The residential care facility where a woman is starving herself to death claims the Bill of Rights prevents them from force-feeding her.
Refusing food, or starving oneself, is a form of suicide and assisting suicide is illegal. The facility says force-feeding the woman would legally be assault.
Margaret Page, 60, has been assessed and found mentally competent to have made her decision. She is being allowed to die.
Her husband, Barry Page, says that is outrageous and surely it is the job of medical professionals to save her life.
“She’s very week. She’s lying on her bed, taking no water at all,” he says.
“She’s accepted her fate that this is the way she is going to die. Nothing is going to change her mind.”
The pair have been married for 42 years and Mr Page says he nursed her in their home for 16 years after an aneurysm left her disabled.
“I know that they care for her, however they don’t value her as an asset to the community. It’s an industry, it’s a money-making venture and they’ve got to look at the bottom line – it is a business.”
The disability facility she has lived at for the last four years rejects that claim.
In a media statement, St John of God in Wellington says it has done everything possible to persuade Ms Page to eat. But under the Bill of Rights it cannot force her to take food.
“I believe that if she was in my care she would still be okay, and that’s easy for me to say because I know – I did it for 16 years," says Mr Page.
Four years ago Mr Page could no longer cope and Ms Page found herself in the home.
Mr Page believes the health system failed to provide what she needed for quality of life.
“She was waiting to be fitted for a cushion on a wheelchair to overcome the soreness, she’d been waiting nine months to be assessed for a communication device so that she could communicate more easily with other clients in the rest home,” he says.
Being on waiting lists for basic equipment has robbed Ms Page of her will to live, he says. In his care she did become despondent, but he could always talk her around.
“We enjoyed a lifestyle which was dictated by her abilities, but we managed to go around the countryside.”
He says his wife had talked of ending her life before, “but in those periods I was able to redirect, and she would come out of it and be quite content”.
Mr Page says his wife’s life will now end in a final irony – the professionals which are caring for her are involved in what amounts to assisted suicide.
“If I did this and allowed it to go on I’d certainly be charged, I’ve got no doubt about it,” he says.