In Nazi Germany, October of 1939 a secret decree was issued to the Reich Health ministry coming straight from the desk of Adolf Hitler himself. The decree, code named ‘Aktion T 4’, signaled a continued and deeper descent into the darkness of National Socialist Germany. ‘Aktion T4’ was the Reich’s ‘mercy death’ program focusing on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to the age of three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms, which would indicate a serious health risk or undue burden to the Reich and its war effort. A ‘committee’ of three medical experts would then assess the special registration form of this child. A euthanasia warrant would be issued for children who failed to meet the criteria of ‘life worthy of life’ and were sent to the ‘Children’s Specialty Department’ for death by injection or gradual starvation. Very quickly Aktion T4 expanded to include older children and adults. Patients were considered ‘useless eaters’ if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senility, therapy resistant paralysis, retardation, encephalitis, and other neurological conditions. Six killing centers were established throughout Germany to expedite the ‘mercy death’ process through a variety of brutal means. It is estimated that by the close of the war between 200-275,000 people were euthanized under the Aktion T4 decree. It is thought that perhaps half of these casualties of Nazi ‘mercy’ were young children, infants, and newborns.
On May 10, 1940 the Nazi army invaded the Netherlands, a country that had naively trusted Hitler’s promise of non-aggression remaining ‘neutral’ throughout Germany’s European conquest. After a brave but futile 5 day struggle the Dutch army surrendered to the Reich. It would be five years before the Canadian army liberates Holland. During this occupation 107,000 of Holland’s 140,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands. Only 5,000 of these would survive the holocaust, with another 30,000 surviving through escape or hiding. Of the 60,000 Dutch Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, less than 1,000 survived. Over 75% of Holland’s Jews perished at the hands of the Nazi’s. This represents the largest percentage of Jews to die from a particular country with the exception of Poland.
One of the cries of Holocaust survivors and educators is ‘Never Forget!’. But, tragically, we do forget. We forget the depths and darkness of the human heart. There is a cold and selfish utilitarian mentality that very easily besieges us. It is a slow and often quiet captivity of our hearts and minds. It is a captivity of our conscience by the forces of comfort and affluence. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen without employing helpful rationalizations and the language of ‘moral complexity’. It happens in our courthouses, schools, churches, and homes. The slope is steep and slippery indeed, but it seems we are, as one author put it, ‘on a down-hill toboggan run- the peak is no longer visible behind us, and the bottom is still a long, long slide down the mountain.’
Today, unbelievably, in the same country where only 60 years ago 107,000 Jews and countless other ‘undesirables’ and ‘useless’ eaters were murdered for the cause of a new society, we are on the brink of a new, yet sadly ‘old’, holocaust. There are few voices indeed crying out against this new front in the war against life. Here is a recent associated press headline that was conspicously and widely ignored by the media. The associated press release read:
“A hospital in the Netherlands- the first nation to permit euthanasia- has proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns and then made a startling revelation: It already has begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.” - Toby Sterling, Assoc. Press
This set of ‘mercy death’ guidelines comes from the Groningen Academic hospital and is known as the ‘Groningen Protocol’. The Protocol seeks to establish a just and legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in severe pain or suffer from a dramatic loss of quality of life from incurable disease or extreme deformity. This pursuit comes only three years after the Dutch Parliament’s legalization of euthanasia for adult patients. The Protocol has only been used for newborns so far, but it proposes to soon cover any child up to the age of 12.
The protocol is eerily similar to the Aktion T4 decree of some 66 years ago in the supposedly barbaric tyranny of Nazi Germany. Yet this new decree is civilized, merciful, and calculated under the new morality of a postmodern Europe. It is pragmatic, utilitarian, rational, and, yet, no matter how you look at it, it calls us to kill our little ones - the little ones who need us most. Death by committee: contrived by medical professionals, established by a medical bureaucracy, vindicated by a utilitarian philosophy, legalized by a heartless judiciary, and justified within a self serving and godless society. And, sadly, we are not far behind.
It has always been the duty of physicians to fight for life and strive for the cure and not merely ‘ease the pain’ of a patient or his caretakers. It is the job of law makers and judges to protect citizens and strive for justice, especially for those who cannot defend themselves. It is the job of a responsible citizenry to fight for just laws, to fight for the rights of our neighbor, and to truly love them. But this sort of ethic is not expedient. And this ethic cannot be applied in a moral vacuum.
But, it seems, the center is lost, the tether is broken, and so we spin perilously out of control. We murder babies and so preserve our freedom of choice. We destroy human embryos and put them to good use, to serve the greater good. We actually debate the use of aborted babies for research. It is actually up for consideration whether or not we should clone humans in order to harvest organs. Today, we measure life not by the standard of God given personhood with intrinsic value regardless of our utility for the cause of a greater society. Our personhood, our value and our right to live now depends on a complex, yet sadly arbitrary calculus which deems one valuable according to our postmodern measure of comfort, happiness, lack of pain, and use to others.
J. Budziszewski has well said,
“While the morality of pleasant feelings ends with the likes of Peter Singer (professor of ethics and philosophy at Princeton University, and advocate of infant euthanasia) who thinks little humans may be killed because their pleasures aren’t big enough, the morality of higher feelings ends with the likes of Hannibal Lecter, who thinks vulgar humans may be killed because their pleasures aren’t refined enough. It is all part of the same revolution.”
And so, it shall be the biblical resolve of faithful Christians, those who love God and all whom He has made in his image, to consider and obey His Word. We will lament the chaos of our sinful culture, yet we will hope in Christ. And we will live to offer such hope to a hopeless world. Such a task will be an increasingly bold one in our age. Our service to Christ in a dark world must begin with the ‘least of these’. We must serve everyone made by God for God’s own glory. Our babies, our elderly, our poor, our disabled. The body of Christ should be a beacon of light, it should be a haven of rest, it should be a loud voice of love and truth, it should be the feet and hands of love and truth. It begins often in little ways, though it always is centered on the magnificent and glorious revelation of God in Christ for the good of all people.
And what does His Word say?
Isaiah 58:10 … if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
Jeremiah 22:3 This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.
Isaiah 45:9 "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker… Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'He has no hands'? Woe to him who says to his father, 'What have you begotten?' or to his mother, 'What have you brought to birth?' "This is what the LORD says… Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands?”
Exodus 4:11 The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
Isaiah 1:17 Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
1 Corinthians 1:25-31 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things-- and the things that are not-- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God-- that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."2 Corinthians 12:9-10 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Labels: Bioethics
