Good old Labour - shooting itself in the foot yet again and again letting floundering vulnerable National off its hook. With another controversial loony-left private member's bill. Marilyn Street needs to know that as with abortion, her so called”stringent safeguards” for legalised euthanasia just will not work. Holland clearly shows this to be the case.
It is naive for pro-euthanasia supporters to bleat on that if you don't want assisted life termination you won't get it - it is your choice. Not so, because unfortunately the right to die rapidly becomes the duty to die and this is the whole crux of the debate.
My right to live when I am old and frail is of far greater importance to me personally and to all New Zealanders generally than the half-baked conviction of some robust healthy idealist person who opinionatedly thinks safeguards will work. They did not for abortion and it is wilful ignorance and blind obstinacy not to look at the evidence and history of legalised euthanasia in Holland and our own 18 000 abortions per year.
I wish to continue to have the choice of a natural death,and hopefully with palliative care if needs be.
It is ironic and instructive that a colleague of mine,Cam Campion,a former National Party MP for Wanganui and avid pro-euthanasia campaigner,when dying of cancer chose instead palliative care in a hospice.

Hylton Rhodes, Tauranga.