Dr. Laura Chapman:

It is very challenging and I do not disregard that as a professional issue. The essence of my professional oath is to first do no harm. It is then about the definition of harm. New Zealand's law has been quite tightly written. There are six criteria that people have to meet in order to be allowed to go through with assisted dying, four of which are clinical. There is a tightly regulated system. I would like for it to be more tightly regulated in some respects.

From a moral point of view, as a doctor the Hippocratic oath is challenging. That is why I have chosen to speak publicly about it because I had no intention of being a participant. Doing no harm for the first patient I helped, and the many others I have helped in the past two years, meant enabling their death rather than anything else. I see that in the context of good palliative care. I saw a patient last week and have spent the time since building up a relationship with her general practitioner and ensuring she has palliative care so that I can decline her for assisted dying but not abandon her to a life that she does not currently want to lead.

I see it as part of the world of being a doctor. Part of that is enabling people not to live a life that they do not wish to live anymore when they are already dying. Our law is set up to enable people to choose the time and date of a death that is already coming in the next six months. Most people choose to shorten their life by a few days or weeks at most.