Euthanasia-abortion link suggested

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 3

Euthanasia-abortion link suggested

PA Auckland The national president of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, Mr Peter Barry-Martin, said in Auckland yesterday that there was a link between abortion and euthanasia. “The doctor is given the right to kill an individual — one at the very beginning of life, and the other at the end,” he said.

He was commenting on statements by the president of the Hospital Boards’ Association, Mr R. H. Kerr, who said doctors and a patient’s relatives should be allowed to help a terminally ill person to die.

Mr Barry-Martin said Mr Kerr’s suggestion that the family could decide about euthanasia if the patient had not already indicated his wishes was “horrendous.”

“What is done in the guise of compassion will eventually be done for the convenience of others. Today we have abortion for the convenience of the mother, tomorrow it will be euthanasia for the convenience of relatives. “How effective can be the legal safeguards protecting the terminally ill, aged, and unwanted against unscrupulous relatives and medicos?” he said. The president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, Mr Ray Carr, of Auckland; applauded Mr Kerr’s stand.

If euthanasia was made legal, many more doctors would take advantage of the new law, he said.

Social Credit’s spokesman on health, Mr Eamon O'Connor, said yesterday that New Zealand would have a very sick health service if the

proposals for the control oi voluntary euthanasia were ever put into legislation. “Possibly Mr Kerr had money-savings for the health service in mind when he put his proposals forward and he would be right in that respect — money would certainly be saved,” Mr O'Connor said. But once a principle like that had been accepted it would lead to pressure on patients to ask for mercy killings and in no time what Mr Kerr envisaged as controlled voluntary euthanasia would very soon run out of control.

If voluntary euthanasia became legalised, the ultimate result could be similar to the final solution of Nazi Germany, with not only terminally ill patients, but mental defectives and even geriartrics at risk.

Mr Keer’s comments, page 5.