David Seymour Accuses Medical Profession of Serious Crimes against Life

David Seymour on the Breakfast show on Newshub on Thursday 30th November claimed in support of his End of Life Choice bill that doctors were already providing patients with a lethal injections and were assisting in their suicide. His words were, “It’s happening anyway.”

This is a very serious accusation that undermines the well-earned reputation of our medical profession in respecting the sanctity of life of its patients. It also undermines the trust that the community has that the medical profession will not kill.

Homicide, the killing of another human being and assisted suicide are serious crimes in the Crimes Act under Part viii, Crimes against the Person. These laws are there to protect the vulnerable in society and we remove them at our peril.

Right to Life challenges David Seymour to produce the evidence to support his serious accusations. We ask why this information has not been provided to the Police and requests that the information be substantiated in order that the alleged crimes may be investigated. It is also a serious crime to have evidence of a crime and not to divulge it to the Police. In the event that he is unable to produce the evidence, he should publicly withdraw his accusations and make apologies both to the medical profession and to the community.
Right to Life believes that there are many in the community mistakenly believe that the palliative care protocol where a doctor prescribes increasing doses of morphine to control pain (that may have the undesired effect of shorting the life of the patient), is euthanasi. It is certainly not.

Right to Life questions David Seymour’s promotion of his contentious and life threatening End of Life Choice bill. One of the grounds on which he promotes his bill is essentially that because doctors are already euthanising their patients illegally we need to rectify this up by making it legal. Or put in another way we need to legalise the heinous crimes of murder and assisted suicide to bring safety and dignity to families.

Mr Seymour please enlighten us, how you intend to make the murder of the vulnerable safe and dignified? How do you intend to make murder safe for the patient? Or is it more about making it safe for the executing doctor, who may not be prosecuted because he or she has acted in good faith? What dignity is there in being murdered by your doctor?

Members of Parliament should not be deceived by this seductive and fallacious rhetoric which seeks to make lies acceptable and murder respectable. Right to Life urges Parliamentarians to reject a culture of death, and to act to protect the lives of the vulnerable, by voting against the contentious and life threatening End of Life Choice bill, at its first reading.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

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