Abortion/euthanasia

Abstract

It is impossible to be too much concerned about the alternatives and positive responses to the modern, worldwide regressive death movement. I suggest the foJlowing for your consideration: 1) For the terminaJly iJl we need to establish more hospices like Sto Christopher's in London, where staff members practice the best of geriatric medicine in making dying patients as comfortable as possible, handling them with dignity and love and working out individualized methods of treatment in the management of pain. Death comes but once let it be easy, said Carl Sandburg. 2) We need homes where the elderly, the most alienated members of our society, can engage in activities appropriate to their age. We have learned how to increase their years; we have not yet learned how to help them enjoy their days. 3) At all costs the Hippocratic Oath and tradition must be retained, or restored whre it has been given up: Ending life is not the business of medicine. Alevare - Sedare - Sanare: «To cure sometimes, to comfort often, and to care always» - that is the vocation of medicine. 4) Instances of overtreatment must be eliminated, because these medical abuses precisely give euthanasians an excuse to push for the legalization of mercy killing. Just as allowing «selective» abortion ends inevitably in virtual abortion-on-demand, so no law can be written for «voluntary» euthanasia which would not occasion massive abuses. 5) We must engage in intensive and comprehensive educational prolife programs at every level. Hard evidence shows that the advocates of killing lose when the public is educated; for example, the jury in the Edelin case had not realized that babies are aborted. 6) We must engage in organized, large-scale political action and lobbying, from the lowest precincts to the highest echelons of government. No one must vote for any office-seeker without knowing where that candidate stands on pro-life issues. We must also develop a much needed prdlife rhetoric. 7) As Dostoyevski said, «If Godis not, nothing is morally wrong», Thus, there must be a revival of religion, with renewed emphasis on the Christian philosophy and theology of redemptive suffering and dying. Albert Schweitzer said that if you wish to avoid suffering, embrace it. In the past, three moral forces were bulwarks of public morality - religion, medicine and law. But today in many countries the religious forces stand alone, often divided and weakened in their influence. Propagandists for death have successfully employed the Hitler-Goebbels tactic of privatizing Christian institutions and Christian bel ievers, making it seem that the disposition of human life is a matter of religious belief and personal morality to be governed by the individual conscience without recourse to universal norms. As Ramsey has clarified, «Unless we think of man's life in terms of his worth to God, we have already in principie justified his possible murder for the sake of the 'greatert happiness of the greatest number' or sorne other quite reasonable earthly goal ". 8) Five years ago Bioethics was not even a word. Biomedical technology has catapulted society into a revolution of ethical dilemmas. For all medical and health care students we must urgently develop special educational programs in medical and biomedical ethics responding to the new questions and problems generated by fast-moving medical advances. In every large hospital there should be a highly competent committee for medical ethics from several disciplines. I see no reason to regard physicians as experts about values and their priorities. 9) Legalized killing of the innocent is a unique threat to modern society. Nevertheless, we must strive for consistency in our pro-life stance. What about capital punishment? What about an adequate theology of war? And what about discrimination and poverty, anti-life social injustices which destroy enormous numbers of lives throughout the world? 10) Watch the death-definers who would inflict on us a Procrustean definition of death or a definition with a vested interest. What is their motivation? Particularly in matters as supremely important as life and death, our technological society must assume that what is not explicitly forbidden will eventually be done - and soon. Fragile are the membranes of society. The line between freedom and compulsion is a perilously thin one. 11) Because the twin evils of abortion and euthanasia are really inseparable, stemming from the same disregard for human life and the same refusal to love all of God's children unconditionally, the best way to fight euthanasia is to continue fighting the legalization of free-andeasy abortion and even to continue fighting the promotion of contraception, that subtle origin of the killing mentality as a solution to human problems. Let me conclude with the words of Sto Augustine at the end of his The City of God: «Let those who think I have said too little, or those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough join me in giving thanks to God. Amen»