April 12, 2016

Visting Euthanasia Advocates Securing their Own Way Out

The Dominion Post, Rachel Clayton

Tom Curran and his wife Marie Fleming, who died of Multiple Sclerosis in 2013 after a failed legal fight to legalise euthanasia in Ireland.

Ann Mace organised for her mother to starve to death.

“She had a stroke and was left totally, completely and utterly paralysed and I had to say I don’t want her fed at all. No food, no water,” Mace said.

“It was horrible but it was the best that I could of done and it still is the best.”
Starvation is the only legal alternative to euthanasia in New Zealand.

Starvation is the only legal alternative to euthanasia in New Zealand.

Mace, a committee member of Voluntary Euthanasia Society New Zealand (VES), joined 56 people at an Exit International meeting in Wellington on Saturday.

Exit International teaches people peaceful, non-medical ways of ending their own lives. Tom Curran, an international euthanasia activist visiting New Zealand this month, spoke at the meeting.

Starvation is currently the only legal way of allowing someone to die in New Zealand.

Curran said it was a slow and difficult process.

“It’s because it’s the only option that’s available, is to break the law,” he said.

Mace said it took nine days for her mother to finally pass away.
Ad Feedback

“It’s sad, citizens who are honest have to break the law in order just to have an easy death, for goodness sake. It should be your right shouldn’t it? To not have to suffer,” she said.

Curran spoke about his personal experience with assisted dying and efforts to legalise voluntary euthanasia.

His wife Marie Fleming suffered from Multiple Sclerosis. She took her case to the HIgh Court and then the Supreme Court in Ireland, fighting for the right to die on her own terms.

After the legal action failed, Curran said he and Fleming agreed on a plan for her to die on her own terms in Switzerland.

“We put a plan in place so Marie was in control herself and she physically relaxed. It was a worry that was gone, she didn’t have to think about it.”

Fleming passed away naturally in December 2013.

Curran has been in charge of Exit International in Europe since 2010.

The group, founded by Australian doctor Philip Nitschke in 1997, has courted controversy over claims it gives detailed information on assisted dying.

Curran said Exit meetings were confidential and questions about methods were often not answered directly. He skirted around specific questions so no one would witness anything illegal, he said.

“Giving one-to-one advice is difficult because it is in fact illegal. So we tend not to give direct clarification,” he said.

One 80-year-old Exit member had a son with terminal pancreatic cancer. A helium cylinder was tucked away in her home to use it if she decided to one day end her life.

But she was not thinking of using the cylinder any time soon.

“At the moment with a son so sick I think I’d better keep going because the rest of my family could hardly cope with two of us dying in the next few months.

“He’s got six siblings and they’re all doing their best but it puts a huge strain [on the family],” she said.