Government training doctors to kill eligible patients!

Media Release 28 September 2025

Right to Life commends the doctors, practice nurses and psychiatrists in New Zealand, who, in obedience to the fifth commandment of God, Thou shalt not kill, and to their medical ethics, have refused to cooperate with the government in the killing of “eligible” patients, in accordance with the appalling End of Life Choice Act 2019.

Right to Life requests that health professionals vigorously resist the efforts of the Ministry of Health, to entice them into betraying their medical ethics and become members of the workforce bringing death to the vulnerable in our community, under the guise that this is a health service.

The community have an inalienable right to trust their doctor to uphold the Hippocratic tradition to do no harm. Would you trust your doctor if you knew that he or she would be prepared to kill you as a treatment option?

Right to Life is encouraged to learn that many health professionals have withdrawn their support to the Ministry of Health’s SCENZ Group The SCENZ Group is responsible for making and maintaining lists of health professionals, who are willing to kill eligible patients with a lethal injection or assist in their suicide. These misguided health professionals are available when a patient’s general practitioner commendably refuses on conscience grounds to participate in the killing of a patient.

The Registrar of Assisted Dying, Dr Kristen Good has revealed in her annual report to the Minister of Health that in 2023 there were 147 health professionals on the SCENZ list comprising: Attending Medical Practitioners [AMP], Independent Medical Professionals, [IMP], Nurse Practitioners and Psychiatrists.

Right to Life is pleased to note that in the annual report for 2025, it was revealed that the number of Attending Medical Professionals, had, in spite of efforts to increase the number of doctors prepared to kill eligible patients, decreased from 147 to 126. Right to Life believes that this decrease is a result of these doctors realising that killing patients is contrary to medical ethics and violates their conscience and requests that those medical professionals still on the list uphold their medical ethics and resign.

Right to Life believes that Health New Zealand should not be training doctors to kill vulnerable patients. Why then is Health NZ anxious to encourage doctors to undertake training in providing assistance in suicide, and in providing a lethal injection to kill eligible patients? Health NZ provides mandatory training with five e- learning modules.

Right to Life was pleased to be advised recently by Professor Suzanne Pitama, Dean of the Otago Medical School, in response to our Official Information Act request, that trainee doctors are not given any training in killing eligible patients with assistance in suicide or administering a lethal injection.

Since the 7 November 2021 to 30th June 2025, a total of 1,307 vulnerable patients were killed in New Zealand by a doctor with a lethal injection or assisted in their suicide. Since the introduction of the End of Life Choice Act on 7 November and the 31st December 2024:-

• 837 patients were killed in their home.

• 94 in a Public Hospital.

• 134 in an aged care facility.

• 33 in a Hospice.

• 9 in a funeral home.

Right to Life will not rest until the End of Life Choice Act 2019 is repealed and asks the community to join us in the defence of life.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.