By the Pulse
The Pulse host Kate Cormack interviewed Henoch Kloosterboer, spokesperson for #DefendNZ and Editor of The Defender, on the latest news around the topic of assisted suicide and euthanasia in New Zealand, including the recent screening of a biased documentary on TVNZ’s Sunday programme, as well as the dramatic increase in numbers of people seeking and going through with an assisted suicide or euthanasia death.
Listen or read an excerpt from the show below.
Kate Cormack
Hi, my name is Kate Cormack, and this is Pulse, the monthly podcast of Voice For Life New Zealand. If you're looking for informative and intelligent pro-life commentary, interviews and news, then this is definitely the show for you. Right, so the second issue that we're going to talk about on today's episode is euthanasia and assisted suicide. So, for this segment, we're going to bring in our guest, Henoch Kloosterboer. Now, I know that I completely screwed up pronouncing your name correctly. So, I'll let you introduce yourself to the listeners. And maybe you can correct me on how to pronounce your name. We've been friends for a while now, but I think I just get carried away and I've just sort of decided how to pronounce your name myself.
Henoch Kloosterboer
All good. Thanks for having me on the show Kate. And yeah, so now you did pretty well, there – it's a bit of a tricky Dutch name. So, all good.
Kate Cormack
So, tell us how to say it right, though?
Henoch Kloosterboer
Well, okay. So English, Henoch Kloosterboer, and if you want to get carried away with Dutch Henoch Kloosterboer, which is a little more fun for those that want to give it a try.
Kate Cormack
So good to have you joining us for this conversation, Henoch. We've been working together on and off for a few years now, it's been just awesome getting to know you, you are just such a great man and such a great heart for defending life and standing up against these threats to life and threats to the vulnerable. So, if you can just introduce yourself to the listeners who haven't met you before. I'm feel like I'm so familiar with you, I, you know, probably be good to actually give the listeners a chance to get to know you. And one of the reasons that we've been working together is because we're working on #DefendNZ. And so, if you could just introduce #DefendNZ to the listeners as well.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah, sure. So, I've been involved with #DefendNZ, now, since it started in 2018. It's been a few years now. But essentially, that was formed to lobby MPs around the End of Life Choice Bill at the time. And we were hoping to overturn that in second or third reading, which unfortunately, we weren't able to achieve. There was a lot of games being played there and deals being made between parties. And so that went through to the public referendum. And so, I've also been involved campaigning nationwide against the legislation because of the risks that it places to vulnerable New Zealanders and the lack of safeguards. It's really inferior piece of legislation compared to overseas, end of life or assisted dying legislation.
Kate Cormack
#DefendNZ has gone through quite a few different phases so far, and I think we're in our third phase, aren't we?
Henoch Kloosterboer
That's right.
Kate Cormack
We're developing it now to suit a different need than what we had when we were lobbying, and when we had the referendum.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Completely. Yeah. So, we started off, as you say, in that lobbying phase, towards MPs. And so, we had a very small target market of 120. Then we shifted gear or Voice For Life shifted gear with its work with #DefendNZ, and its public facing side of things for trying to get no votes on the referendum. A much larger audience!
Kate Cormack
So, from 120 to millions.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Exactly. And I think, you know, it was a pretty close one there. 34% voted no in the referendum, which is the huge amount of New Zealanders if we think about it like that.
Kate Cormack
It is.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah. And so, then we went from the referendum that was in October 2020. And the law was coming into force a year after that date, roughly. And so, it came into effect in November the seventh last year. So, the law has been in force now for basically, six months. And so, we worked together, obviously, Kate and we spent quite a bit of time developing, #DefendNZ for this next phase and the completely new website and focus, which is it's no longer about lobbying for this bill not to exist or for this law not to be in force because it is, now we're in a position where vulnerable New Zealanders are at risk. And so, our work has changed from lobbying to actually supporting New Zealanders at the end of life, helping to advocate for those that might be being abused or who might be potentially coerced or taken advantage of, with regards to this legislation, and also generally advocating and creating awareness for the flaws in the law in lobbying to try and get improvements. So, we've really shifted to, it's become about saving lives now. And sadly, there's a lot of lives that have already been lost to date.
Kate Cormack
Yeah, I think it's an interesting journey, you know, Voice For Life for decades has been fighting against the introduction of euthanasia laws, and thankfully, were quite successful a few times. And then with the End of Life Choice Act, things were different. But we were prepared to continue, it wasn't that, "Oh, we lost, Oh, we lost the law passed. Now we just pick up, we shift away from the euthanasia issue." If anything, that was actually our time to step up even more. Because now that it's enacted, we need to be there to save lives, we need to do all that we can to educate the public about the flaws of the End of Life Choice Act and do all we can here to defend life from euthanasia and assisted suicide. So, what's your role in #DefendNZ?
Henoch Kloosterboer
So, I'm now the project manager for the #DefendNZ project. And then I'm also the editor of a publication that we've been publishing for a little while now called The Defender. So, The Defender is sort of a dual purpose of republishing relevant articles around the topic of euthanasia and assisted suicide worldwide, as well as writing its own exclusive articles and breaking news stories where it can. We've already had quite a few significant stories that have reached a much wider audience and gone global actually – a couple of them. So that's been quite encouraging.
Kate Cormack
It's been very good. And I mean, even just this week, we were able to publish a new article on The Defender about The Sunday programme. Maybe we could sort of fill in our listeners who might have missed that online, but maybe we could sort of fill them in on what's happened there and what our, our take on it and our response to that was?
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah, so The Sunday programme is a documentary, sort of current affairs show that screens on TV One on a Sunday evening. Usually, it's got quite a big audience too. So, this last Sunday, the 15th of May, they covered a story about a lady that's probably known to us, Esther Richards, I think I've even probably seen her at Parliament before, lobbying for the End of Life Choice Bill at the time to be enacted. So yeah, the story was produced by Mariama Kamo from the Sunday team, and she followed Esther's progress applying for assisted dying, and ultimately, to her death. We don't know whether she died from assisted suicide, which is self-administered lethal medication, or if she was euthanised, or, you know, her life was deliberately ended by a doctor. So, we're not sure that the story didn't cover the actual day of her death. Her day of death, also, tragically, was chosen to be 30 years from the day that her own mother had died, which to me, doesn't necessarily, you know, I don't know sound callous, but to me, that doesn't necessarily sound like the "last resort" death before pain and suffering setting on but to me, it sounds like a planned exit and possibly grieving and brokenness from past experiences of loss as well. So, I do think that she would have gone through with the legislation one way or another, but we're just not given details as to which way
Kate Cormack
Yeah, I thought for myself watching it, the fact that they filmed up to the day before with her, which was in itself quite eerie and quite chilling. I was assuming from the advertising that they were actually going to show the full story that they were going to film perhaps on the day, or during the moment, I'm not sure what that would have looked like, but I got the impression that that was what they were going to be doing. And then they didn't pick up any of the story until I think it was like seven or eight days after her? And I think that actually spoke volumes. That why couldn't they cover that most, you know that that really was the crux of the story.
Henoch Kloosterboer
And it's obvious why they wouldn't because, for example, in 2015, a similar programme in Australia by the channel SBS, I think it was, produced a documentary following two people in Belgium who were seeking a similar path. And it actually filmed one of the lady's there who had an assisted suicide and ended her life. And if you watch that doco, it's really disturbing and haunting, and you just feel gross afterwards. So, you know, obviously, this we'll go into it more, but this Sunday piece was really a propaganda piece really, to glorify euthanasia and assisted suicide, and the last thing they want to do is a show Esther actually dying or taking in that lethal, poisonous mixture.
Kate Cormack
It's completely tragic what happened to her. And so, we were I was obviously able to provide our response because the Sunday programme, you know, they had a Facebook Live, where they interviewed a couple of guests who are pro euthanasia. And then even on the Breakfast Show, the next morning, they interviewed one of those same pro euthanasia lobbyists. So there was no sense of balance to the piece that they did produce, there was no sense of balance to the conversation around Esther's death provided in any of their, you know, communications, any of their interviews, and so I think we both, all of us felt that it was important to provide a comment on what had happened, what the show had shown, because I think for me, when I saw the advertising, my heart sunk, because there's so many New Zealand viewers who were going to be watching that programme, who already perhaps have a misunderstanding about what euthanasia really is, and the End of Life Choice Act and the impact, the dangerous nature of it for the vulnerable and disabled and New Zealand. And so, I just saw my heart sunk, because it's like, "man, they're going to watch this. It's going to be painted up, how they want it to be presented". And yeah, so we provided a response. And so, you know, what were the some of the things that we kind of highlighted in there that you want to touch on?
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah, The Defender published a story on Monday, so the day after the programme aired, titled slanted Sunday segment glorifies tragedy...
Kate Cormack
Good title. Yeah, I think that sums it up, right there!
Henoch Kloosterboer
The journalist who wrote that did an amazing, amazing job of just objectively looking at the piece. And there were some real interesting observations that came out of that piece, as well as our discussions. And you've just mentioned around the couple of experts that they had on the Facebook Live afterwards and the one on Breakfast next day.
Kate Cormack
I didn't I don't think I use the term 'expert',
Henoch Kloosterboer
No, no sorry – my bad. You used the word 'activist' and what I just wanted to clarify, as well is that, during the Facebook Live that Mariama Kamo put together, those activists were referred to as experts. And on the Breakfast Show the following morning, they were labelled by their academic title of doctor, even though neither of these folk are medical doctors, and so there was a real game of deceit going on because the reality is one of one of these folk, a young lady called Jessica Young, She was introduced as a researcher of assisted dying and yeah, that's true – she's doing some research with Victoria University, but the journalist didn't mention that actually, she's on the SCENZ group board. So, she's a member of the SCENZ Committee, which is the committee in charge of allocating doctors to applicants. It also didn't mention that she headed up the very-well-funded Yes For Compassion campaign during the referendum year as their campaign lobbyist. So yeah, there was a lot of trickery going on really around how people were presented.
Kate Cormack
Careful use of language...
Henoch Kloosterboer
Oh, very much. I think it was Professor Margo Somerville, who told me the phrase, she coined it as "the cloak of medical legitimacy". And why were doctors involved in the first place with assisted dying and euthanasia, they clearly wanted no part in it. They could have easily set up another group of folk to administer and prescribe a poison. Because, again, the purpose of the medication isn't to help or to save lives, it's to end a life. So, a pharmacist doesn't even need to be involved. It's literally, bluntly, an executioner. So why were doctors needing to be involved to sell it? And Professor Margaret Somerville, her opinion is that it's just to create legitimacy for the whole thing.
Kate Cormack
Yeah. They're the white coat.
Henoch Kloosterboer
I tend to agree with that.
Kate Cormack
Yeah. As you were speaking, I was making me think about when I was watching the Facebook Live. And they did everything they can not to say the words 'euthanasia' and 'assisted suicide', you know, so they're clinging on to the euphemism of assisted dying. We should be advocating for assisted living, we shouldn't be assisting people to die, we should be assisting people to live their lives to the fullest and to a natural death. But yeah, there's so much you could have drawn out of that Facebook Live on itself.
Henoch Kloosterboer
I think we all expected, when we were voting on this, to see a person sort of writhing in pain in their bed, just in pure agony. And sort of this kind of, ethical dilemma of "do we put them out of their misery" type thing? I think that's what it has been painted as and yet, when we watch Esther story, she's living a beautiful life. Yes, she's got limitations on it, for sure, as do many of our disabled and vulnerable community, or even people in poverty have got limitations on where they can go and what they can do. But we really saw a beautiful person who was living a beautiful life, who had a beautiful son, lovely flat, or house, and beautiful location and was able to enjoy a lot of things – now totally, I'm not understating the pain or the loss that she experiences, but she has adjusted as well, like she, she was diagnosed, I think nine years ago. And so, you know, a terminal prognosis... that's the other thing to remember is that terminal prognoses are always a guess at best. In fact, research has shown, we've got an article about it on the website, that I think it's 75% to 80% of prognosis is incorrect. So, what was guaranteeing that Esther was actually due to die naturally in the next six months in order for her to preempt that with a euthanasia or assisted suicide death.
Kate Cormack
I think what you've pointed out was what was quite glaringly confronting about the programme. I watched it with a few work colleagues from another job, who aren't familiar with the euthanasia debate, they're not really familiar with the End of Life Choice Act. But they watched it, and their comment, I mean, of course, they had compassion and in sympathy for Esther and her story with cancer, but basically all they came away from watching that programme with was, she looked happy, she was okay, she wasn't suffering, she wasn't in unbearable pain. And I think that's where, you know, because the Act says, because the unbearable suffering is so subjective, and they also pointed out, you know, a lot of people in New Zealand live their life experiencing suffering on a daily basis, and if they were to start talking about wanting to end their life, we would instantly go into, "oh oh, this person is presenting suicide, suicidal ideation, they're considering ending their own life, they're considering suicide. What can we do to help them?", so that was quite an interesting takeaway for me hearing from others who aren't as involved in the debate as I am, but they were watching it and that was sort of what really stood out to them. I mean, Esther was even saying that during the moment of euthanasia or assisted suicide, again, we're not particularly sure which of those happened to her, that she wanted to crack a joke so that her loved ones would be laughing as she died. And that was quite chilling as well, the idea that we're going to just laugh our way through this killing.
Henoch Kloosterboer
And we don't actually know if there were complications.
Kate Cormack
No, we don't.
Henoch Kloosterboer
We know that some people have literally taken hours or days to actually die when being administered by this sort of medication in overseas jurisdictions. Obviously, they wouldn't put that on the programme well, they may from a journalistic integrity perspective, but I felt like that was missing. So, we don't actually know that. We don't know for sure how she died. Or whether it was prolonged, whether it was cruel, we don't know that. They had to come up with the concoction of substances to create this lethal dose, there's no sort of recipe book for this. And it's going to affect everyone differently. Which is why, I think it was Oregon, where we had one person who came alive again, after being assisted to die. And once they came alive again, they said, "never again, am I doing that!", and they lived until they had a natural death. Yes, I think the other interesting thing is that the story actually, I don't know if it meant to bring this to light, but it did was the fact that she actually had to apply to a doctor twice. The first time she was declined, because it appears that the doctor didn't feel that she was experiencing unbearable suffering. And by the sounds of it. A few months later, the doctor had reversed his decision.
Kate Cormack
Doesn't that just highlight how weak the test level for approval is? We don't actually know what the conversation was the first time and then the second time on how it changed. But it doesn't sound like it was tested in a very sort of physical manner, you know, like, what are the physical symptoms that have declined or something like that? It seems like she was just able to say that it's more unbearable for her or something like that. So, I guess it's just where are the safeguards to prevent people, you know, where's the line I guess!
Henoch Kloosterboer
Totally, like if we can convince our doctors that we're suffering unbearably and change their minds and sort of lean on them a little, where is the standard on that – it's entirely subjective. And that's not a great standard. The other interesting thing that the story highlighted was, there was that sort of moment of, it was either risk aversion from Mariama Kamo, or it was a vulnerability and humanity, I'm not sure. But she kindly sort of confronted Esther and asked, "Hey, is my is me doing this story putting pressure on you to go through with us?", which is a very legitimate question. We know that, essentially, that's what happened with Brittany Maynard in the States, one of the first assisted dying deaths there, is that she was put under pressure by the media. So, I think it was good that that question was asked, it was sort of jokingly sort of shrugged off as, as a "nah, nah, definitely not, you're all good". But what, what it also revealed was that that simple question that Mariama asked, and that was responded to just sort of shruggingly is the exact test that a doctor uses to determine whether a person is under any coercion. There's no standard for what that means. There's no sort of process.
Kate Cormack
It is so weak. It is so weak. And I thought it was interesting that she asked that question, because I think it just highlighted the obvious that that is what they were participating in, that by the Sunday programme being involved in her planned suicide, that they were a part of that and that they were having an impact on that decision, whether they liked it or not. And I think it was also exploiting a very vulnerable woman by putting on this show about her death.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Totally. Yeah. And that's why #DefendNZ is actually running a petition called 'Six to Fix'. And we've highlighted six key changes that need to be made to the Act to make it safer. And one of those, it's number two actually, is require a formal coercion assessment, because there is none currently, so, we've got some detail as to what questions specifically need to be asked here to make sure that we can do a better job than literally the test of the law that the Act says that a doctor must "do their best", which is just the lowest standard that one could ever ask, especially relating to issues of life and death. We're not talking about a personal loan or something here.
Kate Cormack
Shocking. What are the other aspects that we've covered in 'Six to Fix' petition?
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah, sure. So, the six fixes are, the first one is to require an independent witness. That sounds really obvious, but it's currently missing. There's no one to ensure that the person is making this choice freely of their own will.
Kate Cormack
That one's always the most alarming to me, that one has always just been the most unbelievable part of this whole law.
Henoch Kloosterboer
It's present in overseas legislation, but it's just not here. The second one, we've just talked about the formal coercion assessment, the third one is requiring a mental health assessment, because the reality is that we know from overseas data, that one in six people using assisted suicide are clinically depressed, which is a treatable condition – 100% treatable. And so, there's nothing to stop those people from falling through the cracks. So, we're going to get at least one in six that could have been treated because we don't have a mental health assessment. The next one, number four, is requiring a mandatory cooling-off period. And this is shocking that we don't have it – it's basically a stop and think period, which pretty much every overseas legislation has, except for ours. It's basically "hey, between request and death, you have to at least have 10 days, or 15 days, or whatever it is, just to think about it and make sure you really want to go through with this". And ours is lacking that. Our time between request and death is a minimum of 48 hours potentially. The next one we've got is requiring a competency test on the day of death. And this is an issue that we've seen overseas where someone's requested it, then at the point of their death, they haven't been competent, and they haven't actually wanted to go through with it. But because it's basically being pressured on them, we had that sad story about the woman in the Netherlands, whose family members were holding her down while she was begging not to be euthanised. And the doctor was there injecting her, it went to the Review Council. And they decided that the doctor acted in good conscience. So that that would fix those sorts of issues. And in the last one, which is really important, and we can probably just talk it just a little bit more about that as requiring detailed reporting from the MOH. And we currently have got really scant data compared to international standards, we can hardly even piece A and B together from that data. They give us overarching numbers, but not specific to the cases or the types of cases and there's so much data missing. It's ridiculous.
Kate Cormack
And when you're talking about reporting, so what do we know so far about how many deaths have happened since the End of Life Choice Act was enacted in November last year?
Henoch Kloosterboer
So, we've had one official report from the Ministry of Health, which was for data finishing on the 31st of March 2022. So, it was a quarterly report. So, it was quarter plus two months basically, because of the way the time of year that the legislation came in. And so, at that point, we had 66 deaths. There hasn't been an official report since however, Hannah Martin from Stuff, put a story out roughly on the six month mark, which was published on the ninth of May, and so she requested information from the Ministry of Health as to deaths to that point, and we had 92 deaths up to just before the six month mark. But that wasn't actually publicly released by the Ministry of Health. That was a journo basically asking questions and them facilitating that. So, we've got some pretty interesting numbers within what's happening from the proper report up to March that we can see, we can't guess too much more out of that article that came out for the six months, other than that it's really sad that it's increased so dramatically.
Kate Cormack
Yeah, 92.
Henoch Kloosterboer
One thing that I have found quite harrowing is that up until 31st, March, we had 206 applications made. So that was basically five months give or take. So, what's that per month? 40, roughly per month, is that right? Whereas we do know that there were a total of turn 267 applications up to the first of May, which is literally one month from the 31st of March plus a day. So, what we do know is that the difference there is, what's that?
Kate Cormack
Wow, that's a jump.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Year to jump of 61 applications. So, in that last month, if there was an average of 40 per month prior, within the last month, there's been 60 applications. So, it is actually ramping up. And the death rate, if you compare 66 in total for five months, to 92, within that extra one month, from 31st March to 1st May, that's almost, it's not quite a 50% jump. So, it's ramping up. It's scary what's happening.
Kate Cormack
I think it's interesting, too, that they're estimating that there'll be 350 deaths this first year. And so that almost talking about it, like "oh, it's only 92. Like, it's such a small number, because we're expecting far greater", and I think that's just 92 tragic deaths by euthanasia and assisted suicide in New Zealand. That is something to be completely just heartbroken to know, and not diminished the way that they're sort of trying to do with raising a higher number as an estimate.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah. And just one other thing on that, like, this is about, you know, the doctor is not allowed to initiate a conversation around assisted suicide or euthanasia with the patient, right. It's a no, no. But the Sunday programme is actually, starting that conversation with hundreds of 1000s of New Zealanders that are watching, with government funding, because it's on TV One – that's pretty much completely government funded other than a bit of ad revenue coming in. So how does that work? How can the government actually promote a very biased angle of the service, you know, when healthcare practitioners aren't able to bring it up? So, it's basically advertising the service which is going to lead to an increase.
Kate Cormack
The aim is to normalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in New Zealand. But thankfully, we have people like you who are committed to standing against that. And we're so thankful to have you on our team. And if you just want to remind our listeners where they can sign your petition.
Henoch Kloosterboer
Yeah, thanks for that Kate. So www.defendnz.co.nz. We're on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as well. And I just really encourage people to come to the homepage, just scroll down a touch and you'll see the 'Six to Fix'. And if you agree with those, if you think "hey, those things should be fixed", even if you're pro-euthanasia. If you think "hey, those things should be fixed". Pop your name on and sign underneath, we're hoping to get a large number of signatures, I think we're sort of just under 600 at the moment. So, pop on there. We've also got ways that we can help we've got whistleblower forms, if you know of anyone that's had a bad experience where doctors maybe brought it up, or where family members pressured someone, we've got a 'Need Help' page, we've got confidential forms that people can fill in to get in touch with us, so that we can provide them with support as well. We also rely 100% on donations, and it just wouldn't be possible to do anything that we do without them. So, there is a donation page. And we'd love anyone to come on as like a monthly or a weekly, 10 bucks a week or 10 bucks a month type thing, just to help out with our social advertising costs and that sort of thing.
Kate Cormack
Yeah, because we're obviously hoping to expand the work that we are doing at #DefendNZ we're hoping to increase what we're able to publish on The Defender. We're wanting to make a bigger impact in New Zealand and save as many lives from euthanasia and assisted suicide as possible. And so, we really encourage our listeners that if you want to get behind the work that we're doing, we'd love your support. We'd love you to partner with us on what we're doing, we'll absolutely keep you updated. We're so thankful to have Henoch on with us this morning. We'll be having Henoch join us again as a guest on future episodes, especially whenever we're tackling any topics or news or interviews around euthanasia and assisted suicide. Henoch is our go to man, so you will not miss out hearing from him again because I'm sure that you enjoyed the information that he's brought to us. I've learned quite a bit just from our conversation and I've enjoyed having you on with us on the show, Henoch. So, thank you
Henoch Kloosterboer
Thank you for having me on the on The Pulse.