Lecretia's Choice

by Matt Vickers

  As a child Lecretia attended a Baptist church in Tauranga, and she enjoyed Sunday school, I suspect more for the singing and the stories than anything else. But she was instilled with a faith in and respect for God. She drifted away from Baptism in her teenage years, but some vestige of faith remained. For Lecretia, that meant a private spirituality and the practice of kindness and generosity. She put others first, not in the hope of any eternal reward, but just because it felt like the right thing to do. I think Lecretia saw the source of that motivation as God, and felt that the same impulse was present in her fellow human beings. It didn’t come from fear—it came from respect for others. A person’s evil acts could generally, she thought, be traced to evil done to them—cycles of abuse, poverty, cruelty. She believed that kindness and compassion were a sort of universal solvent—applied liberally, they could melt any twisted mesh of evil.

  While Lecretia was tolerant of others’ religious beliefs, and a spiritual person, I am less so. If I am spiritual at all, it’s in my gratitude for being alive, witness to the spectacular confluence of chance and history that is life. To me, if God is anything, it abides in the infinite six that follows the decimal point in the odds of one side of a cosmic die. God is in the mathematical probability of one event happening and not another. Its motives are inscrutable and its attitude to humanity indifferent. We all live under a rain of infinite possibilities beyond our control, and our free will is the flimsy umbrella that shelters us from a deluge of pure chance. And for that reason alone—that common destiny of being at the mercy of fate—we have no excuse to be anything other than kind to one another. Sooner or later, it is our number that is up, and we rely on others to help us bear that burden.

  I placed my trust in science, but Lecretia preferred to follow her instincts. I remember discussing Darwin’s theory of evolution with her once, that all life came from pre-cellular molecules, then cells, then specialised cells, then aggregations of complementary cells and so on, ultimately culminating in animals, and then higher-order beings like us.

  ‘I don’t believe any of that.’

  ‘But it’s science.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘There are experiments that prove a lot of this.’

  ‘It’s so boring, and it doesn’t matter.’

  Lecretia was not interested in science at all—and had avoided it through her schooling, preferring to focus on classics and literature and languages. For her the assertions of scientists were indistinguishable from those of religious leaders, and could be dismissed or accepted according to some internal barometer of truth.

  Lecretia and I both felt that the members of the Care Alliance were ignoring their own internal barometers. We, and most New Zealanders, agreed that if a person is in pain, with no hope of recovery, then they should be able to ask for help to die and have someone help them. It was logical and it felt right. It was free will at work. But it seemed to me that the Care Alliance believed a patient’s ongoing suffering was justified, no matter how bad—upholding the existing law was more important to them than doing what felt right for most people.

  When Lecretia announced her statement of claim, the Care Alliance was quick to condemn her actions. Family First claimed her case ‘should not be solved in the courtroom’. That was, of course, completely wrong: the law had to be tested in the courts. Where else could it be tested, and what else could she do? The truth was Family First feared and opposed change in conflict with its religious beliefs.

  The Care Alliance was not the only organisation to get involved in Lecretia’s case. Countering it was the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New Zealand, a group of mostly elderly people who campaigned for choices at the end of life. They saw a place for voluntary assisted dying for patients with Alzheimer’s and other degenerative illnesses in those cases where an advance directive had been put in place expressing the individual’s wishes ahead of time. The group was led by a retired intensive care medical specialist, Dr Jack Havill, and counted among its allies the former Labour MP Maryan Street.

  Also asking to participate was the Human Rights Commission, an independent crown entity not answerable to the government. Its motivation was to provide expertise in the interpretation of the bill of rights, and it sought to join the case on a neutral basis.

  After Easter, I went home to Wellington so I could return to work, while Lecretia stayed in Tauranga with her parents. She finally took leave from her own job at the Law Commission, ostensibly to focus on the case, but the truth was that she was exhausted. Unless Lecretia’s condition improved, she wasn’t going to return to work.

  We discussed her resigning a few times, so that she could focus on her health, but she refused. She also had a gym membership that she wouldn’t cancel, as she intended to get back to the gym as soon as she was able. Between bouts of nausea and drowsiness, she continued making inquiries about a trip to India. She wanted to go to a tiger game-park and see the Taj Mahal.

  Lecretia had not given up. If she said goodbye to her job, and the gym, that would have been saying that she no longer expected to return to them. Lecretia’s very life was all about her work—she loved law reform, and she didn’t know what she would do with herself otherwise. In the end, I convinced her that perhaps the Law Commission would allow her to take a longer period of unpaid leave. They could hold her position open, and she could retain her office on the nineteenth floor with its spectacular views of Wellington Harbour. As soon as the hearing was done, if she was well enough, she could return. She agreed to this, and finished work—temporarily, in her view.

  Lecretia’s first TV interview was with the journalist Emma Alberici, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s current affairs program Lateline. It went to air on 10 April 2015. The ABC crew travelled to Tauranga to Shirley and Larry’s home to mic Lecretia up and put her on camera. We felt that if we could bring international attention to Lecretia’s plight, it might act as a catalyst for the domestic campaign. Despite not being able to see Ms Alberici, and only being able to hear her questions through an earpiece, Lecretia was lucid and assured throughout the interview. She did a great job. She showed passion and humour, and I was proud of her. The hair loss, the paralysis of the left-hand side of her face and the slightly slurred words were on display, but she made her points clearly and intelligently. Her beauty shone through.

  Though I had returned to work in Wellington, running Lecretia’s campaign was getting to be a full-time job. I had to write blog posts, engage on social media, and review the applications from the interveners and our lawyers’ responses so I could keep Lecretia up to date. Shirley called me from Tauranga, where Lecretia still was, and told me that Lecretia’s illness now required constant attention, as she needed help to move around, to be fed, to be taken to the bathroom. And she needed company. I couldn’t bear the idea of not being with her any more, and I spoke to Xero about this in mid-April. It was agreed that I would take indefinite leave, which was a huge relief. In January I’d recently been appointed the global head and vice-president of bank integration, a lofty title for the job I’d largely been doing anyway, but my new position brought with it higher expectations, and it was hard to see how I could do any justice to this role while caring for my wife when she returned home from Tauranga. I had drinks with my workmates on my last day, a lot of them now firm friends, and knew I would miss them. I didn’t know when I would be back.

  Chapter 18

  THE HIGH COURT was scheduled to hear the applications to intervene in Lecretia’s case in late April in Wellington. Though Lecretia was still in Tauranga, we spoke nearly every day. Tauranga was experiencing a late summer, so a lot of her afternoons were spent on her parents’ deck, eating feijoas from a tree in her mother’s garden, or cherries from a local orchard. When I was on a FaceTime call with her I would scoop up Ferdinand, so that she could see him, and talk to him.

  On 21 April I went along to the High Court to hear the interveners—the parties that wanted to be involved in the hearing—
make their case to be included. The judge would need to decide whether to include the interveners before the hearing started in May. I entered the courtroom and sat in the public gallery, looking out at the courtroom floor, where the various counsels had assembled in groups. I saw Andrew Butler for the first time, and Chris Curran, and I liked them immediately. They were young, and dynamic, and passionate, and I could tell they were really keen to get into the case. I also saw those acting for the attorney-general, and the interveners too. The attorney-general was represented by Michael Heron, the solicitor-general, who wasn’t present, and Paul Rishworth QC, an imperious-looking man who spoke with the creaky voice of the pages of long-forgotten legal tomes. If he was excited by the prospect of the case, he didn’t show it. The Care Alliance was represented by Victoria Casey, a woman with curly grey hair and a serious expression. As a board member of the archdiocese of Wellington, she had strong ties to the Catholic Church. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society was represented by Kate Davenport QC, who seemed relaxed and good-humoured. And the Human Rights Commission was represented by Matthew Palmer QC, Geoffrey Palmer’s son, a successful lawyer in his own right, who shared his father’s rake-thin height and friendly features.

  After a few minutes, the bailiff announced the judge was about to enter the courtroom and called for those present to rise. The judge entered the room and invited the court to take a seat. Justice David Collins was grey-haired, with an open, likeable face. He looked like someone capable of both kindness and sternness. He had a reputation for being firm but fair. When it was announced that he would be presiding over Lecretia’s case, we were pleased. The High Court judiciary were reputed to be almost uniformly conservative, but Justice Collins was regarded as someone who was at least capable of having an open mind.

  Andrew Butler was one of the first to speak, and made the point that Lecretia’s case was really about her own circumstances, not broader society, and therefore the judge should not grant any of the applicants leave to intervene. The broader debate should happen after the court case, in the public arena and in parliament. Besides which, for Lecretia, time was of the essence, and the risk of the interveners filibustering the case was too great. He also pointed out that if the Care Alliance had evidence it thought relevant, that evidence could be put forward by the Crown’s counsel.

  Justice Collins then asked to hear from the Care Alliance. As if to prove Andrew Butler’s point about wasting Lecretia’s time, Ms Casey launched into a long and emotive argument for the Care Alliance’s participation. She advanced and circled and backtracked, speculating about the effects of assisted dying on the elderly and disabled, about the troublesome decisions made in overseas jurisdictions, about the precedent that would be set, about slippery slopes and the thin ends of wedges and more.

  Justice Collins called for a recess halfway through her monologue, and I had a coffee with Andrew and Chris.

  ‘We have a great case,’ Andrew said. ‘The evidence that Catherine Marks and the team have assembled is excellent. The defence has little to support their case. If they win, it’ll be because of the inadequacy of the law, not because what Lecretia wants is wrong or dangerous. We’ve looked, and there’s no compelling evidence not to allow Lecretia to have what she wants.’

  Catherine had begun gathering expert testimony from witnesses around the globe who had worked in jurisdictions that allowed assisted dying. She had spoken to doctors, ethicists and professors about their experiences, and the conversations were revealing: assisted dying was helping patients manage their suffering and live longer lives.

  ‘I apologise if this is a rude question, Andrew, but aren’t you Catholic?’ I said.

  ‘I am,’ he said, ‘but having reviewed the evidence I’m genuinely of the view that assisted dying in circumstances like Lecretia’s is justified—and this case is about Lecretia’s circumstances only. The Care Alliance has no real cause to intervene.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it set a precedent, though?’

  ‘The ruling would only apply to Lecretia. Anyone else who sought assisted dying consequently would need to go through the courts. It would open a pathway, but the courts would remain gatekeepers to its use.’

  We returned to the courtroom, and Victoria Casey resumed speaking about the effects of assisted dying on the vulnerable and the elderly and the disabled, speculating on how people might be coerced, how no process is safe. She was speaking from the same playbook anti-assisted-dying campaigners relied on the world over. Justice Lynn Smith in the Canadian courts had examined all of these claims, and in her extensive review of the evidence, she found them all wanting. The things people feared—suicide contagion, elderly relatives and the disabled being bumped off against their will, the dissolution of the doctor–patient relationship—they were just not happening.

  The Care Alliance had perhaps taken their cue from American Wesley J. Smith, one of the world’s foremost anti-assisted-dying campaigners, who argued that the best way to fight assisted dying—regardless of one’s own religious beliefs—was to make secular arguments, whether those secular arguments were any good or not. His view was that faith-based arguments were not generally successful in societies that separate church and state and promote tolerance and respect for others’ beliefs—and particularly not in secular institutions such as courts. His views were influential. When you look at the various anti-assisted-dying campaigns around the world, God is not usually part of the discussion, though the Catholic idea of sanctity of life might be.

  Casey finally finished some time after lunch. The other applicants, from the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and the Human Rights Commission, were mercifully brief. The hearing ended at 4 pm, and I went to the airport to collect Lecretia and her mother, Shirley. It was good to see them both, but Lecretia’s physical transformation was clearly more advanced. Her left eye was slightly bulging from the swelling, and her left hand was now completely paralysed, curled up against her body like a talon. She was still walking but only just. Her first item of business when we arrived home was to greet Ferdinand. She cooed at him, and let his fur brush her cheek.

  I explained what had happened at the High Court, and described Andrew’s opening statements, and Victoria Casey’s longwinded arguments. She sighed in frustration at the suggestion she was vulnerable, and that she didn’t know what she was asking for or its implications. Russell McVeagh had prepared some affidavits for Lecretia to sign based on prior interviews they had conducted with her, and I read these to her. She listened and nodded, interjecting occasionally.

  Lecretia had agreed to only one big interview, with Television New Zealand’s weekly in-depth current affairs program, Sunday. On Tuesday 21 April, the team arrived in Wellington. Lecretia would be interviewed by Janet McIntyre, one of the country’s most incisive television journalists.

  The cameraman took his first shots of Lecretia and me walking along Wellington’s Lambton Quay towards the Law Commission. We went inside and Lecretia went to her office, where she immediately began checking her emails and going through the papers on her desk. It was the first time she’d been in the office since Easter. Lecretia took a file box and balanced it over her useless left arm as she carried it to her desk. She ignored the cameraman as she caught up with her work.

  On Wednesday, a studio was set up in our lounge, and Lecretia and Janet had their first long conversation. Lecretia was calm and assured, laying out her reasons for pursuing the case. As I watched her speak, I noticed how the room fell silent. My wife had taken on a new quality—mana—speaking with a self-assurance and dignity approaching that of a Māori kaumātua, secure in her wisdom. She’d always had grace, and presence, but this was something else. There was alchemy in the room. As Lecretia unburdened her secrets, and her fears, she displayed a vulnerability I had not seen before, and that willingness to be vulnerable gave her a stronger voice.

  The producer wanted me to be in the story, but I hadn’t made up my mind. I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Lecretia in Kaikoura, t
he fear that people might see me as the instigator of all this, the dark svengali whispering in my lover’s ear. In the end the charm of Janet and her colleagues and the respect with which they were treating Lecretia won me over. The next day, Lecretia and I were interviewed together. It was my favourite part of the shoot. We talked about our marriage, and our struggles with fertility. Lecretia was whip-smart, as always, but good-humoured too, quick to correct my spotty memory but laughing as she did so.

  Janet’s questions turned to Lecretia’s terminal diagnosis and her decline, and what we would do if it all became too much. At the time, Lecretia was drafting an advance directive setting out her wishes. She did not want artificial feeding, did not want her breathing sustained. If she was dying, she was to be left to die. But in that advance directive was a special clause: in the event that she became mentally incompetent, I would have power of attorney—if permitted by law or judicial ruling—to instruct a doctor to end her life. Janet pressed me on that point. How did I feel about that?

  I answered honestly.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s probably fair to say not many people will have experienced that, so there’s not a lot to go on.’

  ‘This is actually giving you the right to say, this is it, it’s over.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Giving a doctor permission to end your wife’s life.’

  ‘Yes. Well, it’s the fulfilment of her wishes. It’s the wishes that she’d set out and made clear in a state of mental competence. If I had any doubt that it was not what she wanted, I wouldn’t be able to follow it through. But she has been very clear that this is what she wants.’ I turned to Lecretia. ‘Haven’t you?’