By Liz Townsend
Euthanasia Supporter Convicted of Attempted Murder
A New Zealand jury found euthanasia activist Lesley Martin guilty of attempted murder for injecting her mother with an overdose of morphine in May 1999. The March 31 verdict could carry a prison term of 10 years.
Joy Martin, 69, suffered from cancer and died after receiving 60 mg of morphine. Her doctor had prescribed only 10 mg of morphine to be given over a 24-hour period for pain relief, according to the New Zealand Herald.
Although police questioned Lesley Martin about her mother's death in 1999, charges were filed only after Martin published an account of her actions in a book titled To Die Like a Dog. Martin wrote that her mother told her she didn't want to live anymore, The Independent reported.
Martin also told police she "cuddled" her mother with a pillow until she stopped breathing, according to the Dominion Post.
Prosecutors charged Martin with two counts of attempted murder for the morphine injection and apparent suffocation. However, evidence from an autopsy showed that Joy Martin died of respiratory arrest from morphine poisoning and not suffocation. Lesley Martin was acquitted of the second charge.
Prosecutor Andrew Cameron said in his summation that Martin meant to kill her mother, not merely to relieve her pain. Euthanasia, he reminded the jury, is against the law in New Zealand, the Post reported. The evidence "made it very clear that a substantial dose of morphine had to be given shortly prior to death to account for the potentially fatal dose of morphine levels in the blood," Cameron told the court, according to the Post. "When she put that pillow over her mother's face having also given the further dose of morphine, she intended to kill her."
Since her mother's death, Martin founded a pro-euthanasia group called Exit NZ, which is affiliated with Philip Nitschke's group Exit Australia. After the verdict, Martin called out to supporters, "Tell New Zealand to complain about this; this is unjust," the Herald reported.
Nitschke said that the verdict would be a positive development by making more people sympathetic to euthanasia. "It's bad news for Lesley, but what better way to highlight this issue," he told the New Plymouth Daily News.
Sentencing is scheduled for April 30.
Hong Kong Journalist Recovers from Coma
After doctors declared her brain dead, Tanya Liu, a Hong Kong-based journalist, woke from a coma after a May 2002 train crash in London. Liu returned to Hong Kong for the first time in March after almost two years of physical therapy at a Chinese hospital.
Liu was on vacation with two friends in London when their express train derailed and crashed onto a platform, according to the Associated Press. Liu's friends died, along with five others, and 70 people were injured.
Liu suffered severe injuries to her skull, organs, spine, and ribs, according to South China Morning Post. Doctors at Royal Free Hospital in London told Liu's family that she was in a "permanent vegetative condition" and would never recover.
"Four days after the crash, one doctor said that we 'should let her go,'" Liu's brother-in-law, Vincent Meng, told the London Sunday Telegraph. "I told him to go and ask Tanya and if she says yes then we would let her go. But if she cannot answer you, you follow our word. You are just a doctor - - you cannot act as a god."
After several weeks in a comatose state, Liu woke up and was able to speak to her family. She was moved to a hospital in China, where she received extensive therapy. She also endured six operations to repair her injuries.
"I'm thankful to my family and to everyone who has helped me during this crisis," Liu told the Morning Post. "My parents and my older sister have given up their daily lives to be with me, to help me heal. I'm thankful for their love. Without their love, I can't heal."
Before the crash, Liu was an anchorwoman on Hong Kong television. Last year, she resumed her career in a small way by filing 10-minute reports for a Chinese station while she was still being treated in a Beijing hospital, according to the Morning Post. She is expected to go back to her full-time job in the near future.
Australian Health Minister Calls Abortion "National Tragedy"
Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott stirred a hornet's nest of controversy when he called abortion a "national tragedy" in a March 16 speech. There are about 100,000 abortions in Australia each year,
with over 70,000 of them funded by the taxpayer-supported Medicare system, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Speaking to the Adelaide University Democratic Club about the ethical role of a Christian politician, Abbott insisted that Christians should not be afraid to discuss complex moral issues.
"The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother's convenience," Abbott said, according to The Australian. "Why isn't the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?"
Other government officials were quick to appease the Abortion Establishment by reassuring them that Abbott's remarks would not influence governmental policy. "The Government doesn't have any plans to change the existing Medicare arrangements; we don't have any plans to do so," Prime Minister John Howard told The Australian.
Pro-lifers, on the other hand, applauded Abbott's remarks. "Abbott, quite rightly, questioned the wisdom of our seeming acceptance of the aborting of one Australian child for every three born," Margaret Tighe, president of Right to Life Australia, told NRL News.
"Tony Abbott was not riding a moral high horse when he described 100,000 abortions per year as a moral tragedy," wrote Catholic Cardinal George Pell in the Sunday Telegraph. "Everyone who is concerned about the good of Australian society should be grateful to him for having the courage to call a tragedy by its proper name, and for starting an important national discussion."