EUTHANASIA
By Mary Senander - All About Issues, March-April, 1992
Euthanasia. You’ve heard that word on TV, you’ve seen it in the papers. What does it mean to you? Does it mean that to everyone?
In recent years, the word "euthanasia" has been stretched to include everything from the ghastly euthanasia program of Nazi Germany, to so-called "mercy" killings, to "pulling the plug" (read: stopping food and water) from severely disabled - but not dying - patients.
In an effort intended to confuse the public, proponents have marketed euthanasia - which is an action or omission intended to cause death - under such sanitized phrases as "death with dignity," "aid-in-dying," and the "right" to die. Euthanasia advocates have framed the issues in terms of hard cases and half-truths, creating fears and misunderstanding among the public. They falsely imply that it is necessary to change laws to permit discontinuing useless treatment from patients and to further "compassion" and "mercy."
In fact, we can’t legislate compassion. We can only legalize killing.
It is important to understand: there is no church, law, medical association or pro-life organization which insists on extraordinary, heroic, unnecessary, unduly burdensome, futile or experimental measures to prolong life. To discontinue or not initiate such measures is not euthanasia - indeed, it may be sound and humane medical practice.
When the time comes when we can no longer cure, our role becomes one of offering loving, compassionate and common-sense care. Morally, and as a matter of human justice, we are required to provide only what is ordinary, necessary, and readily available. Except in the rare instance in which a dying person can no longer assimilate nutrition and hydration, this would include provision of food and water. It would include such basics as pain and temperature control, repositioning to avoid bedsores, medicines and treatments for comfort, hygiene, and lots of TLC. Since suffering is often more than a purely physical problem, we must do what is necessary to help alleviate mental, emotional, social and spiritual suffering.
Proponents of death KNOW this. But they want more: they want the "tight to choose" to live or die - autonomy, without limits - for themselves and for others. They want the right to kill.
Groups such as Society for the Right to Die and Concern for Dying (recently merged and renamed Choice in Dying), The Hemlock Society and others are working aggressively to gain social and legal acceptance of the so-called "right" to die. How? The same way prolifers work to protect and defend the right to life: in churches and schools (from the ivory towers of academia to as early as first grade), in legislatures, courts and public policy, and through the media.
They have been quite successful. It can be easily demonstrated that a pro-euthanasia mentality is malignant and spreading across this land.
It’s difficult to summarize in but a few words, but three issues are basic: (I) "aid-in-dying"; (2) withholding food and water from people who are disabled; and (3) the living will.
(1) Aid-in-dying does NOT mean holding the hand and wiping the brow of a dying person. It is the deceptively soothing term for what is currently first degree murder. Last year, two men helped catapult discussion of "aid-in-dying" to the front pages of every newspaper, to talk radio and prime-time TV. Derek Humphry, director of The Hemlock Society, released his best-selling how-to book, Final Exit, providing explicit instructions on how to kill yourself - or kill someone else, and avoid detection. Dr. Jack Kevorkian, an unemployed pathologist from Michigan (a man who makes Humphry look moderate by comparison) killed two more women with his "self execution" devices. Neither man should be dismissed as mavericks or radicals - these ambassadors for death reflect the true face of euthanasia, both past and contemporary.
Voters in Washington state narrowly defeated (54%-46%) Initiative 119 last November. If passed, it would have allowed doctors to write suicide prescriptions or to give lethal injections. It would have allowed the establishment of suicide clinics and the import of patients from other states for the sole purpose of killing them.
Similar "aid-in-dying" measures have been considered in Oregon, Hawaii, and California. At this writing, such measures are being discussed for the legislatures of Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine; there is an initiative effort in California. And with every effort, proponents gain momentum.
(2) Withholding necessary care, including nutrition and hydration, from persons who are vulnerable - with the purpose of speeding their deaths - is also making headway. The case which is currently most important is that of Christine Busalacchi, a 21 year old woman from Missouri. She was in a serious car accident in 1987 in which she received a severe head injury. Christine does not depend on any "heroic" measures; she is not dying (she is not even sick). She’s said "hi" to two physicians who have examined her. She uses a call button when she wants attention. She feels joy, discomfort and emotion.
Last year, wit rehabilitation, Christine learned once again to take solid foods - three meals a day - by mouth. She appeared to enjoy her meals, but her father, who wants her dead, demanded that oral feeding be ceased, so she is again using a feeding tube.
At issue is whether or not her father can move her from Missouri, where she. lives and is currently protected, to Minnesota, where the law is more lenient and would allow her to be starved and dehydrated to death. A ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court is expected shortly.
If the court rules that she can be killed, no one will be safe. There is essentially no difference between Christine and someone with Down’s Syndrome, or severe muscular dystrophy, or someone disabled with Alzheimer’s disease or stoke, just as there is essentially no difference between a feeding tube and a sipping straw. At issue is whether or not we will continue to care for and feed those who cannot care for themselves.
(3) The third issue is difficult to address in just a few words, but it lays the groundwork for the first two: the living will. Although they sound good on the surface, living wills - a brain child of the pro-euthanasia movement - erode, rather than expand patient rights. They depend on imprecise and elastic language; they can deprive a patient (and the family) of true, informed consent; they grant immunity to health care providers who deny ordinary care.
Now, the federal government is pimping for the euthanasia societies. As of 12/1/91, federal law (Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990) requires that any one who enters a nursing home, hospice, hospital or clinic be asked if They’ve signed an advance directive, usually known as a living will. Our response must be recorded in our medical records. If the health care providers don’t comply, they risk losing their Medicare and Medicaid funding - a bullying tactic which is only one of many indications that this is not a patients’s rights measure. It is a cost containment measure.
(In response to the new federal law and other developments - including the widely publicized Helga Wanglie case in Minnesota, which shows that a family, acting on the explicit word of a loved one who is no longer competent, can be forced into court by a hospital which does not agree - the IAETF developed the Protective Medical Decisions Document (PMDD), which allows us to designate someone we know and trust to make medical decisions for us if we are unable to do so but it explicitly defines and prohibits euthanasia.)
(This is one of several such documents presently under review by the American Life League legal team. For current information and our recommendations, simply write to Mary Heim Sadick, Esq., c/o American Life League, P.O. Box 1350, Stafford, VA 22554. - Ed)
Euthanasia is not an issue of the future." Euthanasia is being practiced in the United States of America now. It is a logical philosophical and legal extension of abortion: once we accept the "right" to kill infants in the womb because they are considered "unwanted," imperfect or merely inconvenient, we can logically move with case to the destruction of other lives who are considered "unwanted," who are clearly imperfect, and who are inconvenient burdens on our social, economic or emotional systems.
What can we, who care both about those who are vulnerable and about public policy, do?
· We must read and listen critically, becoming informed so that we can help others to understand these issues.
· We must reach out to those who are vulnerable and their families (i.e. nursing home visits, respite care programs, support groups, etc.).
· We must challenge attitudes, programs and policies which threaten the lives of those who are medically vulnerable.
To do this, we must first realistically assess our own attitudes about disability, aging, suffering, dying and death. Then we must challenge ourselves: do we really believe in the Creator-Creature relationship and the command Thou Shalt Not Kill.. or do we worship the gods of freedom, autonomy and choice? If our response is an affirmative commitment to the Judeo-Christian sanctity of life philosophy, then we must cherish, love and protect those who are defenseless - no matter what costs.
Mary Senander has followed euthanasia-related issues since she wrote a high school term paper in 1963. She is editor of the IAETF Update, a bi -monthly publication of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force. (Update subscriptions, $25; Living Will booklet, $2.50 from P.O. Box 760, Steubenville, OH 43952)