Victoria Harkless
Assistant Editor-In-Chief
New Zealand passed the End of Life Choice Act on October, 30th, 2020. The End of Life Choice Act gives New Zealand citizens the right to legally ask for medical assistance in ending their life.
There are guidelines as to the eligibility for assisted death. According to referendums.govt.nz, the person making the decision must be eighteen years or older, a citizen of New Zealand, suffering from a terminal illness that will have significant/ongoing decline in physical capability, or that will end the sufferer's life in six months. The criteria also states they must be going through unbearable suffering and that they must be able to make an informed decision about assisted dying.
The process is quite lengthy. The citizen making the choice must be seen by a doctor who will give a likely course of the terminal illness, and tell them the expected impacts of assisted dying as well as talk about the definitive nature of assisted dying. The doctor must maintain constant contact with the sufferer in case they change their mind.
The doctor is also responsible for making sure the patient knows there are other options for end of life care and they must encourage the patient to speak with family, friends and possibly even a counselor before making the decision to go on with assisted death, though they can not force them to talk to anyone. If at any point the doctor feels like the person is being pressured to make the choice of assisted death they must stop the process.
Once the above process is considered completed and the person is considered eligible it comes time to discuss the method of death, and when. It can be done in one of four ways; Ingestion triggered by the person, ingestion through tube triggered by doctor or nurse, injection by doctor or nurse or injected by the person into the vein. While they discuss this they will also pick the time and date for death.
This process is confidential. This means no one can make public the method of assisted dying, the place of death or the name of the person administering the medication or the employer. The Act will be reviewed constantly in case they find it needs to be stricter or changed to make it better. The act will be treated the same as a terminal illness under insurance.
The Act will not be going into effect until sometime in 2021 but had a wide range of support as it was a sixty-nine to fifty-one when it was approved. It was approved by more than sixty-five percent of the population. Overall, the bill hopes to provide a safer way of death to those who want it and it is a very specific process that will hopefully increase the end of life quality of those who choose to do this process.
Image Credit: Marcelo Leal on Unsplash
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