COMMENTARY: Assisted-suicide dilemma focuses attention on disabled

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.) UNDATED _ The Supreme Court is playing chicken […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.)

UNDATED _ The Supreme Court is playing chicken with a guy in a wheelchair. Amazingly, the wheelchair may prevail.


This just about sums up the scene at last week’s oral arguments regarding physician-assisted suicide, a day that may signal one the most seismic political shifts in recent U.S. history. One, because the core value of modern American life _ virtually unrestricted personal autonomy _ suffered a severe body blow from its most powerful defenders. Two, because the illusion that abortion is merely about aborting unwanted children was torn asunder by the presence of the next targets of the culture of death: the disabled.

Supporters had every right to assume that their cause was unstoppable, for assisted suicide is legally grounded in the Court’s unshakable embrace of the right to abortion. In its Casey vs. Planned Parenthood decision, the Supreme Court declared that abortion was a”liberty”protected by the Constitution, liberty being defined as the right to make”intimate and personal choices”that are”central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Not surprisingly, those words were parroted in a lower court’s finding that the right to choosing when and how to die”is … a choice central to personal dignity and autonomy.” The skids seemed well greased. But something very strange happened on the way to the crypt. Some of the most ardent official supporters of this philosophy came to their senses. Instead of”Go!”they shouted”Whoa!” The Clinton administration, which has supported abortion rights to the point of embracing infanticide, delivered a brief to the court against this form of so-called suicide (when someone injects someone else with a fatal dose of sedatives, suicide isn’t really an accurate term). They engaged in remarkable legal gymnastics to attempt to separate abortion from euthanasia, though the latter is built on the former.

The Court, as reflected in the questioning of Justices Souter and O’Connor, showed that it had awakened to the incredible problem created by the language of the Casey decision. On the one hand, if they follow the logic of their own reasoning, they would have to approve what is, in effect, euthanasia, which would create a public reaction that could eventually imperil the whole line of”privacy”decisions.

If, on the other hand, it is declared that there is indeed a limit to personal autonomy _ that the state has a responsibility to protect life at its most vulnerable stages _ then the very foundation of its abortion decisions is called into serious question. The Court has dug itself a very deep hole and has forgotten to bring along ladders. Its decision is eagerly awaited.

The dilemmas faced by the administration and the Court was compounded by the first time presence (in an abortion-related hearing) of disabled protesters. Up until now, pro-choice activists have succeeded in writing off the victims of their policies _ unborn children _ as strangely non-human. Such a case cannot be made about the disabled, who walk, talk and at last week’s hearing shouted out an undeniable truth: the abortion decisions have laid the groundwork for eliminating any number of vulnerable populations.

Stephen Gold, a lawyer representing the group Not Dead Yet, told USA Today that”people with severe disabilities are petrified they will be next.” The case of Down syndrome children proves Gold’s point. As journalist Tucker Carlson recently reported, it is nothing short of a miracle that these children are born at all. Amniocentesis and other tests have made it possible for every pregnant woman to know whether her baby will be so affected. Ninety percent of the time, mothers who test positive abort the child.

One study found that 25 percent of these patients felt”pressured”to abort by their doctors. In fact, a staggering 77 percent of doctors surveyed favored withholding food and medical treatment to children born with Down syndrome (spell that infanticide).


Money is often the reason.

Dr. Mark Evans of Detroit’s Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy says”amniocentesis costs $1,000, but a reasonably conservative estimate is that it costs $100,000 for just the first year of a Down syndrome child’s life,”a figure that balloons to more than $1 million during a lifetime.

At a time when there are enormous pressures by doctors and insurance companies to save money, the extermination of Downs syndrome children has been taken up as a holy cause. Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders once told an audience that”abortion has an important and positive public-policy effect,”offering as proof the fact that the number of Down syndrome children born in Washington state in 1976 was 64 percent lower than it would’ve been without abortion.

Down syndrome, of course, is only a mildly disabling condition. Affected citizens lead active, productive lives. Many disabled Americans suffer from much more complicated problems. As one told a broadcaster during the protest,”I’m expensive, so I’m better off dead.” Those of us on the pro-life side are, of course, thrilled at last week’s developments. Yet it was also a terrifying sight to watch American citizens pleading for their lives _ not before a gunman, but on the steps of the highest court in the land.

This is where the culture of death has brought us, and I know I am not alone in saying, God help us.

MJP END COLSON

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