SEYMOUR DEFENDS HIS ODIOUS BILL

350 people crammed into the Havelock North Community Centre on Thursday night to hear David Seymour promote his odious End of Life Choice Bill.

A lawyer friend of mine thought they were about 50/50 for and against. A woman friend said definitely more for.

Clinchers, I thought, were the young woman whose family been told repeatedly that she was going to die, how she herself had sometimes passionately wanted to die. But she's still very much alive and glad to be.

A middle-aged woman talked about close, long-term friendships with old people whose families wanted them out of the way.

Then an elderly man said we're facing a tsunami of the aged and if this bill is passed, sometime in the future it could be decided we can't afford all these elderly people and some will have to go. He was laughed at.

That reminded me of my mother, Kathrin du Fresne, getting up on a chair at the United Women's Convention in the '70s and telling them if abortion was legalized the next thing would be euthanasia. They laughed at her.

Make no mistake - we're on that slippery slope already.

I knew I had to get up and advertise the BRYAN KEMPER EVENT AT TARADALE TOWN HALL, THIS SUNDAY MAY 6, AT 7 P M. So I kept my mouth shut,

But in two hours of debate not one of those 300 people said that life is a gift from God and is to be taken back only by God. God didn't rate a mention.

Not even, as far as I or a friend could remember, from Anglican clergyman Alister Hendery, who gave a most beautiful speech - but at the end of it, we couldn't tell whether he was for or against.