Culture Of Life 101… “The Third Time Around: The History Of Euthanasia In The United States” (Continued)

By BRIAN CLOWES

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of chapter 23 of The Facts of Life, “Euthanasia,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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We have seen how the euthanasia movements in both Nazi Germany and the Netherlands were led by doctors, who extended the “right” to euthanasia to one specific group of people after another. Since the pro-euthanasia movement in the United States is led by judges, they instead enact one legal principle after another in order to expand the pool of people eligible to be killed.
So far, we have covered the doctrine of substituted judgment, and have seen how even the fundamental right to life is quickly being superseded by a “super-right” to privacy. But this is not enough to fully enact euthanasia; several more steps have to be made.
Food and Water Become “Extraordinary.” In 1981, 55-year-old Clarence Herbert suffered a heart attack during surgery and lapsed into a coma. His family asked doctors to remove his respirator, but they also discontinued intravenous feeding. A week later, Herbert died. Two doctors were convicted of murder for killing Herbert, but the California Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds that withholding life support and food was a passive omission, not an aggressive action designed to murder.
In a similar case on the opposite side of the nation, 84-year-old Claire Conroy was conscious but confused, and could only be fed intravenously. She could not swallow or communicate, and physicians expected her to die within one year. In 1985, her nephew sought to have her feeding tube removed. However, Conroy died while the court deliberated the case.
This New Jersey Supreme Court decision set broad limits upon withholding care when the patient clearly would have refused treatment and when evidence exists to prove this point. The court also gave the green light to euthanasia when the cost of care outweighs the benefits, when the burdens of care outweigh the benefits to the patient, and when the patient would suffer an undefined level of “inhumane” pain.
The significance of these cases is profound. The California and New Jersey high courts found that food and water are in the same category as artificial respirators and other complex medical treatment, and may be classified as “extraordinary measures” and therefore withdrawn.
The New Jersey high court lost little time in vastly expanding the pool of patients who could be denied basic care. This occurred in the case involving 32-year-old Nancy Ellen Jobes, who was severely brain damaged. She could follow people with her eyes and respond to commands and various stimuli. A feeding tube sustained her, but she was not terminally ill.
In 1987, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered Jobes’ nursing home staff to stop her feeding, and she starved to death in 19 days.
The ruling in this case held that food and water could be withdrawn from a non-terminal patient, even if he or she had never expressed such a desire. The court also ruled that, from that point onward, no hearing was necessary for health-care facilities to gain permission to stop the feeding of a patient or patients.
This means that a family that is awaiting an inheritance or just cannot be bothered to care for an aged or infirm relative anymore may starve the patient to death, even if the patient had never expressed such a wish — or even if the patient was, say, a practicing Catholic who had expressed a previous desire not to have food and water withdrawn in order to hasten death.
This is the very definition of involuntary euthanasia.
Many people who support euthanasia oppose capital punishment because, as they say, the judgment of people is so often faulty. However, they are not willing to concede that this imperfect judgment extends to end-of-life issues as well.
The 1989 Carrie Coons case illustrates this principle. Coons was an 86-year-old comatose woman who was not terminally ill and was being sustained only by a gastronomy tube. The New York State District Court had originally approved the removal of the tube, but delayed the actual order for two weeks so that a facility could be found that would be willing to starve her to death. During this grace period, Mrs. Coon’s roommate and several nurses “weaned” her off the gastronomy tube and began feeding her by mouth. She recovered completely.
After the order to withdraw treatment had been rescinded, the court asked Dr. Michael Wolff, one of Mrs. Coon’s physicians and a nationally recognized expert in geriatric medicine, how doctors could accurately foretell how long a person would remain in (or even if they would remain in) a “persistent vegetative state.”
Dr. Wolff replied that “I don’t think there is any mechanism to establish that with absolute certainty.”
Conscience Rights for Health Care Providers Overruled. Activists who are pushing any evil activity are never satisfied when their practices are legalized; they are driven to force everyone else to participate in those evils as well. Of course, anyone who objects to the evil must be forced to comply under threat of severe punishment.
Euthanasia is no exception to this principle.
Thirty-four-year-old Hector Rodas suffered a drug-induced stroke and became a quadriplegic. He was mentally alert but unable to swallow or talk. He was not terminally ill, and was being fed with a nasogastric feeding tube.
The Colorado District Court held that the patient has “the right to accept or withdraw feeding and hydration treatment.” As we all know, whenever the courts invent a new “right” out of thin air, everyone must be compelled to support it. The public hospital caring for Rodas was ordered to withdraw his feeding, despite protests by hospital personnel that they felt they would be participating in a suicide. Rodas died of starvation in 15 days.
This is the first case where a court was petitioned to allow a lethal injection. The American Civil Liberties Union had requested a lethal injection for the dying Rodas, but later withdrew its petition.
This case is also disturbing because the consciences and the beliefs of the health-care workers were utterly disregarded.
In the same year (1987), the Rhode Island court system violated the conscience rights of health-care professionals regarding the Marcia Gray case. She was 49 years old and had been comatose for about one year. Both she and her family had expressed a wish that extraordinary measures were not to be taken to extend her life.
Rhode Island District Court Judge Francis Boyle ruled that the state-run General Hospital must remove her feeding tube or transfer her to an institution that would. The hospital then contacted 274 nursing homes and hospitals in the New England area, but none were willing to accept the patient for the sole purpose of starving or dehydrating her to death.
At this point, Rhode Island Gov. Edward DiPrete stepped in and ordered the hospital to disconnect her feeding tube. Judge Boyle then ruled that Marcia Gray could be starved and dehydrated to death. On November 16, she was transferred to South County Hospital. A physician of the hospital was so eager to starve Gray that he removed her feeding tube in the ambulance on the trip to South County!
Marcia Gray took 15 long, agonizing days to die, during which time she lost 50 pounds. Physicians sedated her heavily in order to suppress her severe seizures.
This case and the subsequent actions by the state are foreboding harbingers of things to come. If hospitals adhere to any kind of creed that respects human life, they will be overridden by the state. Additionally, if General Hospital had not been able to find another institution willing to murder Gray, the hospital’s personnel would have been forced to kill her over their personal moral and religious objections — or face jail terms for contempt of court.
The director of the Rhode Island State Department of Mental Health and Hospitals, Thomas D. Romeo, said in an October 28, 1988 Providence Journal interview that this series of state actions would reawaken the old image of state hospitals as the dumping ground for patients, a “boneyard” where they are sent to die.
John Breguet, general counsel for the Rhode Island Department of Mental Health, Retardation, and Hospitals, voiced the fears of many when he said, “Once we establish as a societal philosophy that society has a right to terminate some life that society thinks is not worth living, it is not that far to go to the profoundly retarded, those with severe mental problems, or those with serious physical handicaps.”
Of profound significance was the fact that Judge Boyle relied heavily on the 1973 abortion decision Roe v. Wade to affirm the principle “that a person has the right . . . to control fundamental decisions involving his or her own body.” Thus, the direct link between abortion and euthanasia is, at last, directly and irrevocably drawn for all to see.
Any pro-life activist who encounters a person disclaiming any connection between abortion and euthanasia via a “slippery slope” should describe this court case to them.