Protect funeral directors from culture of death!

Media Release 16 June 2025

Right to Life calls on our community to protect funeral directors from the culture of death, which seeks to seduce them into allowing eligible vulnerable patients to be killed by their doctor with a lethal injection or assisted in suicide in a funeral home.

Right to Life believes that the previous Labour government’s Minister of Health, Hon Ayesha Verrall [pictured] must accept responsibility for this appalling proposal.

Providing a lethal injection to a patient or assisting in their suicide at a funeral home, retirement home, hospice or hospital is intrinsically evil, violates the fifth commandment of God, “You shalt not kill” and violates the human rights to life of the patient.

In response to an Official Information Act request from Right to Life, Health New Zealand replied on 5th June 2025, stating that “the number of assisted deaths that took place in funeral homes, for the 12 months ending 31st March 2025, is fewer than 10. The exact number is withheld under section 9[2][a] of the Act to protect the privacy of natural persons.”

Right to Life supports the ethics of funeral directors and commends those directors who uphold their duty to fulfil the corporal work of mercy to bury the dead in a dignified manner, and show respect for the body of a deceased person, who was made in the image and likeness of God.

Right to Life is appalled that the Funeral Directors Association former CEO, Gillian Boyes, advised in 2024 that funeral homes are “stepping up for those who choose euthanasia”, in some cases allowing an assisted death on their premises.

At the 2024 AGM of the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand, Officers of the Assisted Dying Secretariat of the Ministry of Health gave a presentation encouraging funeral homes to provide facilities on their premises to enable doctors to kill their patients with a lethal injection or assist in their suicide.

Right to Life calls on the community to boycott any funeral home which provides facilities for the killing by euthanasia of vulnerable patients by “assisted dying” Funeral directors are members of a noble profession; There is no place for the killing of the vulnerable in funeral homes.

Right to Life is disturbed by this proposal, which seeks to normalise the killing of vulnerable patients and give this killing some respectability. It is indicative of euthanasia creep and is deeply offensive. It would be very convenient to have the patient euthanized at the funeral home, so that they would then be embalmed on the same premises, then buried by the funeral director or cremated.

Funeral homes provide an important service to our community by :-

• Fulfilling the corporal works of mercy, to bury the dead.

• Fulfilling the spiritual works of mercy, providing comfort to the afflicted, and by providing facilities such as chapels to pray for the living and the dead.

The Labour government’s proposal was part of the advancing culture of death. Why is the National led government intent on continuing to promote this intrinsic evil?

Right to Life believes that the government has corrupted the medical profession, the nursing profession, the midwifery profession, the pharmacy profession and now they seek to corrupt the funeral directors profession with the promotion of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Right to Life makes no apology in speaking up in defence of funeral homes. We request, in the interest of our community, that the funeral directors profession reject this Ministry of Health's gruesome proposal, and refuse to allow their facilities to be used to kill vulnerable patients with a lethal injection or to be assisted in suicide.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life. New Zealand Inc.