French philosopher and author Albert Camus said since we were all going to die, it was obvious that when and how did not matter.
Had Camus been in New Zealand for the past 25 years, he would have seen that in fact it matters to a great many people, very much indeed.
Act New Zealand leader David Seymour’s End Of Life Choice legislation, which will come into force should New Zealanders vote in favour of it in a referendum being held in conjunction with the October 17 election, is the fourth attempt by parliamentarians to change the law in this area.
Michael Laws — now on the Otago Regional Council but then a National Party MP — introduced the Death with Dignity Bill in 1995, inspired by the battle of colleague Cam Campion against terminal bowel cancer.
That voluntary euthanasia proposal failed by a margin (61 to 29), but advocates were not deterred.
New Zealand First MP Peter Brown, who had watched his wife die of cancer in 1984, waged a dignified and determined campaign throughout 2003 for his Death with Dignity Bill — a piece of legislation almost exactly the same as Mr Laws’ Bill.
This time the debate was much more finely balanced, Mr Brown’s Bill being defeated 60-58, with one abstention.
Although there was an apparent change in political mood, it took until 2012 for another MP, Labour’s Maryan Street, to put a Bill on the issue in the Member’s Bill ballot.
Despite her Bill prompting considerable public debate, Ms Street opted to withdraw it the following year, saying she did not believe it would receive the consideration it was due in an election year.
Parliament also considered three petitions during this time: two opposed to euthanasia and one, in the name of Ms Street, in favour.
None of the subsequent select committee reports proposed law reform in the area.
Undeterred, Act leader David Seymour took up the baton and proposed his End of Life Choice Bill, which in November last year Parliament passed 69-51, but subject to the outcome of the upcoming referendum.
While lawmakers have wrestled with this issue, so have the courts, and several significant cases have influenced public opinion on the issue.
New Zealand’s first major courtroom test of euthanasia came in 2004, when former Whanganui intensive care nurse Lesley Martin was tried for the attempted murder of her mother.
Police had investigated cancer patient Joy Martin’s death in 1999, but moved to prosecute after her daughter published a memoir, To Die Like A Dog, in which she described injecting her mother with morphine.
Lesley Martin was convicted and eventually spent seven and a-half months in jail, but not without considerable controversy.
A case with strong parallels played out in Dunedin in 2011, when university professor Sean Davison was charged with the attempted murder of his mother seven years previously.
Davison, from South Africa, also wrote a book about his experiences, and returned to New Zealand to face trial.
However, four days into that High Court hearing, the Crown amended the charge to one of inciting and procuring his mother's suicide.
Davison — now the president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies — pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five months’ home detention.
THOSE cases involved grieving children who argued they were helping a desperately ailing parent, but a 2015 case brought by Wellington lawyer Lecretia Seales was entirely different.
Diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour, Ms Seales (42) went to the High Court at Wellington to argue for a declaration on behalf of her GP that the doctor would not face prosecution if he assisted her to die.
While too ill to argue her case herself, Ms Seales did make it to court to hear some of the arguments.
Ms Seales died, unassisted, the day after Justice David Collins delivered his decision, which declined to grant any of the declarations Ms Seales sought and said the issue was one for Parliament rather than the courts to address.
Almost immediately, David Seymour announced he would place the End of Life Choice Bill in the Member’s Bill ballot.
In 2017, Mr Seymour struck it lucky — firstly that in June his Bill was drawn and secondly that he retained his seat in that year’s election, which meant he was able to keep the Bill on Parliament’s Order Paper.
The "Bill History" on Parliament’s website testifies to the dogged struggle of both pro- and anti-euthanasia advocates: the Bill’s first and second readings were 18 months apart, and its four-month-long committee stage saw the House discuss 113 proposed amendments — many of which were proposed to filibuster the Bill’s progress.
The Act, which has received Royal Assent, will only come into force if more than 50% of voters in the referendum vote "Yes".
We will not know that on election night: the Electoral Commission says it will announce preliminary results for both the End of Life Choice and cannabis referendums on October 30.
