Hospices say no to euthanasia

NewsRoom 9 July 2018
Family First Comment: “As euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are against the ethos of palliative care, we believe this will have a detrimental impact on the workforce.”
www.protect.org.nz

The group which represents the 35 hospices in New Zealand says a new bill could require it to host physician-assisted deaths even if it philosophically opposes them.

Hospice New Zealand says it strongly opposes David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill, which sets out a process by which people suffering a terminal illness or enduring “unbearable suffering” can apply to their doctor to die using a fatal medication.

It questions a clause in the Bill which allows a medical practitioner to have a conscientious objection to carrying out a death but then sets up a body which administers the law and which would provide a second medical practitioner.

Hospice NZ says that seems to prevent it from having a policy of not providing physician-assisted suicide. Even if its staff objected to assisted deaths then a patient could ask the administering body, the Support and Consultation for End of Life in New Zealand, for other practitioners.

“Could physician-assisted suicide take place in a hospice inpatient unit – provided by a SCENZ member if as an organisation we are unable to conscientiously object?”

The submission is one of a record 35,000 submissions made on the Bill, which are being slowly made public by Parliament’s Justice Select Committee.
READ MORE: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/07/08/140506/hospices-say-no-to-euthanasia#
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