The nation’s highest court voted 6-3 to support the State of Oregon’s euthanasia law – with the new Chief Justice Roberts, as well as Justices Scalia and Thomas, voting against.
I do hope that these three justices – two of whom so often have evoked my agreement and commendation – are familiar with the following part of world history, as reported in the Bible’s First Book of Samuel:
“Then said Saul unto his armor bearer: ‘Draw thy sword and thrust me through therewith, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through and abuse me.’ But his armor bearer would not, for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and fell upon it.”
This is a story of suicide that, but for the cowardice of the armor bearer, might have been euthanasia or “mercy killing.” In consideration of the Philistine treatment of the wall of Bethshan – to nail a prisoner to the wall and let buzzards devour him – this was a merciful release. Saul was fortunate in being able to administer his own deathblow even though surely wounded.
Many today are unable so to avail themselves and are doomed to lingering deaths with steady or recurrent agony. A few of these sufferers are able to leap out of windows, take poison or turn on the gas; but in a number of instances these acts of violence are not successful – and even run the risk of harming others.
In the light of a large segment of modern church thought, it seems strange that there is no biblical condemnation of King Saul’s action. Neither is there any particular condemnation regarding the biblically reported suicides of either Abimelech or Samson. There is no specific condemnation of suicide or euthanasia from Jesus Christ.
Most of the opponents of euthanasia will cite the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” This argument demands extreme pacifism as well as vegetarianism. The more accurate translation, “Thou shalt do no murder,” eliminates implication of euthanasia, since murder is legally defined as killing with malice aforethought. The families, friends and physicians who put love above legality, courage above comfort and heed Jesus’ admonition “Blessed are the merciful” in applying euthanasia risk their reputations, their liberty and even their lives. Certainly this cannot be said to represent malice, as indicated by the growing number of juries that acquit euthanasia – and now, this nation’s highest court.
Suicide or euthanasia, under extenuating circumstances had no early philosophical opposition. It was advocated by Pythagoras, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus and Seneca. Suicide was committed by Hannibal, Diogenes, Socrates, Cleopatra and Aristotle, who like Seneca chose the lesser of two evils. It seems foolish to brand all of these leaders as either insane or cowardly.
U.S. Army Gen. William Dean, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, publicly asserted that he would request being supplied with a suicide pill if ever again he were to go into battle with the Communists. This statement has been severely criticized by a number of Christians, who are ignorant of the fact that St. Jerome permitted suicide in defense of chastity! They are ignorant of the fact that the patristic father, Lactantius (tutor of the Emperor Constantine’s son), allowed for suicide in the face of impending torture.
Upon investigation, the main opposition to euthanasia seems to come from St. Thomas Aquinas, who was presumptuous enough to claim that suicide is a sin of which it is impossible to repent.
But even the Roman Catholic Church has sanctioned euthanasia, in the “Holy Stone” of 17th century Britanny. With permission of the priest, the family of an incurable sufferer might drop of large stone on his head. The question faced in this case was not a matter of choosing between life and death, but a choice between a death of lingering agony and death that is swift and merciful.
Involuntary torture does not seem to be redemptive, but rather to evince the disdain of a supposedly Christian society which would not deny the same mercy to an animal. This distinction between animals and human beings can be realized without lessening the demand for similar mercy to the human being.
There are admittedly a number of physicians who are opposed to euthanasia. These M.D.s are either bound by a type of moral restraint – or moral bewilderment, consideration of income, or fear of reputation. A number will cite the Oath of Hippocrates, all the provisions of which few physicians observe. (These include making your son an M.D. and teaching the sons of your teacher.)
Analgesic sedation gradually wears off until increased dosage induces death. Insofar as surgery is concerned, there is a limitation on the amount possible without inducing death – and the metastatic cancer can spread to every section of the body. Needless to say, if excess of pain could be eliminated completely and deterioration halted, there would be no need for euthanasia. But the pain and horror and torture do exist in so many instances – instances that may strike any of us or our families.
Cancer is one of the most horrible. With the advance of medicine in other fields, there is at the same time, an amazing growth in the age span and consequently in those susceptible to the disease. Cancer is the Latin form of the Greek word “Carcinoma,” used by physicians in the euphemistic attempt to avoid the free translation, which means “crab” – a gigantic crab that eats out of the vitals of a suffering human being.
If cancer research had sufficient support (even one-fiftieth of our defense budget), it might conquer the disease. But try telling this to a terminal cancer patient who realizes that he faces months or even years of agony. The gamble on a last-minute cure is not very consoling or worthwhile to a patient who writhes with every breath – and to a Christian who does not think that death is the worst thing possible.
Might not the physician be wrong in his prediction of an inevitable death? To forbid euthanasia on this remote possibility is to undermine the entire medical profession, every one of which can be wrong at any time. We must have faith in the God-given ability of the physician who can, with reasonable accuracy, state that terminal cancer is fatal. Again, we must consider the wishes of the patient who may wish to trust the ability of his physician.
Does a person have a right to die if he so wishes? Our mores here are extremely contradictory. Our country does not look askance at Patrick Henry’s plea for death as the alternative to liberty.
Does a person have the right to die? Certainly, if as a hero or martyr – certainly not if on a hospital bed – “because this is selfish” – even though a large part of agony may be vicarious suffering while loved ones stand by. It is supposedly selfish to wish to hasten a slow and certain death that will bankrupt a family in exchange for a few months of living hell.
According to much contemporary (though really medieval) church thought, man has a right to be killed in battle or in capital punishment, but not while begging for even one person to manifest the compassionate mercy of God. We refer to the death of a terminal cancer patient as “merciful release,” – if merciful, then godly. It is blasphemous to presume that God can’t act through hypodermic of a physician who heeds Christ’s admonition “Blessed are the merciful.” If hastening death interferes with God’s providence, then so are the physicians who labor to prolong life. We seem to forget that there were some churches that opposed the use of ether (“pain is good for the soul”), the use of vaccinations and the treatment for syphilis.
It should be remembered that no punishment is going to stop mercy – or should it. Euthanasia is undoubtedly being practiced surreptitiously on a gigantic scale. Do we wish to breed disrespect for the law? Ought we to oblige the physician alone to shoulder this devastating responsibility – and prosecute him for being merciful?
Though the adherents of euthanasia are probably still in the minority, the movement is growing. In 1935, the Roman Catholic Church canonized Saint Thomas More in whose book, “Utopia,” the people practiced voluntary euthanasia. We may not achieve Utopia in these United States, but perhaps, some future historian will regard the opposition to euthanasia as a peculiar relic categorized with witch burning.
In that classic text on medical ethics, “Morals and Medicine” by the late Rev. Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., there is the following unforgettable description of agonizing death:
“For any moral man with spiritual integrity the mere fact of being alive is not as important as the terms of living – Jonathan Swift, the satirist and Irish clergymen, after a life of a highly creative letters, ended it all in a horrible and degrading death. It was a death degrading to himself and to those close to him. His mind crumbled to pieces. It took him eight years to die, while his brain rotted. The pain in Swift’s eye was so acute that sometimes it took five men to hold him down to keep him from tearing out his eye with his own hands. For the last three years he sat and drooled. Knives had to be kept entirely out of his reach. When the end came, finally, his fits of convulsion lasted 36 hours.
“We can easily conceive of Dean Swift grabbing madly for a knife or a deadly drug. He was demoralized, without a vistage of true self-possession left in him. He wanted to commit what the law calls suicide and what vitalistic ethics calls sin. Standing by was some good doctor trembling with sympathy and frustration. Secretly perhaps, he wanted to commit what the law calls murder. (But like Saul’s armor bearer he would not – for he was sore afraid.) Meanwhile, necessity, blind and unmoral, irrational physiology and pathology, made the decision. It was in reality no decision at all, no moral behavior in the least, unless submission to physical ruin and spiritual disintegration can be called a decision and a moral choice.”
“Thou shalt not kill” may have its necessary and tragic exceptions, but there should be no exceptions whatsoever to Christ’s admonition: “Blessed are the merciful.”
Related special offer:
Subscribe to feed