In thirty-eight states in America, if a driver runs into another car driven by a pregnant woman, and the fetus is killed, the driver can be charged with "vehicular feticide" and generally face the same penalties as for any vehicular homicide. These thirty-eight states have fetal homicide laws in their statutes; in twenty-three of those states, the laws apply to any stage of pregnancy. In these cases, the law looks at the death of the fetus as a crime against the pregnant woman. But what if the woman was driving to an abortion clinic to terminate her pregnancy?
Here we see the inconsistency of thought when it comes to defining the value of a life. In the case of the fetal vehicular homicide, the life is as valuable as any when deciding the penalties. In the case of the abortion, it is not a homicide but a "choice" guaranteed by "privacy." In an effort to resolve some of these confusing issues, there are movements around the United States to establish Personhood Amendments in state constitutions, which will define exactly what a "life"is. I applaud the efforts to these groups to both define life and to value it. However, I am somewhat pessimistic about the outcome.
It will be virtually impossible to overturn Roe versus Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decison that forty years ago established the right to abortion in this country. The Supreme Court decided only nineteen years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that those rights were firmly established and could not be overturned. A Personhood Amendment challenge has not yet made it to the Supreme Court; they refused to hear a case from Oklahoma last year. Time will tell if a state can successfully get an amendment passed, but I do not see the Supreme Court allowing such an amendment to curtail abortion rights in the United States. There are hopes, however, that it will increase the awareness that the fetus is a person with rights.
Where I am even more pessimistic is how we will value life in the future. It may be that the fetus can be declared a person, but a person will not be worth very much, with a life of little value. We see the declining value of life at the other end of the spectrum, with the progression of assisted-suicide and euthanasia laws around the world.
We must make sure that we use our terms correctly as they are frequently confused. With physician assisted suicide, the physician gives the patient the medicine, which they then administer to themselves. With euthanasia, the physician administers the medication, a lethal injection. Euthanasia comes from the Greek "eu," meaning "good," and "thanatos," meaning "death," so it means a "good or happy death." The word did not assume its modern meaning of mercy killing until the mid 1800's.
Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia are legally in use around the world. We would like to think that if people are going to wrest the decision of the time and manner of a person's death from God, that it will be a rare decision made only in the most dire circumstances and that certainly the person whose life is ended prematurely will be involved in the decision. Sadly, that is not the case.
Last December, we hear from Belgium of two twins, born deaf, who were devoted to each other. They had lived their lives together, and now at the ripe old age of forty-five learned that they were also losing their eyesight. They decided that was intolerable, and so, even without a terminal illness or unbearable pain, requested to be put to death. Marc and Eddy received their lethal injections on December 14, and the doctor/executioner remarked that it was, "very serene and beautiful." Belgium, along with the Netherlands and Switzerland, allow physician assisted suicide in non-terminal cases. Belgium is also looking at getting laws passed that would allow for euthanasia in those with dementia or children with disabilities as long as the other family members give consent.
Certainly nothing like that could happen in any other civilized Western society, right? But in the United Kingdom, with the National Health Service that gives them so much pride, there is the "Liverpool Care Pathway." When the health care team decides that you are "dying," then you can be put on the Liverpool Care Pathway, wherein food and water and medicines are withheld as part of palliative care. Approximately 130,000 people a year are put on the LCP, but it turns out that of the patients who are conscious, about half of them are never told that they are on the fatal pathway, and in one-third of the cases, the families are not told. The NHS is divided into "trusts" which provide the health care for a geographical region, and they can save a lot of money by prematurely ending the lives of those with illness (usually within 29 hours!). In fact, the trusts received 30 million pounds to put more patients on the Pathway. Still, British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt says that, "It's a fantastic step forward, the Liverpool Care Pathway, and we need to be unabashed about that," and that it shouldn't be discredited if something went wrong in "one or two cases." And, "Lots of people...want to die in a dignified way."
So far, euthanasia is illegal in the United States, but physician assisted suicide is legal in Washington, Oregon, and Montana. Other states are looking at adopting it. Yet I am unable to find anywhere in the Bible a passage on death with dignity. It is a concept of modern society, and in my new book, Surviving the Suffering, I discuss this at more length in the chapter, "Suffering at the End." It is interesting that often the same people that advocate death with dignity are also the ones who are in favor of abortion. I can't think of a less dignifed way to die than to be scraped and torn apart while in the womb.
1. http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/marc-eddy-verbessem-belgium-euthanasia_n_2472320.html
3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255054/60-000-patients-death-pathway-told-minister-says-controversial-end-life-plan-fantastic.html
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