The Hidden Truth About Euthanasia: A Doctor’s Perspective on Loneliness, Pressure, and the Illusion of Choice

A New Zealand doctor has broken ranks, speaking anonymously to Voice For Life, to expose what they say is the hidden reality of euthanasia inside the healthcare system.

Behind the language of compassion and choice, this insider account points to a far more confronting truth—one that rarely reaches the public.

From years on the frontline of end-of-life care, the doctor describes patients not defined by pain alone, but by isolation, fear, and a quiet sense of being a burden. In these moments, the line between choice and compulsion becomes far less clear.

What emerges is not theory, but a testimony that’s raising serious questions about what is really driving assisted dying, and what may be lost when the system offers death before fully addressing the needs of the living.

What Patients Were Really Asking For

For many people, the debate around euthanasia feels recent. But for doctors working in end-of-life care, the underlying questions have been present for a long time, well before any legal framework existed.

It wasn’t formalised, and it wasn’t a pathway. But it was real. It surfaced in quiet, often raw conversations with patients who were exhausted, overwhelmed, or simply at the end of what they felt they could carry.

“It would come up in conversation and people would say, I wish I could die. I wish you could give me an injection. I’m over this,” the experienced doctor says.

Those words weren’t rare. They weren’t shocking. And importantly, they weren’t treated as a final request.

“They’re thinking about dying… it’s part of life,” he explains. Particularly among elderly patients, those with serious illness, or those facing a terminal diagnosis, death is not an abstract concept. It becomes “very present, very real.”

But before euthanasia was an option, those statements didn’t end the conversation, rather, they began it.

“You could then always have a conversation,” he says. Not a procedural one, but an exploratory one. A human one. 

“What is dying like for you? What are you sick of? What could be different? What are you worried about? What are you frightened of? What makes your life not worth living from your perspective?”

These weren’t rhetorical questions. They were invitations.

They opened space to understand what was actually sitting beneath the statement, “I wish I could die.” Because often, that sentence was not really about wanting to die, it was about something else entirely: unresolved fear, unaddressed pain, relational tension, loss of dignity, or a sense of isolation.

And because euthanasia “wasn’t an option,” there was, in his words, a kind of grounding constraint: “this is the route by which we’ve got to solve it.”

The work was not to end life, but to understand it right up to its final chapter. And in many cases, that work led somewhere meaningful.

“So often you were able to help people to a different place,” he reflects. Not necessarily to full peace or resolution, but to movement. To a shift. To “a place of greater acceptance of dying,” or to the resolution of specific issues that had made the situation feel unbearable.

Sometimes that meant addressing practical concerns. Other times it meant navigating deeply personal terrain—“conflict within families or estrangement with families.” Conversations that had been avoided for years suddenly became possible, and even necessary. 

The response to suffering was different.

Rather than seeing a request to die as a conclusion, it was treated as a signal… one that pointed to something deeper that needed attention, care, and often, time.

That distinction matters because it raises a critical question: when someone says, “I wish I could die,” what are they really asking for?

“I Don’t Want to Be a Burden”

One of the most common, and most revealing, statements heard in end-of-life care is not about pain. It’s: “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“A very, very common comment from people who are frail… elderly or dying,” the doctor reflects. 

“Is the sense that they can’t impose on others,” he explains. “They can’t ask of others… that it’s not fair.” 

These are often people who have spent their lives giving to their families, their communities, their workplaces. “The salt-of-the-earth people who have always done things for others,” and now find themselves in a position where they need help.

That shift is hard, and one they so often don’t want to cross, the line from being the one who carries others, to being the one who must be carried.

“That breaks my heart as someone who cares,” he says. “Because you know, these people are treasures. They have lived a good life. They have helped so many other people.”

There’s a quiet injustice in the idea that a life defined by contribution could end with a sense of being a burden. 

“You just want to say to them, you are not a burden.”

The doctor explains in those moments you want to gently challenge the belief and help reframe what this stage of life represents.

“You are now going to enable other people to do what you have done yourself,” he says. “You’re going to enable other people to be their best selves… and help you.”

In other words, receiving care is not a failure—it is part of the same human cycle of giving and receiving that defines all of life.

“This is a stage of life that will come to all of us.”

And before euthanasia was part of the system, those conversations about dignity, dependence, fear, identity were not optional. “It was okay,” he says. “In fact, it was what you had to do to help.”

But the landscape has changed, and the conversation abruptly finishes.

“Nowadays… I’m a conscientious objector, but I’m required by legislation to give you this phone number. You can ring it up and they’ll do it for you.

“Just having the option of euthanasia entices vulnerable people with this supposed sense of still being in control. But the only reason we’re having the conversation is because they’re not actually in control. Presenting them with the fallacy that ending your life keeps you in control is leading them up the garden path.”

The shift is subtle, but significant. Where once the response to “I don’t want to be a burden” was a deepening of conversation, now there is an immediate pathway available—one that can redirect attention away from the underlying issues entirely.

“And you think… when poisoning your patient is legal, and what they’re asking for, it just takes all that attention off those other things,” he says. The things that, in his experience, can be “really helpful, really… I’m going to say profound.”

That’s not to deny the reality of suffering.

“I don’t want to trivialise the suffering that people experience at the end of their life,” he is careful to say. “Both the start and the end of life can be quite messy… it is often difficult.”

There are cases where pain is hard to control. There are situations that are deeply complex. This is not a simplistic picture. But what stands out, after “hundreds of conversations… with people who are dying,” is this: “The thing that strikes me is not that they’re actually worried about pain.

“They’re worried about loneliness, they’re worried about abandonment, they’re worried about being dependent.”

There is a fear of needing help with the most basic, intimate parts of life, “needing someone else to help them with their toileting… because they feel that’s undignified.”

Which raises an important question: is the loss of independence the same as the loss of dignity, or is that something we have come to believe?

“There’s often fear of where you might end up… and loss of control.” And these, he says, are “the key drivers for assisted dying.”

The data reflects this too.

“The Canadian data says about a third of people go for euthanasia because of loneliness.”

That statistic lands heavily.

“Heavens… it’s awful that we as a society would choose to care for someone who is lonely by ending their life.”

It’s not just a medical question, it’s a societal one.

“How on earth did we end up there?”

Because if loneliness, fear, and dependence are driving decisions, then the issue is no longer just about individual choice. It’s about what kind of care, connection, and support is available—and what is missing. And that distinction becomes even clearer when you step outside end-of-life care entirely. 

He recalls looking after “a young person, perfectly physically well, who felt like her life wasn’t worth living.” She was suicidal. She needed care. And the response in that context is obvious.

“Do I say to her, well… maybe you’re right, here, have an injection?”

“Of course not. She is of incredible value.”

And so the response is not to affirm the desire to die, but to respond to the underlying need.

“I want to give hope… not a lethal injection.”

A Doctor’s Dilemma in the New Legal Framework

One of the most pressing questions for doctors today is no longer just what is right, but what is allowed.

Before euthanasia, doctors could push back strongly to help find the root causes of suffering and address them. But now there’s a major question mark and hesitation around what legal obligations doctors have in referring to assisted dying services.

How are doctors navigating that line?

It’s a question that goes to the heart of how medicine is changing.

While there’s a legal framework, the doctor says, in practice things don’t arrive neatly packaged. It’s not about a procedure, it’s far more relational.

“My patients don’t generally come in [talking about death] and say, ‘day after tomorrow, here’s the time, here’s the place’… It arises in conversation.”

It happens in the middle of trust, in the middle of a journey. And doctors navigate that with varying degrees of skill, largely depending on their experience and training.

“I [personally] feel okay to have a full conversation with a patient,” he says. “With someone who I’m doing the journey with.”

That conversation includes honesty—both about the patient’s rights, and the doctor’s own position.

“I will say, look, I am not someone who supports euthanasia. I don’t think in the grand scheme of things it’s going to help. And I acknowledge your right to access that.”

There is no attempt to block, or to control. But there is also a clear boundary.

“I won’t stand in the way, but I won’t help. I won’t participate.

“But I’ve been in the trenches a long time,” he says. “I’ve been in lots of gnarly situations.” End-of-life care, family conflict, complex dynamics, “civil war,” as he describes it in some cases.

They are familiar. And that familiarity creates a level of confidence.

“So in a sense… these are settings where I feel not comfortable, but skilled.”

But not every doctor has that experience.

“My concern is really for younger doctors,” he says. Especially those who feel uneasy about euthanasia, but are working within a system that is increasingly structured around it.

Because navigating these moments is not just about empathy—it’s also about confidence, judgement, and knowing how far you can go.

“The script they’re given by the system is, ‘okay, let me help you with that request.’

And around them, the environment continues to change. The system is not neutral. It is shaping expectations, both for doctors and for patients. And beyond the system, there is the wider cultural shift.

It becomes more normalised, the nature of the interaction itself begins to shift. 

“Patients come preloaded… their minds made up… the fight for life is already over… and they just want you to tick the box.”

That image, of a patient arriving not to explore, but to confirm, is a powerful one.

Because it represents a fundamental change in the role of the doctor. From someone who helps navigate uncertainty… to someone who may be expected to simply facilitate a decision.

And that raises a difficult question: When the conversation starts at the end—what happens to everything that used to come before?

When the Boundaries Shift: The Quiet Expansion of Assisted Dying

One of the deeper concerns raised in this conversation is not just about assisted dying as it currently exists, but about where it leads. There is an underlying trajectory that, once set in motion, becomes difficult to contain.

“The drift and criteria changing is a concern of mine,” the doctor explains. And it’s not a new concern. It was present from the very beginning.

“It was something we always said… once you have said it is okay for the state to sanction killing someone whose life is deemed to not have value, then the criteria must extend over time.”

This isn’t framed as speculation, but as something that follows a certain internal logic. Because once a boundary is crossed, it becomes harder to justify where that boundary should remain.

“If it’s okay to kill one person,” he says, “then the person who’s seven months before their expected death compared to the person who’s five months… it’s okay for one, you can’t say it’s not okay for the other.”

And so the pressure begins. Not necessarily through deliberate intent, but through consistency.

“There will always be pressure to stretch the line… in fact, it’s being unfair not to.”

This is not just theoretical. It’s something already observed internationally.

“We’ve certainly seen that elsewhere in the world,” he notes, pointing to countries like the Netherlands and Belgium, where criteria have expanded to include psychological and psychiatric diagnoses. In Canada, the conversation continues to move in that direction.

And that makes you wonder, if suffering is the justification, who gets to define which suffering counts? He reflects on the reality of mental health in a way that challenges easy distinctions.

“I see people with mental health diagnoses whose lives, in my view, would be far more difficult than anyone with cancer.”

For those living with chronic, unrelenting psychological distress, where “every day is just grey or black”, the suffering is profound.

“If you are accepting that it’s okay… for a person with cancer,” he says, “it’s almost cruel… almost devaluing the suffering of the person who suffers in other ways to say, no, you’re not eligible.”

This path of logic will lead to an inevitable conclusion: “It’s just got to change over time.”

“To have the option of euthanasia… when things are dark and have been dark for a while…”

He pauses. “I don’t want to be a doctor in that world.”

The concern is not just about individuals—it’s about systems, and how those systems respond under pressure. There is recognition that most people involved are acting with good intentions.

But intention does not eliminate consequence. Because over time, something else happens.

“It just becomes a very easy option.”

And not just for individuals.

“It lets everyone else off the hook.”

The system. The funding constraints. The stretched services. The difficult, resource-intensive work of long-term care.

“Lets the system off the hook… lets stretched budgets off the hook… lets the families off the hook.”

Even the practical realities begin to shift.

“It means you can organise your death. People can plan ahead, book cheap flights... It cheapens life overall, doesn’t it?”

The process always involves more people than just a doctor and patient.

“There are families. There are important connections. There are teams of health professionals who see different pieces of the puzzle.”

Care is complex. It is relational. It is layered. And yet, the system can present it as something far simpler.

“A very naïve caricature,” he calls it. “Doctor and patient go away and do a deal.”

But that is not the reality on the ground. And when policies are built on simplified assumptions, the outcomes can diverge significantly from what was intended.

Which brings the concern back to where it started: Once the boundaries begin to shift, once the criteria begin to expand, once the system adapts around the easiest path…

What, exactly, are we building toward? And more importantly: What might we already be losing along the way?

If Doctors Lose Their Conscience, Patients Lose Their Advocate

At the heart of this conversation is not just a policy debate—but a deeper question about the role of the doctor. 

What happens when a clinician is no longer free to bring their full judgement, experience, and moral reasoning into the room? The language often used, “conscientious objection,” doesn’t quite capture what’s at stake.

“I prefer the term freedom of conscience,” the doctor explains. Not as a defensive stance, but as a positive one. “Because I stand for something that I think is better.”

But from his perspective, the solution to suffering is not the ending of life itself.

“I don’t think that taking someone’s life is ever a good answer.”

It’s a position that has landed him in scenarios where he has had to have the freedom of conscience to object. And yet, the system around him is shifting.

“The system is moving very quickly to rein in the ability for doctors to stand apart,” he says. The space to say: you have the right to pursue this, but I cannot be part of it.

“I will not stand in the way… but I will stand out of the room.”

That distinction, between allowing and participating, is becoming harder to maintain. And increasingly, it is seen as problematic.

“It’s seen as paternalistic,” he explains. As if not doing what the patient wants is a failure of care. But in everyday medicine, that assumption doesn’t hold.

“Doctors say no to patients all the time,” he points out. “Someone comes to me wanting a drug of addiction—I say no. I don’t think this is in your best interests.”

That refusal is not neglect, it is part of professional responsibility.

“I’m not going to do it. Here’s something else we can think about. Here’s something else we can talk about.”

That, he argues, is what patients actually need.

“You want a doctor who’s prepared to stand there… and bring their perspective, what they think is in the patient’s best interest.”

To remove that voice, to tell doctors they cannot exercise judgement in certain areas, is, in his view, deeply risky.

“To say that I am not allowed to have that room… is actually very dangerous for our health system.”

Because it changes the nature of care itself.

“Do you want a doctor who must do what the bureaucracy tells them to do?” he asks. “Or do you want a doctor who’s prepared to go into bat for you?”

This is not just about assisted dying. It is about the kind of healthcare system being created.

“It’s about enabling doctors to be good doctors across their scope of practice.”

There is a tendency to think that “freedom of conscience” is simply about personal beliefs, perhaps religious or moral views that sit outside professional practice.

But that, he suggests, is far too narrow. “We want all doctors to be moral,” he says. “Do you want an amoral doctor?”

Because medicine is not value-neutral.

“Do you want a doctor who has no concern about what is right and wrong? How’s that going to work?”

Clinical judgement is not separate from ethical judgement, it is built on it. Every decision, even the most routine, involves weighing what is good, what is harmful, what is appropriate.

“Every time someone walks into the room about their sore throat,” he says, “do you want me to be concerned about what is right and what is wrong, or do you just want me to be a robot?”

And yet, there is a growing push to separate those things. To suggest that in some areas, particularly around assisted dying, doctors should set aside their own judgement and simply follow the process.

Good medicine, in his view, requires something more. “Good medicine requires doctors to be exercising conscience.”

And when that is suppressed, the impact is deeply personal.

“If doctors are having to shut up and do what they’re told… that’s a very damaging place for doctors.”

It is exhausting. It wears people down. In systems where patients are not getting what they need, where clinicians are forced to operate within constraints that don’t align with their judgement.

“That hurts the patient, but it hurts us too. You can only take so much of that… before clinicians start to say, I just can’t do this.”

Which raises a broader concern. If the system continues in this direction, what happens to the doctors who are most thoughtful, most conscientious, most committed to holistic care?

“It would be a really big nail in a coffin that’s already got lots of nails in it,” he says.

“Choice” Is Never Made in a Vacuum

Much of the public conversation around assisted dying is framed around autonomy, the right of an individual to choose the timing and manner of their death.

But in practice, those decisions rarely exist in isolation. They are shaped by relationships, responsibilities, fears, and circumstances that reach far beyond the individual.

One case, in particular, brings that into sharp focus.

“I was looking after a frail woman,” the doctor recalls. She was elderly, living at home with her daughter. The situation, on the surface, was already complex.

Her daughter was in midlife, but vulnerable… “she’d never done well academically,” he explains, and had lived her life on a minimum wage, still at home. “She was a lovely, simple soul.” 

But her future independence was uncertain. At the same time, the mother’s health was deteriorating.

“She had significant chronic health conditions… living independently was increasingly challenging.” It had reached a point where 24/7 care was needed.

The obvious next step, moving into a rest home, was fiercely resisted by the mother for a tragic reason.

“She owned her home which she would be required to sell to pay for rest home care. That meant she could not then leave it to her daughter.”

The decision was not just about her own care, it was about her daughter’s future.

“At that point, her daughter becomes homeless.”

Other family members existed, but they were already stretched, living their own lives, managing their own responsibilities. The daughter’s situation was uniquely fragile.

“She was particularly concerned for her daughter,” he says. “Who was never going to be able to own her own home… and would probably struggle to manage her own living situation any other way.”

And within that context, a new line of thinking emerged. “She started talking about euthanasia.”

Not out of despair in the traditional sense. Not driven primarily by pain. But as a solution.

“I just think that’s incredibly sad,” he says. “That’s not the sort of world I want to live in.

“I think she would have qualified,” he says. “It wasn’t a stretch to think she only had six months left.”

Her reasoning was, in her mind, entirely logical. 

“This is how I can provide for my daughter… whom I love dearly.

The conversations that followed were careful, deliberate. There were discussions with her, with her daughter, with the wider family. There were familiar themes—resistance to losing independence, fear of institutional care.

“I don’t want to go into a rest home… carry me out in a box,” he recalls hearing. A common refrain, and one that speaks to the deep emotional weight of losing control.

But beneath all of that, her central concern remained unchanged.

“A parent choosing to end their life so that their child is provided for… what does that say about us?”

In this case, events unfolded differently.

“She actually died suddenly, unexpectedly,” he says, something that often happens toward the end of life.

“Thankfully we never got to the crunch.”

But the proximity to that moment is what lingers. Because it reveals just how close these decisions can come to being shaped by factors far removed from the individual alone.

“The autonomy argument… pretends that decisions are just about me.”

But in reality, they are not.

When the System Fails, Death Becomes the Fastest Option

There is a version of end-of-life care that most people hope for. It begins with honesty. It moves toward support. It is grounded in presence, planning, and care that surrounds not just the patient, but the family as well.

But the reality is often far more fragile.

“It’s happened a lot of times,” the doctor begins.

A patient arrives at hospital with vague symptoms of pain, nausea, something not quite right. They’re sent for scans, and then comes the moment that changes everything.

“You find that they’re unfortunately riddled with cancer.”

It’s sudden and unexpected. “A bolt out of the blue.” And then comes the conversation that follows.

“You sit down with them and you walk them through the process… this is what we’ve found.”

There may still be tests to confirm the details, but the overall picture is already clear.

“I would be most surprised if this was a cancer that could be cured… we’re talking about the last chapter of your life.”

He doesn’t soften what that moment is like.

“That’s like hitting someone with a baseball bat.”

It’s confronting. It’s heavy. And while doctors are trained to have these conversations, the impact is never routine. From there, the focus shifts to what comes next.

“What I would do… is say, look, this is an awful situation, but the last thing you want to do with whatever time you have left is sit in a hospital bed.”

The goal becomes getting people home—back to something familiar, something human.

“You’d want to be with your family… not with strangers in white coats.”

And so begins the process of palliative care.

“You talk them through what that looks like, good pain relief, helping you navigate the plans you’ll need to make, how do you care for your family, how do we care for your family.”

It is, at its best, a model of care that is both practical and deeply relational.

“So we’ve made these referrals… how about you go home?”

And this is where the system begins to show its strain. Because what is promised is not always what is delivered.

“Then a month later they turn up in ED in constant pain, because their number hasn’t come up yet.”

The gap between intention and reality becomes painfully clear.

“I know I’m sending people home to a system that is completely overwhelmed,” he says. “Despite my best endeavours… despite me pleading… it’s not going to work.”

And so people wait. Sometimes for weeks with pain, with fear, with unanswered questions.

“They’ve had no support, no contact.”

In that space, something begins to shift. Without support, people don’t just endure physical symptoms, they can “plunge into grief… or fear”. And eventually, they return. 

“Then they come back in crisis a month later.”

At that point, the options look very different.

“Now I need to send them home with a phone number that they can ring to end it all.”

There is a bluntness to the way he describes it.

What is being offered in that moment is not just a service, it is a contrast. On one hand, a system that has struggled to show up. On the other, a pathway that is immediate.

“The only service that comes to your home… and within days you can be over this.”

And that, he argues, is not a neutral choice. “That’s not a choice. That’s a bulldozer.”

One option is delayed, under-resourced, and uncertain—and the other is accessible, efficient, and definitive. The balance is no longer even.

“We all know the other options… which might be what they want.”

Part of the issue, he explains, is structural.

“In New Zealand, our palliative care services are awesome—but they’re funded by cake stalls and op shops.”

“There are saints out there,” he says. “Palliative care doctors and nurses—I’d want them on my case.”

But there simply aren’t enough of them.

“And we are not fixing that.”

And so a difficult reality emerges.

“I’m having to send people home just hoping.”

Hoping it works, hoping the support arrives, hoping the system holds. But knowing that it often doesn’t. And in that gap, something else becomes more prominent.

“I’m worried that it’s actually reducing people’s choices,” he says.

Because the presence of assisted dying doesn’t exist in isolation—it interacts with everything else around it.

It creates an “out” for systems that are struggling to meet demand.

There needs to be more than a system change to fix it.

“It’s about thinking about the workforce,” he says. More doctors. More nurses. More community support. More policy oversight. More accountability.

“We need to say how good it can be.

“I’ve seen so many people die well,” he says.

What We Lose When Death Is Shortcutted

“I think we lose so much [when people choose euthanasia],” the doctor says. “I think we lose, for the person, the privilege of being cared for.”

That word—privilege—is a striking one. Because it reframes something many people fear or resist: dependence.

“I don’t want to patronise people,” he adds. This is not about minimising the difficulty of that stage of life. But it is about recognising something that can emerge within it.

He reflects on the recent death of an elderly relative, someone who, for a long period, had been fully dependent on others. And what stood out to him was not just the vulnerability of that situation, but the response it drew out in others.

“I just take my hat off to the saints who cared for her,” he says. “She was comfortable… she just was.”

But surrounding her was something more than care in a clinical sense.

“There was this whole community of people who were able to be their best selves using their gifts, their passion, their love, to care for this person at the end of their life.”

It’s a picture that mirrors something familiar at the other end of life.

“Just as there are people who do that at the start of life,” he says. The caregivers, the teachers, the people who quietly shape and support others in different seasons.

“There are teachers in the classroom… there are cops in rough neighbourhoods… making the world a better place.”

Care, in this sense, is not just a task. It is an expression of who people are at their best. And when that space is removed, or shortened, something is lost, not just for the person dying, but for everyone around them. 

Because death, in its natural course, often creates a window. A difficult and confronting one. But also, a meaningful one.

“I think we often lose real time as families,” he says.

Time that might otherwise allow things to surface—things that have been unspoken, unresolved, or avoided. He describes moments where he has been able to help families “notice the elephant in the room… name the elephant in the room… sometimes usher the elephant out of the room.”

These are not easy conversations. Often they come with long histories, deep tensions, or unresolved pain.

Sometimes, something shifts. He recalls being with a patient in their final moments, someone whose last words were simple, but profound.

“They were able to say, ‘I love you.’ And then they died.”

Moments like that are not guaranteed. But they are possible. And in his experience, they happen more often than people might expect when there is time, space, and support.

There are situations marked by conflict, chaos, unresolved pain. Death does not automatically resolve those things.

“I just think euthanasia takes away so much potential. It takes away so much of the reality of life,” he says. “It takes away… the really important stuff in life, as well as in death.”

If a “good death” is not just about the absence of pain, but about connection, care, meaning, and presence, then shortening that process does not simply reduce suffering.

The Bottom Line

This conversation does not present death as simple, neat, or sentimental. It acknowledges suffering, complexity, family conflict, fear, exhaustion, and the messy reality of life in the trenches. 

But it also insists on something that is increasingly easy to lose sight of: people at the end of life are not only looking for pain relief. Often, they are looking for presence, reassurance, dignity, belonging, support, and care that does not abandon them.

If the system offers death more quickly than it offers real support, that is not expanded freedom. 

If people choose death because they feel like a burden, because they are lonely, because their daughter might lose the house, or because the service that should have come never arrived, then the question is not only what they chose. The question is what choices were really left.

Call to Action

If this conversation challenged you, slowed you down, or helped you see the issue in a different light, do not let it end here.

Share it. Discuss it. Ask harder questions about what compassion really means. Advocate for better palliative care, better support for families, and greater freedom of conscience for healthcare workers. 

And most of all, refuse the idea that the only answer to suffering is to end the sufferer.

“Because how we care for people at the end of life says everything about who we are,” Voice For Life president Lydia Posthuma says.

“And life should be valued, protected and honoured from conception to natural death.”