We have spent the last several weeks looking at what it means to be human and the lethal consequences when society declares a person or group of people "not quite human". In the case of Nazi Germany, the declaration of the Jew as "sub-human" led to the slaughter of over six million people during World War II. Because many have declared the fetus to be not quite human, over fifty million abortions have been performed in the United States in the last forty years. Still, the truth of humanity cannot be suppressed forever. In horror, people look back on the Holocaust and wonder how the Jews could have been thought of in that way. And it is getting harder and harder to look at the unborn child and say that it is not human.
Where I think we may be headed is an even darker place than the land of untruth. It is the land of uncaring. It may be that modern society recognizes the unborn as a real bona fide human being, but then sees no problem with killing them. When we last looked at late term abortions, we discussed the partial birth abortion, where an unborn child is partially extracted from the womb and then killed before fully removing it. That practice has been illegal since the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. But late term abortions are still performed. The law said you could not extract a live fetus. It didn't say anything about killing the fetus and then extracting it. The current procedure now is to use a long needle and inject digitalis into the unborn baby's heart, killing it, and then it is dismembered, removed, and discarded.
If you remember our discussion in Part III, we talked about the Nazi euthanasia program, Aktion T4. The Nazis decided that the "unfit" did not deserve to live and they began putting "defective" infants to death in 1939. This was expanded to older children and then adults. Over 70,000 German citizens were killed in this program. When the German public at large became aware of what was going on, there was an outcry and the protests forced the Nazi leadership to officially abandon the program, although it was continued in secret for several more years.
Today, euthanasia is making a comeback in the modern world, and there is no secrecy and no protest. To be clear in our discussions, we must make a distinction between euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In the latter, the physician gives to the patient the fatal medicine, and the patient takes it himself. In euthanasia, the physician actually administers the lethal poison to the patient. Both physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are now legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg; all three countries were defeated in World War II by the Nazis and opposed them. They are now embracing Nazi euthanasia ideology.
On this side of the Atlantic, Quebec seems likely to be the first to blaze the euthanasia trail, as they have considered legalizing it with Bill 52. We do not have euthanasia in the United States, but physician-assisted suicide is legal in Washington, Oregon, Vermont, and essentially in Montana. We have not yet caught up with Europe, but there is still time.
Well, what if someone is suffering and wants to die? Why should we care if someone submits to voluntary euthanasia? They are only harming themselves, and they should make the decision about how and when to end their life, right?
What if the euthanasia, like the Nazi T4 program, was involuntary?
I am sure that you think that such a thing does not exist. I would like to refer you to the Groningen Protocol from the Netherlands. It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and is referenced below. It describes in great detail the selection process for putting infants to death in that country. It requires a very smart and dedicated team of physicians and health care workers who evaluate the infant and determine that it should be euthanized. Belgium liked the way the Dutch were doing things so much that they took the Protocol and fashioned a bill to take to their parliament last November, and it now seems close to passing. The Belgians are likely to expand euthanasia to those with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests that already nearly a third of euthanasia cases in that country do not involve a patient request. According to the British Medical Journal, a fifth of cases in the Netherlands do not involve a patient request. Although involuntary euthanasia is currently illegal in all countries (with the exception of the Groningen Protocol babies), it continues to be practiced, not prosecuted. The right of a human to put himself to death or to request to be put to death becomes the right to put the human to death.
Personal choice, not God's sovereignty, seems paramount these days. Someone has to choose in these matters: the mother aborting her child, the patient requesting assisted suicide, or the doctors practicing involuntary euthanasia make a choice. The fetus whose heart is being injected with digitalis, however, does not get to choose, nor does the baby being examined by the doctors under the Groningen Protocol or the patient with Alzheimer's who is euthanized. What happens when the state starts making the choice? Under China's One-Child Policy, three hundred and thirty-six million abortions have been performed since 1971, many of which were forced. And in Western Civilization, we have the National Health Service in England and its Liverpool Care Pathway. Although it is not euthanasia, it involves withdrawing food and water from patients the NHS health care team decides are not long for this world. It turns out that of conscious patients, half are not told this will be done to them. If I recall correctly, the choosing of the time of one's death is to be done by God.
So we try very hard to get these people recognized as human, and even if we succeed, it won't matter because human life is becoming devalued. We can convince a society through evidence and reasoning that these people are human, but we cannot force a society to value human life. We talked last week about the "collapse clause" in the Roe v. Wade decision, where it was stated that if the fetus could be shown to be a person, the argument for abortion would collapse, and the fetus would be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. That Amendment states that no one may be deprived of life without "due process of law". Well, look at the Groningen Protocol and the Liverpool Care Pathway, and there is your due process.
Thinking of these things as medical "procedures" seems to make them so much more acceptable, and even dignified. As I mentioned in an article earlier this year ("What's Your Life Worth, Anyway"), I am unable to find anywhere in the Bible a passage on death with dignity. It is interesting that often those who are proponents of death with dignity are also supporters of abortion. I cannot think of a less dignified way to die than to be scraped and torn apart in the womb. The Jew facing the brutal Nazi gas chambers declares, "I am not a sub-human!" The fetus inside its mother pleads "I am human!" The Chinese mother facing forced abortion cries, "My baby is human!" The elderly person with dementia implores, "I am still human!" And before the fatal procedure is administered, the last thing they hear is "You're absolutely right. But we don't care."
1. Verhagen, E, and Sauer, JJ. The Groningen Protocol--Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New Eng J Med 2005;352:959-62.
2. Chambaere, K, Bilsen, J, Cohen, J, et. al. Physician Assisted Deaths Under the Euthanasia Law in Belgium: A Population-Based Survey. CMAJ 2010;1-7.
3. van der Wal, G, and Dillman, RJ. Euthanasia in the Netherlands. British Med J 1994;308:1346-9.
4. 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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