The Culture of Death

For decades our culture has been in a battle over the sanctity of human life. Following Roe v. Wade in 1973, all pretenses have been removed that there is a conflict between two opposing worldviews. One worldview believes that there is a God who created us and placed His image upon us so we have intrinsic and extrinsic value from the moment of conception until we breathe our last breath. The other worldview asserts that we are a random accident of matter plus time plus chance, and our value is determined by what we can do and our perceived quality of life.

This conflict came crashing home last week when I had to fly home to Wisconsin for an emergency visit. My mother fell down several stairs and broke both of her legs. Fortunately the accident, although severe, was not life-threatening. However, while we were in the hospital with her keeping her company the day following the surgery, my oldest sister was brought into the emergency room due to severe dehydration and malnutrition.

A brief explanation of my sister’s condition is in order. She struggles with long-term depression. Additionally, she was diagnosed with diabetes about 15 years ago. During the first several years with the disease, she was in denial about it and refused to take aggressive steps to control her sugar levels. As a consequence, she now has cataracts and glaucoma and is almost completely blind. Her kidneys are functioning at approximately 30% and will slowly continue to deteriorate. She also suffers from borderline paranoid schizophrenia. About a year and a half ago, the courts determined that she was not mentally fit to make medical or financial decisions concerning herself, and the court appointed one of my brothers and one of my sisters as guardians.

At times, my sister can be very difficult to treat. She will refuse medicine, or not eat because she thinks the food has drugs in it. This isn’t far from the truth however, because the nursing home did try to put her medicine in her food and she was able to quickly figure it out. She has some serious medical problems, but all of them are treatable and she does not have a terminal illness.

At the hospital she ate at least three meals a day, while I was there, did take her diabetes medicine (but refuses the antipsychotic medication), allowed an IV, and did drink a healthy amount of liquids.

On Friday morning of that week, the doctor, discharge nurse, and another nurse met with my brother, sister, and the rest of the family to talk about an “alternative” to our present treatment strategy. They recommended that we allow my sister to decide for herself if she wants to eat, drink, or take her medicine. They would put her in a facility called “Comfort Care” because they know that her refusal to do this will quickly lead to her death. They would keep her comfortable, but not force any food, water, or medicine on her. They are asking us to allow a mentally incompetent person to make medical decisions we know will quickly kill her.

This suggestion is both morally reprehensible and unethical. Although they are not advocating active euthanasia or even assisted suicide, our doing nothing will quickly have the same effect. I would call what they advocated as “passive assisted suicide.” They know that sitting by and doing nothing will lead quickly to my sister’s death. Fortunately, I was there to confront them on their recommendation and they had no ethical basis to suggest this route.

They tried to argue that her quality of life is lower than many and that she will never have the type of life that she used to have. My sister is able to order her own meals, go to the bathroom on her own, give herself insulin shots, talk about the news, carry on conversations with the family, and laugh at my stupid jokes. She is not in a persistent vegetative state or terminally ill.

It is a scary world when we start evaluating people’s worth based on quality of life. Who will determine if our life has sufficient quality? Who will decide if we should live or die? As more baby-boomers age and we have an insurance and Medicare crisis, will the criteria continue to drop based on available finances? By denying God we have also cheapened the value of life. Ideas that were once considered outrageous and impossible to happen are now being advocated in a small Wisconsin hospital. If this is how far we’ve come in the last three decades, where will we be three decades from now?

Protect the sanctity of all human life; someday the life you protect may be your own.