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, a 150-page treatise on all of the aspects of euthanasia, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped” — Sen. Hubert Humphrey.
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Euthanasia: Here
We Go Again!
You have to hand it to liberals. When they develop a strategy that works, they stick with it. Margaret Sanger and her peers strongly emphasized the “hard cases” in their relentless agitation for the legalization of birth control. First, contraception was legalized for heart-rending, heavily publicized (and rare) exceptions, and then for more and more cases, until it was legalized by decree of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968.
Of course, these methods of birth control failed millions of times every year, leading to a demand for the legalization of abortion — again, only for the emotional “hard cases.” These exceptions expanded until the complete legalization of abortion in 1973.
As we know, both contraception and abortion strongly contribute to the breakup of families by enabling sexual promiscuity among both married and unmarried people. Meanwhile, the social demotion of the “traditional” family as the norm has been greatly accelerated by the availability of widespread divorce, pornography, and pretend homosexual “marriage.”
This means that many sick and older parents are abandoned by their children, who are themselves struggling with fractured families and resultant poverty. The elders are often shuttled off to a “retirement facility” by their children, where they slowly begin to believe that life might not have very much purpose.
Under the guise of caring for those who are suffering and lonely, many Americans are now demanding “physician-assisted suicide.” The most liberal states — Washington, Oregon, California, and Vermont — have already legalized the practice, but just for the “hard cases,” of course.
Across the Atlantic, we can see the future of euthanasia — there are almost no limits on the practice in the most liberal European nations of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
As with both contraception and abortion, we are now hearing louder and louder calls for courts to resolve the “patchwork quilt of laws” across the states and to legalize euthanasia nationwide — but only for the “hard cases,” of course. Pro-euthanasia groups are also portraying the current state requirements of three requests for euthanasia as “burdensome,” and there is much agitation to jettison all such prerequisites and establish “euthanasia on demand.”
The Definitions And
Types Of Euthanasia
The General Definition of Euthanasia. The term “euthanasia” means any action committed or omitted for the purpose of causing or hastening the death of a human being after birth, usually for the alleged purpose of ending the person’s suffering. The word is derived from two Greek words: “Eu,” meaning “good,” and “thanatos,” which means “death.”
The Vatican’s Declaration on Euthanasia states: “By euthanasia is understood an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated.”
All of the elements of the Culture of Death — from contraception to abortion to homosexual rights — have made their advances primarily by emphasizing the “hard cases,” which usually make up from one to three percent of all of those affected.
The pro-euthanasia lobby has learned this lesson well. It has accomplished many of its goals by using scare tactics involving dramatic anecdotes of people in severe, unrelieved pain, who are being “kept alive by machines” with forests of tubes and beeping devices surrounding them, interfering with their peace and, above all, the vaguely defined term “quality of life.” Pro-euthanasia groups have also confused lawmakers and the public by intentionally blurring the lines between direct and indirect euthanasia and a natural death. Pro-abortionists use precisely the same tactic when they lump contraceptives, abortifacients, and abortion together.
The critical differences between active/passive and voluntary/non-voluntary/involuntary euthanasia and natural death must be defined precisely before any intelligent discussion on the various “shades” of euthanasia may proceed.
Anti-euthanasia activists must be intimately familiar with the terms relating to euthanasia, or they will be confused and ineffective in their efforts to save lives.
Active (positive, direct) euthanasia is action taken for the purpose of causing or hastening death. These measures may include a lethal injection or an overdose committed by a physician or other person.
Passive (negative, indirect) euthanasia is action withheld for the purpose of causing or hastening death. These measures include the withholding or withdrawal of non-heroic measures, including food, hydration (water), and oxygenation.
Examples of this type of euthanasia are the many infanticides committed each year in the United States by withholding food and water from handicapped newborn babies who would otherwise have lived. Another example of passive euthanasia is the withholding of food and water from a person in a so-called persistent vegetative state, or from someone whose health is not improving rapidly enough in the opinions of the attending health-care workers.
Voluntary euthanasia is committed with the willing and autonomous cooperation of the subject. This means that the subject is free from direct or indirect pressure from others.
Non-voluntary euthanasia is committed when the subject is unconscious or otherwise cannot give consent. Permission may be granted by a court or by family members, or euthanasia may be performed at the discretion of the attending health-care professional or caretaker.
Involuntary euthanasia is committed on a subject against his expressed wishes.
This means that there are six general classes of euthanasia: 1) Active voluntary, 2) Passive voluntary, 3) Active non-voluntary, 4) Passive non-voluntary, 5) Active involuntary, and 6) Passive involuntary.
Types Of Suicide
Suicide is the act of deliberately ending one’s life. Pro-euthanasia activists often speak approvingly of rational suicide, which means that a person has carefully contemplated his actions, as opposed to a person who acts impulsively, under duress, or under severe psychological or emotional stress.
Assisted suicide is the act of providing means (drugs, a gun, a rope, a plastic bag with an elastic opening, a rusty Volkswagen van, or whatever else is needed) in order to help a person take his or her own life.
Physician-assisted suicide simply means that a doctor provides the means for a person to end their life. Specifically, this means that the physician provides a prescription or other means for a person to commit suicide; the patient, not the doctor, actually performs the lethal act. Pro-euthanasia activists sometimes refer to this as physician aid-in-dying or self-delivery.
Condition Of The Subject
Coma is an abnormal deep stupor occurring in illness in which the patient cannot be aroused by external stimuli. Comas are sometimes induced in order to help a patient heal from a severe injury or to help him avoid an extreme degree of pain for a temporary period.
Persistent Vegetative State, or PVS, is a term sometimes used synonymously with “brain death,” but the terms actually differ greatly in meaning. The American Academy of Neurology defines PVS as: “A form of eyes-open permanent unconsciousness in which the patient has periods of wakefulness and physiological sleep/wake cycles, but at no time is the patient aware of him- or herself or the environment.”
Many people refer to a person who lapses into an extended coma as one who has entered a “persistent vegetative state.” This is an inaccurate and demeaning term. To begin with, more than half of all patients in PVS eventually regain consciousness, as we will see.
Perhaps even more important, we should avoid the term “persistent vegetative state” because it is dehumanizing. People are never “vegetables” at any time from fertilization to natural death, so we should not refer to them as such. We must recognize that all human beings must be afforded dignity and care as basic rights, regardless of the seriousness of their condition.
A more dignified term would be simply “comatose.”
Finally, the term “persistent vegetative state” is a very imprecise catch-all term, and its meaning can vary substantially depending upon the outlook and the intent of the person using the term. Because it is so open to abuse, the term should be avoided altogether.
Brain Death, or the exact instant of death in a human being, has been precisely defined by medical professionals. Blakiston’s Pocket Medical Dictionary provides measurable criteria with which to determine if brain death has actually occurred:
“Cessation of neurologic functioning by the criteria of deep unconsciousness without response to painful stimuli, absence of spontaneous breathing, fixed pupils, spontaneous marked hypothermia, absent reflexes except rarely tendon reflexes, and an isoelectric electroencephalogram showing no electrical activity over 2 microvolts at maximum gain even with stimulation by sound, pain, or pressure, recorded for 30 minutes or longer at 24 hour intervals. Excluded are patients under profound central nervous system depressants or hypothermia.”
This exacting definition leaves little doubt that a person suffering “brain death” has little or no hope of recovery.
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