Do you believe the church in New Zealand needs to be built up, to work together better, and to have greater influence? Do you believe the Christian community needs to speak better into society, with both grace and truth? Do you believe we all need to guard and nurture the spiritual unity we have in Jesus?
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We appreciate you doing whatever you can to strengthen NZCN’s connections with your church, friends and family.
Click here to read about 4 issues currently facing us in Aotearoa New Zealand
The other country where euthanasia for children is legal—Colombia
The long process of legalisation began in 1997
Colombia is not a nation that one associates with end-of-life debates, but it is one of the few which has legalised euthanasia – even for children over 6 years old. Perhaps the issue has flown under the radar because many Colombians are Catholics or Evangelicals for whom euthanasia is anathema.
The process began in 1997 when Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that ending lives in certain circumstances was not illegal. In Sentencia C-239/97 it stated: “Nothing is more cruel than to force a person to survive in the midst of shameful suffering, in the name of other people’s beliefs.”However, this still left the legal status of assisted suicide and euthanasia in a legal limbo. Activists could not be sure that they would not be prosecuted.
And then, in 2017 (Sentencia T-544) the Court ordered the Department of Health and Social Protection to issue regulations which would “guarantee the right to death worthy of children and adolescents”. So on March 9, 2018, the Department of Health and Social Protection issued Resolution 825 which allowed euthanasia for children over 6. The Department explained that before that age children cannot grasp the idea of their own death. However, children between the ages of 7 and 12 are allowed access euthanasia with the approval of their parents. Children between 12 and 14 can access it even if one parent disagrees. After 14, no parental involvement is needed, provided that all the requirements for euthanasia are fulfilled.
Like adults, the child must have an incurable condition, have unmanageable pain and the mental capacity to consent. “Doing this for children is a whole new world,” Ricardo Luque Nunez, a doctor and bioethicist who is an adviser to the Colombian Ministry of Health and oversees this issue, told the Globe and Mail.
According to official records only 40 people have taken advantage of Colombia’s euthanasia regulations. Unofficially, there may be many more. As in other countries, activist doctors who are impatient with red tape take the law into their own hands. One doctor claims that he has “provided euthanasia” to almost 400 people, including more than 30 children.
Colombian voters have had no say in this momentous legal change. “We have not had a big national debate about this, and I’m not very happy about it,” says a former Colombian health minister. “We need a public debate: We are not Belgium or Holland – this is at odds with people’s beliefs and mode of thought.”
This website provides links to a number of international articles and documents pertaining to euthanasia, assisted suicide advance directives, disability rights, pain control and more.
This article by Michael Cook was originally published on MercatorNet under a Creative Commons licence. The original article can be found here.
Euthanasia: False Light
International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (2009) This video looks at euthanasia and assisted suicide through the eyes of five people — three patients, a doctor, and a hospice nurse, all of whom speak from their hearts, not from a script.
The only person that I trusted was my doctor. And to have my doctor walk into the room and say, “I’m going to give you the choice to just end all this right now.”
Patient
And it’s a lot easier to push people out of the picture then to actually get involved with them and suffer with them. Which, by the way, is what the word compassion means. It means it means to suffer with. If you kill somebody, there is no ‘with’. You’re not compassionate if somebody’s dead.
To help New Zealanders understand what David Seymour’s ‘End of Life Choices Bill’ entails, and what it would mean in Practice, MAXIMINSTITUTE hosted two visiting UK experts at their recent MIC event.
Baroness Ilora Finlay is Professor of Palliative Medicine at Cardiff University. She has been President of the Medical Women’s Federation, President of the British Medical Association, President of the Royal Society of Medicine and is President of the Chartered Society for Physiotherapy. She also chaired the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, and since 2014 has chaired the National Council for Palliative Care.
Robert Preston worked in Whitehall as a civil servant for 30 years. In that role he examined Lord Joffe’s Private Member’s Bill, “Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill” and he is now Director of the think-tank, Living and Dying Well, which works to examine the objective evidence surrounding the controversial end-of-life debate and publishes research to help inform Parliament and the public.
Both came to be involved in the issue of assisted suicide and euthanasia through their involvement in the 2005 British Select Committee that conducted a comprehensive investigation of the practices of assisted dying around the world. Following the conclusion of that inquiry, both have continued as advocates of improved elder and palliative care, as well as working to oppose legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Both presentations were highly informative, however, the Q&A segment was extremely illuminating. Below is the list of questions asked from the floor with the timestamp on the video.
1:25 Q: Who are you to tell someone who is in pain that they can’t do what they want? If it’s their life, shouldn’t they have the right to do what they want?
4:20 Q: Can palliative care really relieve all suffering? Aren’t there going to be people who still suffer even with the best care we can offer?
5:20 Q: How do the safeguards in David Seymour’s End of Life Choices Bill compare to the safeguards required by similar laws in The Netherlands, Oregon, Belgium etc.?
8:25 Q: Do you think there’s any chance your views on assisted suicide would shift if one of your own family members was ill, in agony, and wanted help to end their pain?
13:30 Q: Purely this is too important a question to trust to just 121 MPs in Parliament. Shouldn’t we settle the issue of euthanasia with a binding referendum so the people can decide?
16:00 Q: Isn’t opposition to euthanasia just driven by religious views? How do you think religion interacts or should interact with this subject?
16:50 Q: You talk about the Hippocratic Oath – “first do no harm.” Proponents of euthanasia have made legal arguments that suggest denying people access to legal assisted suicide means that we’re essentially forcing them to continue suffering, and in essence, doing harm to them. Also, they say that people who want to die on their own terms may choose to commit suicide before they lose capacity, effectively shortening the life they could have had if they were certain someone else could end their life for them later on. How do you respond to these arguments?
20:55 Q: You talk negatively about the rising numbers of people using euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands and Oregon respectively. Isn’t this just showing that legalising it is giving people options that they want? Is it necessarily a bad thing to see rising levels of euthanasia?
23:45 Q: It seems that a lot of this debate isn’t just about levels of pain, but it’s the idea that any level of suffering or loss of autonomy is something we should have the right to avoid. How do you address those sorts of concerns?
26:20 Q: In your experience in public debate around assisted suicide in the UK, what’s one argument that you have found really resonates with people?
30:35 Q: What about situations where someone is in agony because of their condition, but simply ceasing medical treatment won’t allow them to die? Isn’t there a case for assisted suicide then?
Looking for more articles on Euthanasia and the debate in New Zealand?
Do you believe the church in New Zealand needs to be built up, to work together better, and to have greater influence? Do you believe the Christian community needs to speak better into society, with both grace and truth? Do you believe we all need to guard and nurture the spiritual unity we have in Jesus?
If so, please help us get the NEW ZEALAND CHRISTIAN NETWORK to be better known. Help us get many more Christian people and churches connected with us, receiving our newsletter, following on FB, using the website, making contact, partnering with us.
The NZCN exists to gather (to help bring evangelical/charismatic/Pentecostal NZ Christians together in closer fellowship and a common Gospel cause), to build (to help resource, strengthen and build up the church in New Zealand and increase its constructive influence on society), and to speak (to speak into both church and society, with grace and truth).
Four issues currently facing the government and the citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand are outlined below.
We appreciate you doing whatever you can to strengthen NZCN’s connections with your church, friends and family.
Dr Stuart Lange (interim National Director)
Major issues we need to be informed about, to pray about, and to talk to our MP about
The critical second reading of this Bill, which would legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in New Zealand, is likely to take place very soon, possibly on June 20.
1. The End of Life Choice Bill
An overwhelming 91.8% of the submissions to the Justice Committee were opposed to the Bill (and 93.5% of submissions from medical personnel), the report of the Justice Committee identified major problems with the Bill, but there remains a risk that a majority of MPs may vote for the Bill.
Please be praying, and please seriously consider clearly (but courteously) communicating your concerns to your MP – and the same applies to the issues which follow.
2. Proposed abortion ‘reform
The Law Commission has considered proposals for changing the law around abortion, to reduce the stigma of abortion, to increase the freedom of women to make their own decisions, and to increase the accessibility of abortion. It is proposed to take abortion out of the Crimes Act, and that performing an abortion be regarded as simply a health procedure. The inclusion of abortion within the Crimes Act recognises that abortion involves bringing about the death of human foetus. Making abortion merely a health procedure implies that unborn babies are merely organic material, with no human rights.
At present, performing an abortion is illegal unless it falls within certain exceptions: abortion is legally permissible up to 20 weeks’ gestation if authorised by two certifying consultants, if there is (a) ‘serious danger to the life, or physical or mental health’ of the mother (including pregnancy as a result of sexual violation), or (b) serious foetal abnormality, or (c) if the pregnancy results from incest, or (d) the mother is ‘severely subnormal’ (has significant mental, physical or intellectual impairment). After 20 weeks’ gestation, abortion must be necessary to save the life of the woman or to prevent serious permanent injury to her physical or mental health.
All three proposed models involve further liberalisation of New Zealand’s abortion law, and would remove the requirement for two certifying consultants. Model A would make abortion available to any woman (in consultation with her doctor) for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy. Model B would make abortion available to any woman, subject to a statutory test: ‘If the health practitioner who intends to perform the abortion reasonably agrees the abortion is appropriate in all the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing’. Model C would apply Model A (abortion for any reason, at any stage, with no statutory test) to pregnancies up to 22 weeks’ gestation, and would apply Model B (statutory test and decision made by the doctor who intends to perform the abortion) to pregnancies after 22 weeks’ gestation.
None of the three proposals appear to demonstrate regard for the rights of unborn children. Surely a just and humane society, along with being concerned for the health and wellbeing of women, should be eager to protect those who are among its most vulnerable children, the unborn. All abortion ends a life, for whatever reason, but late-term abortion is especially abhorrent. Abortion can also often involve long-term consequences for the mothers. If abortion is to become a normal health procedure, there are also questions around whether doctors and nurses would be free on conscientious grounds to decline to participate in abortions. Does New Zealand really want or need these changes?
3. Proposals for ‘hate speech’ legislation
This is an issue full of complications and dangers.
While it is already a crime to incite hatred and violence against anyone (and rightly so), and there is no place for the sort of hatred which lies behind racism and terrorism, it could become a significant threat to freedoms of religion and of speech if ‘hate speech’ became defined or interpreted as expressing religious or moral views which some groups might complain are offensive and ‘hateful’ and thus a criminal offence.
Could it one day become illegal, for example, to publicly proclaim that Christ is the way, the truth and the life (something which may offend some atheists or members of another faith), or to admit the belief that God intended marriage as a union of one man and one woman? Could expressing such views lead to dismissal from one’s job or profession? Would it be illegal to quote certain parts of the Bible? Would such laws be applied equally: would atheists and members of minority faiths be equally at risk of breaking the law, or would Christians be subject to particular restrictions?
The recent dismissal in Australia of rugby star Israel Folau indicates how freedoms of religion and expression (whatever we may think about how wisely those rights were exercised) are now under threat in the public sphere.
4. The legalisation of marijuana
Making marijuana legal and freely available would have major negative effects on New Zealand society, not least in terms of health, mental health, road safety, and the safety of the workplace.
Why would we even consider this move? Have we not learned from the huge costs to society tobacco use and alcohol abuse? Do we really need another such harmful industry, peddling its products and enjoying the profits while downplaying the very significant social and health costs?
Times are rapidly changing in Aotearoa New Zealand. The events surrounding 15 March 2019 catapulted us to the forefront of both the world and social media. Our country has become bigger on the world stage and smaller here, as people reach out and demonstrate that we are better than this.
We’ve recently had Christchurch, Israel Folau, the End of Life Choice Bill and now, Sri Lanka put the Christian faith in the spotlight. How you respond to these issues and events has a significant impact on how people see our faith.
With this in mind, I want to highlight two events that are coming up soon. Movement Day NZ (Wellington) and The Gospel in the City(Palmerston North). Both of these events are about building the church. Movement Day NZ will have speakers from around the country sharing what God is doing amongst their city networks while The Gospel in the City explores doing church in the city, for the sake of a city.
