By BRIAN CLOWES
Conclusion
(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 on euthanasia, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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“We’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life” — former Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm.
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Euthanasia: How It Will Be. Leaders of the pro-euthanasia movement pretended to care for the suffering as they began their media propaganda campaign. However, as their cause advanced, their emphasis gradually morphed from caring to killing. Now we are at the stage where the euthanasiasts and the media are trivializing the killing of the sick and elderly, claiming that euthanasia is a matter of “fundamental human rights” and is of no concern to anyone else.
It is enlightening to refer to the situation in a country where euthanasia is a fact of life in order to ask ourselves if we really want this for our country. We need look no further than Holland, whose permissive euthanasia laws have come under increasing scrutiny over the past several years.
As we have seen, being elderly and ill in Holland is a frightening experience, because these people know that they are officially “expendable.” This is because the primary motivation for Dutch health care is not care, but cost containment. Sick people have been analyzed and examined by doctors using a soulless benefit-cost equation — and they have been found wanting.
Reaction of the Americans. The topic of runaway health-care costs is becoming more prominent in the United States, especially under the unsustainable Obamacare system. As usual, the more utilitarian mindset opts for the easy solution — instead of increasing efficiency and cutting waste, simply eliminate those patients who are too costly to care for.
Many euthanasiasts strenuously object when they are accused of supporting legalized euthanasia for such purposes. However, the evidence sustaining this charge is overwhelming. More and more of the leaders of the pro-euthanasia movement are demanding legalized euthanasia specifically for the purpose of reducing health-care costs.
For example, Daniel Callahan, president emeritus of the Hastings Center, said in 1983:
“A denial of nutrition may in the long run become the only effective way to make certain that a large number of biologically tenacious patients actually die. Given the increasingly large pool of superannuated, chronically ill, physically marginal elderly, it could well become the nontreatment of choice….Our emerging problem is not just that of eliminating useless or wasteful treatment, but of limiting even efficacious treatment because of its high cost. It may well turn out that what is best for each and every individual is not necessarily a societally affordable-health care system.”
Cost-cutting by euthanasia has already begun here in the United States. There are an increasing number of cases where patients have been told that their health-care expenses would not be covered — but that the cost of a suicide pill would be. For example, an elderly Vermont woman who was otherwise healthy but who had merely broken her wrist had euthanasia repeatedly suggested to her by medical personnel.
And cancer patient Barbara Wagner of Oregon said in 2008 that “I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the [suicide] pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won’t give you the medication to live.”
Many are promoting a “fixed categorical standard” that would flatly deny certain surgeries past specific patient ages, regardless of prognosis. One of these suggestions is that coronary bypass surgery be banned after age 60. Naturally, those elderly people who have enough money could still buy any surgical procedure they wanted. This situation would thus become a curious reflection of the gender feminist complaint that, if abortion were to become illegal again, only rich women could afford “safe” ones.
There is growing anxiety among medical professionals that evils such as those in Holland will quickly become entrenched in the practice of American health care. Dr. Charles L. Sprung has warned that “widespread practice of active euthanasia in the United States appears not very far away.”
Suicide expert and author Dr. Herbert Hendin testified before Congress:
“The Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for people who are terminally ill to euthanasia for those who are chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress, and from voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia (called ‘termination of the patient without explicit request’)….There is no way to stop the slide once a society steps onto the slippery slope by legalizing physician-assisted suicide.”
However, others would welcome such “advances” with open arms. Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society, said of the euthanasia program in Holland: “It’s been tested there…it appears to be working.” Margaret Battin, another Hemlock officer, urged that the United States adopt the Dutch euthanasia program: “Let’s use the Netherlands as a role model.”
Dutch euthanasia proponents apparently wouldn’t object to seeing their brand of “gentle killing” exported all over the world. Maurice De Wachter, director of the Institute for Bioethics in Maastricht, has said that “The Netherlands is what I would like to call a test case for an experiment in medical ethics….There is a practice growing where doctors feel at ease with helping patients to die, in other words killing them.”
The Hemlock Quarterly reported that “The Netherlands are closest to having achieved their goal of active voluntary euthanasia.”
No one can deny that the Dutch model would certainly save lots of money in the United States. It is estimated that 20,000 persons are killed in Holland every year — most of them involuntarily (the 6,000 Dutch voluntary euthanasias are strictly registered; the remainder are classified as involuntary).
Holland currently (2016) has a population of about 17 million, and the United States has a population of about 324 million. If the ratio of euthanasias in the U.S. population were the same as it is in Holland, there would be 381,000 murders by euthanasia every year in the United States — one every 20 seconds during working days — equivalent to the total population reaching the age of 80 every year!
It turns out that Hollywood’s 1976 movie Logan’s Run was eerily prophetic.
“It Can’t Happen Here”: Pro-euthanasia activists continue to insist that involuntary euthanasia will never take place in the United States.
This is part of the psychology of the pro-euthanasia movement; it continues to strive vigorously for goals that it claims are impossible and undesirable — just as the pro-abortionists did in the mid-1960s. When pressed for answers, of course, euthanasiasts will be able to offer no concrete reasons as to why euthanasia on demand (or command) will not happen in this country.
But the purported impossibility of doctors killing patients is already happening in the United States — and sometimes doctors are effectively even forced to kill.
For example, in March 1987, a California superior court ordered cardiologist Dr. Allen Jay to remove 92-year-old Anna Hirth’s feeding tube. He refused, stating: “[This] was something I could not do, either as a practicing Jew or as a practicing physician — or as an American.” The judge immediately threatened to imprison him indefinitely on contempt of court charges.
This was the first known case of attempted judicial coercion for a forced euthanasia. The court was perfectly willing to jail a doctor indefinitely unless he turned his back on his beliefs, his religion, and on the principles of his profession. The only reason that Dr. Jay got away with his refusal is that there was a public outcry over the judge’s coercive tactics — but how long will it be before the public just doesn’t care anymore?
At the other end of life, of course, our medical professionals commit more than 5,000 cases of infanticide of handicapped newborn babies in the United States every year.
Conclusion. The euthanasia movement made its first well-organized attempt to establish the “right to die” in the late 1960s. However, the drive for legalized suicide stalled, because its proponents moved too quickly and too soon. Experts now recognize that no nation can establish euthanasia as a “right” before establishing abortion as a “right.”
The reason is simple: The anti-life forces must gradually erode society’s respect for human life. First, the most helpless and invisible of society’s “unwanted” members — preborn children — are dehumanized and rendered expendable. This is followed by the “bridge” of infanticide, the killing of so-called defective newborns, which is already happening in this country on a large scale.
Finally, the door is thrown wide for euthanasia on demand and ultimately involuntary euthanasia.
We are standing at this pivotal crossroads in the United States right now.
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