Rob Jonquière is a retired doctor and advocate on the so-called “End-of-Life choice.” Jonquière started his career as a family doctor in the Netherlands.
In the 1970’s when euthanasia was illegal in the Netherlands, Jonquière says that he met patients with terminal diseases who asked him for euthanasia.
“I did help a couple of my patients and, of course, the problem with that was that I could not talk about it with other people,” he said.
Jonquière went on to be the chief executive of the Dutch Right to Die Society, NVVE.
“I was involved in the development of the details of the bill right from the start, so I was very glad when in 2001 the parliament approved the bill and it became a law, effective from 2002.”
After retiring from the Dutch Right to Die Society, Jonquière became the communications director and administrative secretary to the board of the umbrella organization, World Federation of Right to Die Societies.
Jonquiere has now agreed to help End of Life New Zealand raise the issue by talking about medically-assisted euthanasia legislation. His efforts are being opposed by groups such as Not Dead Yet , a grassroots group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination.
On their website, the disability rights group demands the equal protection of the law for the targets of so called “mercy killing” whose lives are seen as worth-less.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
The group launched last month in New Zealand as Not Dead Yet Aotearoa (NDYA) writing in their press release that, “Disabled people want to have a good life. But too many of us lack the basic choices that our human dignity demands. That means many of us don’t feel at all secure and valued equally. But, ironically, society will happily provide us with the choice to die!”
NDYA member Huhana Hickey is quoted as saying, “We’re seen as costly too, a drain on scarce public resources.”
Also in opposition to Jonquiere’s right to kill agenda are members of the New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA).
President Mark Peterson says that right-to-die legislation is a slippery slope, “If you legalize voluntary euthanasia then you actually start to create the situation where there could be subtle and not so subtle pressure on patients to accept that as being their lot,” he said.
A New Zealand media outlet reports that Jonquiere said he did not know why disabled people had come out so strongly against the legislation.
In response, the euthanasia advocate made this alarming statement, “Sometimes the only way to terminate the suffering is to take away the life.”
Calling it deliberate killing, Peterson said that NZMA members opposed voluntary euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, “Just the straight-out ethical thing of doctors deliberately killing patients just doesn’t sit well with our members,” he said.
If the terms choice, drain on society, death with dignity, and mercy killing are familiar, that is because may on Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control League board in conjunction with the Eugenics Society helped found the first right-to-die organization back in 1938.
In fact, by 1952, Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger was open about her belief in Euthanasia. This 1952 letter from the Euthanasia Society of America clearly shows Margret Sanger on the American Advisory Board of the Euthanasia Society of America. Read more about Sanger and her supporters here.
LifeNews Note: Carole Novielli is the author of the blog Saynsumthn, where this article originally appeared.
