Sparrowhawk/Kārearea | Looking for choice morsels of currents affairs, culture, and politics to chew on. Or spit out hastily. I
A few days ago, National Tamaki MP Simon O’Connor publicly commented that Labour leader Jacinda Ardern was hypocritical in her dismay at New Zealand’s deplorable youth suicide statistics while supporting assisted dying. He believes there are no shades of grey with suicide: that the ending of a life by one’s own hand, or the assistance of another, is always suicide, no matter the circumstances of the person involved, and that Ardern’s views on suicide and assisted dying were inconsistent.
Like the Pharisees of the New Testament, he has chosen to cleave to the letter of the law, rather than its spirit. And in doing so, he has blinded himself to the different circumstances a person at the end of their life might find themselves in, and the choices they might want. For him, it’s all the same, and he’s got the dictionary to prove it.
I don’t hold the same view as Mr O’Connor . Like most New Zealanders, I look beyond raw semantics, and see a world of difference between a depressed teenager, who needs help and support to choose life, and a rational, terminally ill human being whose quality of life is in sharp decline, who seeks to abbreviate their suffering when the outcome is almost certainly death. I am as shocked and appalled at New Zealand’s terrible record on suicide as anyone. Both Lecretia and I had the experience of losing people
Sparrowhawk/Kārearea | Looking for choice morsels of currents affairs, culture, and politics to chew on. Or spit out hastily. I