David Seymour’s voluntary euthanasia bill to be lodged in Parliament
Stuff co.nz 13 October 2015
A bill calling to legalise voluntary euthanasia will be lodged by ACT leader David Seymour in Parliament on Wednesday.
The bill is being presented on the same day former Labour MP Maryann Street, who in the last parliamentary term proposed and championed the End-of-Life Choice bill, will have a petition heard at health select committee.
The petition, which has 8795 signatures, garnered cross-party support when it was presented at Parliament in June by Street and Matt Vickers, husband of Lecretia Seales, who died of a brain tumour on the same day she lost her High Court bid to choose to die.
An inquiry was born out of Street’s petition and members of the health select committee would look at the factors that contributed to a person wanting to end their life, as well as the experiences of other countries who have adopted euthanasia laws.
Seales spent her final months fighting for the courts to rule in favour of assisted dying but she learnt on her death bed that she had been denied her dying wish.
It’s understood Seymour’s bill was likely to be modest and wouldn’t go as far as some people would like, but would draw from the experiences of similar bills that have come up for debate recently overseas.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/72984566/david-seymours-voluntary-euthanasia-bill-to-be-lodged-in-parliament
David Seymour’s voluntary euthanasia bill set to join ballot
NZ Herald 14 October 2015
Act Party leader David Seymour will today launch his bid to get voluntary euthanasia back on the parliamentary agenda.
Mr Seymour is lodging a new bill in the private member’s ballot which would legalise medically assisted suicide.
When he began drafting the bill in June, he said: “In my view it is politically, morally, legally and, in terms of public policy, the right thing to do.”
The End of Life Choice Bill will go into a ballot which already has 68 bills in it, meaning there is no guarantee it will be debated in the immediate future.
Mr Seymour wants the Government to pick up his bill, but it has not given any sign that it will do so.
Prime Minister John Key has previously said that while he has voted in favour of voluntary euthanasia in the past, he believed a member’s bill was the best way to deal with the issue.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11528614
Seymour to present euthanasia Bill
3News 14 October 2015
ACT leader David Seymour is about to unveil his End of Life Choice Bill.
He drafted his voluntary euthanasia legislation after a petition carrying 9,000 signatures was presented to parliament in June, asking for an inquiry.
In July, the health select committee announced it would hold an inquiry, and it’s due to start hearing submissions on the petition on Wednesday.
When the petition was presented by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New Zealand, Mr Seymour said drafting a bill was “the right thing to do”.
http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/seymour-to-present-euthanasia-bill-2015101405#axzz3oTJyYP7A
