Who are you listening to in the euthanasia debate?

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015

Four months ago I wrote a piece on the debate of euthanasia in New Zealand.

Lecretia Seales has become a household name after New Zealand Listener ran a piece titled Dying Wishes and highlighted the debate after a private members bill on the issue had been removed.

A word on the ruling
I would like to clarify Judge Collin’s ruling. Too many headlines over the past few days have read ‘Seales denied the right to die’.

Judge Collins did no such thing; at any point Lecretia could have committed suicide. Let’s not fluff over what euthanasia is; it’s commiting suicide.

What Judge Collins did was rule that her doctor could not kill her and that if he did, he would be charged for her murder. After all, in New Zealand, if you deliberately kill someone it is, by definition, murder.

What is this debate really about?
Many times over as the press covered the case the following statement was made ‘Lecretia did not want to be the poster girl for euthanasia’ and in fact an article from March states that the court action she was taking was that the relief she was seeking from the court would apply only to her own circumstances.

From everything I have read her whole case was based on the fact that she was not seeking a campaign for anyone other than herself. Now, her attempt for a personal ‘solution’ has been hijacked by others.

Before anyone is concerned about sensitivity, please remember that within hours of Lecretia’s death her own husband was making a war cry towards parliament that we should give Lecretia her legacy by changing the law, hijacking the case for a crusade.

My prayers do go out to Lecretia’s grieving family. I do understand their loss. Like many others in New Zealand (one out of three people, in fact) I have been touched closely by cancer.

But the one thing my mother was told by a psychologist after my father passed away was to never make a life changing decision within five years of a life changing event. Psychologists advise this because it takes that long to adjust to such news. Yet Lecretia and her family were doing just this. Continue reading