Death Ships Could Bring Abortion and Euthanasia to the High Seas

By Liz Townsend

In an effort to bypass pro-life laws in countries around the world, euthanasia and abortion practitioners are planning to peddle their deadly trades on ships moored in international waters.

People in countries that ban or restrict euthanasia and abortion who want to kill themselves or their unborn babies could take a cruise only a few miles away from the coast and have the grisly deeds done.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, known as Australia's "Dr. Death," announced plans for the euthanasia ship May 31. Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, an abortionist in the Netherlands, is the founder of the Women on Waves Foundation, the group behind the abortion ship proposal.

According to international law, countries have jurisdiction over their own ships on the high seas, so any abortions or assisted suicides that take place on board ship in international waters must comply with the laws of the country where the ship is registered.

The abortion ship, to be called the Sea Change, will be registered in the Netherlands and will sail around the world performing abortions, according to an interview with Gomperts published on the Women on Waves web site.

"It now seems that the Sea Change will become a reality as soon as we have raised enough money and are able to buy or lease and outfit the ship," Gomperts said. "We will go to every country where local women's and/or reproductive health organizations ask us to come."

Her plan is to follow Dutch law, which allows abortion on demand up to 22 weeks with a five-day waiting period between "counseling" and the abortion. The ship's abortionists would "counsel" women and then remain in port or nearby until the abortions are performed. During the waiting period, the Sea Change would offer "an exhibition on sexual education, workshops, counseling hours for women and provision of contraception," according to the Gomperts interview.

The ship would dock in a city's harbor or launch smaller boats from shore to take the women to the ship. The Sea Change would then sail into international waters, where the abortionists would ply their trade.

Gomperts's vision, according to the Women on Waves web site, is to change the laws of all countries, and "ideally the services delivered by the ship would become available locally (which is to say legal and safe), making the ship's activities unnecessary."

"In other words," Gomperts continued, "the Sea Change will continue to sail as long as there still is a medical and political need or demand for it, which means as long as there are still countries where women have no reproductive rights, and as long as there still are countries with restrictive abortion laws and women dying due to illegal abortion."

Financing for the Sea Change would come from donations to the nonprofit Women on Waves Foundation. "If we perform 100 abortions each week during 10 months per year, each intervention will cost only 100 dollars to make the project self-supporting," Gomperts told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. "If we can get enough donations we can do the interventions without charge."

Abortion supporters have embraced the Sea Change proposal.

"If more women took these kinds of risks, we'd all be better off," Robin Cook, a representative of the United Nations World Health Organization, told Ms. magazine. "I really think [Gomperts] may join the ranks of the reproductive pioneers of the 20th century."

Pro-lifers have a very different opinion of Gomperts and her proposal, viewing her attempt to bring abortion on demand to countries that protect the lives of unborn babies as dangerous and arrogant. "It's outrageous, it's unbelievable," said Jeanne Head, R.N., a member of the Gomperts dismissed such pro-life concerns. "I don't care much about them either," she told NRC Handelsblad. "I don't have moral problems with abortion; it is assistance, that's it. A fetus that can't survive on its own outside the mother's womb is in my view not a child."

The idea of evading pro-life laws in international waters appeals to euthanasia advocates as well. "I want to see if I can operate a vessel outside the 200 mile international shipping limit and take advantage of international law to allow patients access to a peaceful death," Nitschke told Agence France Presse.

"I believe one is bound by the conventions of the nation under which the ship is registered, so it will not be simple, but I am seriously looking at the possibilities," Nitschke continued. Since Australia, his home country, bans euthanasia, one possibility mentioned by Nitschke would be to use a ship registered in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is widespread, according to The Age.

There is still a long way to go before the world's first euthanasia ship can be launched; Nitschke has to find financial backing and settle the legal questions before he can move ahead.

Pro-lifers in Australia immediately denounced the idea. Calling it a "floating ship of death," Margaret Tighe, chairwoman of Right to Life Australia, told The Age, "It would do nothing to alleviate the loneliness, the need for quality pain management, and the compassionate understanding that is at the heart of a euthanasia request."

When one part of the country, the Northern Territory, briefly legalized euthanasia in 1996, Nitschke quickly assisted the suicides of four people using a device similar to Jack Kevorkian's suicide machine. The Australian federal government overturned the Northern Territory law eight months after it went into effect.

Nitschke has expressed his admiration for Kevorkian and his death crusade. "I think Dr. Kevorkian is an absolute hero, frankly," Nitschke told Southern Cross magazine. "He's got the courage to do something that no one else has been brave enough to do."

At the "Self-Deliverance New Technology Conference," held in Seattle last November, Nitschke spoke as an expert on assisting suicide. Sponsored by Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry's Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization, "only those with 'hands-on' experience with assisting death" were invited, according to the Seattle Times. The conference participants described various ways people can kill themselves without using weapons or government-controlled narcotics.

Nitschke spoke about his efforts to find "what he calls the Holy Grail, a 'suicide pill' or potion, to be easily concocted from common ingredients," the Times reported. Others described devices such as one that uses a bag, a hose, a mask, and a jar to suffocate a person to death.

Nitschke announced his euthanasia ship plans in London May 31, where he was delivering his death machine to the Science Museum, which will display it beginning in July. Calling the machine part of "a significant issue in contemporary medicine," a statement from the museum explained, "Our aim in acquiring the euthanasia machine is to stimulate thoughtful and responsible public debate about the issue."

Since the Northern Territory law was overturned, Nitschke has been conducting "death advisory clinics" in cities across Australia, according to the Hobart Mercury. He claimed that these clinics do not violate the law banning any action to "advise, counsel or assist" a person in suicide, but "follow the difficult legal line of giving terminally ill patients the information they need so that they can make informed choices," Nitschke told the Mercury.

He said that 200 people in Australia have "sought his advice on assisted suicide in the past 18 months," according to The Age.

"If euthanasia advocates can indeed secure funding for a 'death ship,' it would be a tragic development," said Burke Balch, director of NRLC's Department of Medical Ethics. "Terrible as the loss of lives directly killed on such a ship would be, the greatest danger would be whatever influence its existence might have in bringing about national laws that would mainstream euthanasia as a standard part of medical management, and create the climate in which killing oneself when a 'burden' would eventually become expected and perhaps even required."