthanasia isn’t available …. yet! A classic example of why we should say #rejectassistedsuicide
www.protect.org.nz

On June 10 2017, Killarney Jeffares’ life flashed before her eyes.

The words, “there’s nothing we can do” echoed around her brain and she was quickly moved into palliative care.

Wills were finalised, family were present and funeral plans were put into motion. Her death was imminent.

It had been six months since she was diagnosed with rectal cancer, but an operation found it had spread.

“I knew something was wrong because it was supposed to be a seven-hour surgery and I was out after two hours,” Jeffares said.

“It was horrific. We were mourning. My children from Australia came over to visit me and we started our grieving process.”

Her husband Robert was and still is the only person who was told by the surgeon the rough timeframe of how long his wife would live for.

“It really hit home,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone. That’s one man’s opinion.”

But four days later, she was told there had been a mistake. Her samples had come back she was told she actually had ovarian cancer and all hope was not lost.

“We can never get that time back. It was quite traumatic for all of us going through that process, so we were just speechless when they told us ‘oh no, we’ve got that wrong’, she said.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12121907&ref=twitter

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