The Christian community is against killing helpless and vulnerable people. We are called to stand for those who are unable to assert their ‘personhood’ for themselves (due to brain damage, other debilitating ailments, level of development, or what have you). We are to stand against the murder of ‘the least of these’ as they are growing in the womb. We are to vehemently protest the disposal of severely disabled people that provide no utilitarian ‘use’ to our society at all (as we rather arbitrarily understand 'use'). That we would see these basic commitments to life and its preservation as 'up for debate' or 'morally complex' is a sad commentary on the state of our society. We are called to ‘spend ourselves’ (Isaiah 58:10): our money, time, energy, technology, and any other resource available to fight for life and care for the lives of all human beings. This is the call of Christ. This is the testimony of Scripture. This is a protection and provision of our Constitution. And this fundamental commitment is in fact what we are dealing with today in much of the discussion surrounding Terri Schiavo’s medically sanctioned starvation. We can shake our heads and lament the ‘complexities’ of this situation, or we can see it for what it truly is.
“Wasn’t Terri in a persistent vegetative state?” (Actually, there is no real ‘consensus’ on what a PSV is, and we are Christians who are called not to obey the ‘consensus’ of a secular community anyway.) That is entirely the wrong question. The question is, “Do we deprive people of basic care such as nutrition and hydration due to severely diminished brain capacity?” The answer to this question is ‘no’ regardless of the question of Terri’s persistent vegetative state. Terri was alive, and would have continued living with basic care offered her by her parents and others in the medical community. We are not to allow our children, friends, family, and neighbors to die of thirst. This is such a fundamental axiom of human existence and Christian civilization that I am appalled that it is up for debate.
"But isn't a feeding tube an extraordinary measure of care?" Our medical community is able to sustain life through feeding tubes simply and rather affordably. Yes, not long ago, and still in many parts of the world today, one in Terri's condition would suffer and die without a feeding tube. But, she does not need to suffer and die in such a way. We can easily provide a basic regiment of care that would afford her, and many like her, a rather comfortable life, however 'diminished' her brain capacity might be. To withhold such care would lead to, indeed cause, her death. This is not within the purview of our legal system, or medical community.
Regarding Terri’s (and many others in hospitals and nursing homes everywhere) ‘diagnosis’. "Wasn't she brain dead?" Let us remember, the brain is a very complex, powerful, mysterious and misunderstood organ. When I hear neurologists report of the ‘facts’ regarding Terri’s condition, I have to chuckle at the hubris of our medical community. The ‘facts’ often touted on MSNBC by medical professionals are anything but. There was not a ‘consensus’ regarding the nature of Terri’s thoughts, perceptions, feelings, personhood, or ‘viability’. And these are questions not merely about tissue and biochemistry. There is a metaphysical, philosophical, and theological dimension to these questions that I am afraid many of our ‘medical professionals’ are unable or unwilling to attend to. If anyone from the medical community spoke out against such a ‘consensus’, as they did, they were labeled ‘fundamentalists’ or ‘extremists’.
Terri was very much alive. It was not a life that we would choose for ourselves, or the ones we love. But, we are not the ones who choose such things. That is the sovereign work of God. Terri was severely brain damaged, she was severely disabled and in need of constant care and attention, to be sure. But these realities do not change the fact that she was alive. She displayed this fact for all the world to see in living and fighting for life for two weeks while medical care professionals sat by refusing her water and basic nutrition. To withhold such basic elements of human care and compassion is to cause suffering and death, it would not have ‘prolonged’ it. It should burden our national conscience that a mother and father were forbidden to even wet a cloth and ring it into their dying daughter’s mouth. This is a travesty. It is inhumane. It is grotesque. And it is clearly immoral.
And the reason we are given for this grotesque immorality? Hearsay. Her husband (and at least one other) heard her say she wouldn’t want to live in such a state. But, with all due respect, so what? We are not called to honor such requests. Are we called to kill all who don’t wish to live in some diminished capacity? My wife and I have both agreed that we will not kill each other, even if one of us pleads or requests that the other do so. And we certainly wouldn’t do so through the slow and painful process of starvation and dehydration. God’s command is clear: we are not to take the life of an innocent person. This is a fundamental teaching of the Scriptures. This is the cornerstone of a free and just society.
As a Pastor I will not be a party to anyone’s requests to be killed, no matter how ‘legal’ this request is. Let me ask you, shall we obey God or man in such a matter (Acts 4:19)? What exactly is the ‘right to die’? The ethical implications of asserting and honoring such a right are frightening. How far do we take this? We must recognize that in the case of Terri Schiavo, this ‘right to die’ required that our medical professionals, whom we trust to ‘do no harm’, deprive her of basic care. And we must state over and over again that Terri Schiavo was not dying! She was declared functionally dead (arbitrarily and disputably) because of her severely diminished mental capacity. We must reckon with the horrors of these distinctions regarding life or death based on mental capacity, cognition, or awareness. The fact remains that she was alive! And alive for a good long while until she ultimately died of thirst. She may well have not desired to be alive. Her husband certainly did not wish for her to be alive. We as a society may very well consider such life burdensome. But, it does not give us the right to take it away.
Alex Schadenberg, an ethicist and Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition states the case plainly:
Euthanasia is an intentional act or failure to act which causes a person’s death for reasons of ‘mercy’. If a person is dying or nearing death their body often begins to shut down, meaning the veins and circulatory system are becoming unable to circulate fluids and food. To withhold fluids and food from a person who is dying or nearing death is not euthanasia, but rather accepting the limits of life. Terri Schiavo’s body was not shutting down and she was not otherwise dying. Withholding fluids and food from Terri Schiavo was not an acceptance of the limits of life but rather an intentional failure to act in order to cause her death. This is euthanasia.David Stevens, M.D., Executive Director of the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association, said the following regarding Terri Schiavo’s death:
Today we grieve, along with Terri’s parents and siblings, for a life unnaturally cut short. Terri’s death reflects a failure of a medical system that failed to insist on a definitive diagnosis consensus, a legal system that failed to deliver due process, and a culture that failed to distinguish between artificially prolonging life and deliberately ending life. Removing Terri’s tube was done simply to remove a burdensome patient. Reliable neurologists determined that Terri was not in a persistent vegetative state, which means her starvation and dehydration led to a slow and painful death.
Let us remember the cultural context of all of this. Thirty years ago, at the legalization of the murder of the unborn, prophetic voices warned of this ‘slippery slope’. Today in the Netherlands physicians are ‘rationally’ considering the ‘Groningen Protocol’ that establishes under what circumstances newborns should be euthanized due to severe disabilities and an undue burden on society(
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/983ynlcv.asp).
Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values at Princeton University, advocates killing newborns up to two months after birth based on the arbitrary ‘choice’ of the child’s parents or the state (
http://http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/2900/psai.html. The judicial branch of our government recently ruled, at the highest level, and on the basis of an ‘emerging consensus’ in our community and around the world that teenagers cannot be held morally and legally culpable for heinous capital crimes. We stand idly by while millions of babies are discarded every year around the globe. And this is done with ‘legality’. We are legitimizing homosexuality as a ‘normal’ and healthy behavior. Our society is slowly devaluing life and all that preserves, promotes, and sustains it at every level. We have rejected any universal reference point for truth and morality. The ‘truths’ that govern our society have been upended. We have pursued and achieved as a society that deadly combination Francis Schaeffer warned us of, the combination of comfort and affluence without which life is considered burdensome, painful, and without value. In such a culture, we have no room for untimely or unwanted pregnancies, the elderly, disabled, and profoundly needy. And we certainly have no categories for accepting, living with, and rising above such calamitous conditions as they intrude upon our own personal existence.
All of this indeed should cause us to mourn the slow and creeping moral decay of our culture, especially as this decay reaches into our Christian community. But we should rejoice at such opportunities to proclaim God’s truth and demonstrate his love in a dying age. We don’t trust in human governments, in human riches, or human strength and wisdom. Our hope is in his Word, in his unfailing love, and his unconquerable strength. May God have mercy, may his Kingdom come, and may his people be faithful. Cling to the promises of His Word, and be committed to works of righteousness by His grace.
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?
Exodus 20:13 You shall not murder.
Romans 14:7-8 For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
Matthew 19:18 Jesus replied, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony;
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?”
Proverbs 24:11 Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. 12 If you say, "But we knew nothing about this," does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?
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
Isaiah 1:17 Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
Labels: Bioethics
