‘Voluntary euthanasia should be legal’

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 5

‘Voluntary euthanasia should be legal’

PA Wellington The terminally ill should have the right to be put to death, said Emeritus Professor Lloyd Geering yesterday. Voluntary euthanasia should be legally accepted as a way for people whose life had become an intolerable burden to have a “happy death,” Professor Geering told health workers at Wellington Clinical School. “The emphasis should be on the quality of life rather than the quantity,” he said, during a seminar on the ethics of euthanasia. “If it is impossible to keep living well, dying well takes precedence,” said Pro-

fessor Geering, the former head of religious studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Professor Geering’s views were opposed by a Catholic priest, the Rev. Fergus Reeves, a former chaplain at Wellington Hospital. While “passive euthanasia” — such as the switching off of life support systems so that a seriously injured person could die naturally — was acceptable, active euthanasia could never be condoned, Father Reeves said. A healthy society was judged by the degree to which it protected its weakest citizens, such as dying patients. Society had an obligation to help the citizen,

not hasten his demise. If euthanasia were made legal the next step would be the legal killing of the mentally handicapped and the senile elderly — evoking memories of Nazi Germany, he said. A Wellington lawyer, Mr Kit Toogood, said the Crimes Act indicated that any form of “mercy killing" would be regarded as murder. But he knew of no New Zealand case that had come to trial. Mr Toogood said the act specified that no-one could consent to their own death, and that it was illegal for someone to “accelerate" another person’s death, or to encourage or help a suicide.