(LifeSiteNews) — According to the most recent report of the New Zealand “Assisted Dying Service” (which sounds so benign and almost… helpful, doesn’t it?), covering April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, there were 472 “assisted deaths” during that period. This, as Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition noted, is an increase from 344 the previous year; additionally, there are also 1,137 active cases, an increase from 945 the previous year. From the report:
For the 472 assisted deaths that took place between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025:
- 17 people chose ingestion, triggered by the person,
- 5 people chose intravenous delivery, triggered by the person,
- 9 people chose ingestion through a tube, triggered by the AMP or ANP
- 441 people chose injection, administered by the AMP/ANP.
To clarify the terms: assisted suicide is when the person commits the act of suicide themselves, with help; euthanasia is when the person is killed by a lethal injection administered (usually) by a medical professional. In New Zealand, the vast majority of those seeking death are opting for euthanasia – 441 out of the 472 cited in the recent report. This, the report notes, is similar to Canada, where the euphemism “MAiD” is used, but euthanasia is almost universally practiced.
It is important to note, Schadenberg emphasized, that of the 472 who died, “21% of the applicants were not receiving palliative care; 12% of the applicants were living with a disability; only 126 medical professionals were willing to participate in an assisted death in 2024, which indicates that most medical professionals are unwilling to kill their patients, and only 10 applicants (1137 active cases) had a psychiatric assessment to check for both competence and for any presence of coercion.”
In New Zealand, as in Canada, the oversight for a process that ends in the death of the patient is shambolic or absent. Rather than rigorously ensuring that those seeking a lethal injection are able to grant consent and are free from any form of pressure or coercion, euthanasia providers instead seem inclined to hunt for reasons to approve people. For those who think this an exaggeration, journalist Alexander Raikin published two chilling reports last fall, noting that a quarter of all euthanasia practitioners in Ontario may have violated the Criminal Code of Canada.
But as Raikin asked almost plaintively in his report at The Hub: “Does anyone care?”
That is precisely my feeling reading reports from euthanasia regimes that tell us precisely what we have come to expect: That safeguards are weak, porous, and often seem non-existent; that euthanasia rates always climb, and few seem interested in asking why; that many opt for euthanasia or assisted suicide because they cannot get the care they actually want, and thus calling their final, fatal decision “choice” seems farcical at best and cruel at worst.
New Zealand legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in November 2021 after the “End of Life Choices” Act passed by the narrow margin of 69 to 51 in 2019. In 2020, a referendum on euthanasia resulted in 65 percent of voters approving it. According to that legislation, New Zealanders are only eligible for euthanasia or assisted suicide if they have a terminal illness “likely to end the person’s life within six months” and are in an “advanced state of irreversible decline in physical capability” with “unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that the person considers tolerable.”
But of course, euthanasia activists and their political allies are not satisfied with that – because once they have legislated the “right to die,” they always, always push for expansion. And thus, David Seymour, the head of the ACT Party and a sponsor of the “End of Life Choices” Act, is calling for an expansion, and now says that the legislation they initially sold to the public was a “political compromise.” In other words, he and politicians like himself passed what they thought the public would tolerate, and now they’re pushing for more.
Considering the latest euthanasia report, as well as the almost daily stories from Western euthanasia regimes, it is difficult not to conclude that leaders like Seymour do not believe their own propaganda lines about “safeguards” and “choice.” They can read, just like we can. They get the newspapers, just like we do. They know what’s happening. And they don’t care – or perhaps they’re getting precisely the results they want. It’s a dark thought, but increasingly unavoidable.
