Showing posts with label death with dignity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death with dignity. Show all posts
Monday, July 17, 2017

Does Pro-Life Language Regarding Charlie Gard Prove the Pro-ChoiceArgument?

Does Pro-Life Language Regarding Charlie Gard Prove the Pro-Choice Argument?



Over the last few days the Charlie Gard situation has ignited into an inferno within the pro-life community. 

Arguments by those who support GOSH, because they believe his dignity is best protected by allowing him to die "peacefully" by removing his ventilator, make up one camp. The other side of the debate is made up of those who are outraged at the idea of "death with dignity" due to strong pro-life positions on assisted suicide and euthanasia.

This is being argued out on both sides in terms of "parental rights", and how far they extend when you've got a gravely ill child. Those who support GOSH have come out strong for hospital personnel and medical professionals, who they believe have the better handle on the situation. Those who support Charlie's parents are crying foul on terms of traditional beliefs when it comes to parents and children.

In the middle of this maelstrom comes a strong warning from some pro-lifers who have noted our language in terms of "who decides" is eerily similar to the pro-choice camp: in pushing this as solely a parental rights issue, our rallying call has become, "parents have the ultimate authority over their children's life and death", when it comes to serious illness and birth defect. We are setting a dangerous precedent here, as we are using the pro-choice language of our opponents to justify overturning the court order which will end the life of Charlie Gard. 

I myself fell victim to this rhetoric, and while I still hold my position that when it comes to a medical decision a parent has authority over medical professionals, I would like to make one clarification: a parent should not ever have the option of removing life support from a child who is still living, which is the case with Charlie Gard. 

Charlie Gard is alive, and he is fighting. 





What does this mean? 

That he has a right to potentially life-saving treatment not because his parents have decided they would like to pursue it, but because he is a human being with inherent value. This speaks to the core of our pro-life mission at Save the 1: we fight for the exceptional cases where even pro-life persons may waver on their life ethics. We do this because we understand the question isn't whether a woman should have the right to end the life of a child, but rather, whether a pre-born child is human and deserving of equal protections under the law. 

Because the questions which seem to be causing so much division revolve around potential pain and suffering, any conversation must include information about this. 

There is absolutely no definitive proof Charlie Gard is suffering, and furthermore, with the extent of damage the hospital is claiming, there are legitimate medical arguments to dispute the idea that he's in pain. Without going into too much detail and getting sidetracked: the type of damage they are claiming he has would also affect his body's ability to process pain. His condition leaves him unable to feel pain, as the relevant proteins needed for this process are missing. 


What people are perceiving as pain is really scary photos of him on a ventilator- but when we put aside our emotions on this one, reality tells us people can live full lives while on a ventilator. 

Back to the central issue: Even if he were capable of feeling pain, pain is treated with palliative care, not death. Charlie Gard's case is less relevant in terms of whether the suffering individual should be euthanized (by either doctors or parents), and much more relevant in terms of the rights of the disabled people to live to their own potential vs. the potential society decides to set for them, in terms of quality of life.

In addition to this, Charlie Gard's parents have said in interviews that critical information may have been withheld from the court. They have clarified there are many more physicians who are now in consensus with them and the physicians who hope to treat him in the US. 

These doctors are working for Charlie. Not his parents, not GOSH, and certainly not the pro-life superstars who've shown up at his bedside (no insult intended).

These doctors recognize a possibility for success with treating Charlie Gard, and for the sake of all humanity, maybe we should too. 

It's not about who has the right to decide how he's treated, but about whether a desperately ill child has the right to potentially curative medication. We believe he does, and we are firmly in 
Charlie's camp on this one- not because we believe his parents have the right to decide whether he lives or dies, but because our little niche of the pro-life stratosphere is home to the most desperate of cases- children whom the rest of the pro-ilife world sees only as bargaining chips. We've seen the power of life in little Faith, and Christian, and Angela, and once you see those tiny miracles, it's impossible to believe our God may have a bigger plan for Charlie Gard. 

We hope you too support Charlie Gard- not because you put yourself in his parents shoes, or you believe the government health system has overstepped its boundaries. We hope you support Charlie Gard because he deserves this chance to live to his potential, whatever that potential may be.

 BIO:  Sarah St. Onge is a wife, mother of 4, step-mother of 2, and pro-life blogger for Save The 1.  She blogs on faith, grief, loss, and pro-life issues pertaining to continuing a pregnancy after a lethal anomaly has been diagnosed, at www.shebringsjoy.com.

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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

ABANDONING HEALING FOR KILLING, by Jesi Smith


Brittany Maynard picked the day she is going to die, November  1st.  A 29 year old beautiful , well- spoken woman shared with the world that due to her terminal brain cancer she moved to Oregon so that she could have a legally authorized ‘death with dignity’ 

(http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/26724752/terminally-ill-womans-wish-raise-awareness-about-dying-with-dignity).  She will end her own life “…using medication prescribed by her doctor.” Like many others, I grieved upon hearing this woman’s story about her cancer, but I was also horrified by the public admission that she plans to commit suicide.  How can so much compassion be combined with killing?  It is only a medical pseudoscience that offers death as a cure.  

Clothed with deceit the term ‘death with dignity’ builds a medical bridge to paid, licensed, well groomed doctors in white coats becoming the professional contract killers of the sick. This will only encourage the theory of biological perfection to become routinely enforced by giving permission to doctors to destroy life. Over every hospital who wants their patients to have ‘death with dignity,’ should hang the signs, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” and “If we can’t heal you, we’ll kill you.”  What if killing becomes just a regular part of their ‘care’?  Maybe we should free all the hospital beds of the chronically sick. Goodbye chronic back pain patient, goodbye chronic headache patient, and goodbye to the development of cures and treatments along with them. This opens the door to a  fanatical doctor with vile intentions  to cure the world of all the undesirable sick people, people he thinks are inferior in some way…incurably so…and uses the ‘death with dignity’ as his deadly disguise for murder.

We do not need the medical community to become the arbiters of death.  Changing their practical science of healing and hope into a group of medical killers is to “abandon healing for killing” as journalist Gitta Sereny writes in her book “Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder.”  There must continue to be a firm boundary between medicine and murder.

Why make our medical industry carry the staggering burden of needless bloodshed for those who are already dying? After years spent in study to help the human condition, we turn the doctors knowledge of the caloric chart into a how-to- guide to starvation and the skill of prescribing medicine to help someone get better into an overdose of death.  If we are being brutally, honest wouldn’t a bullet be faster and cheaper than a medically sterile and sanctioned version of death? How is it possible that our conversation has changed from how to treat and help the sick to which method would be suitable for killing the sick?

Many people have examples of a loved one dying unexpectedly or a friend who beat the odds of a doctor’s diagnosis of eminent death. The prediction of death is not an exact science. It would be terribly disturbing to have a doctor mistakenly make their decision to put to a patient to death by relying on outdated research in the rapidly changing field of medicine. The doctor’s lack of knowledge could kill the patient without cause. Eventually, the U.S. may decide to widen the umbrella of the sick that are able to commit medical suicide to include children under 18 like Belgium. Society may even start deciding for those who are mentally handicapped that they too are better off dead under the mistaken notion that because they cannot do what we do they would prefer to die. No one will be safe in the presence of the medical professionals when they have such power over the life and death of their most vulnerable patients.

‘Death with dignity’ will never be accomplished by any in the medical field.  Interestingly Noah Webster, in his American Dictionary of the English Language, included this in his definition of dignity, “the man who deliberately injures another, whether male or female, has no true dignity of soul.”  None of us can find dignity in death for it can only be found by living a life of true honor and nobility.


BIO:  Jesi Smith and her husband Brad are pro-life speakers with www.SaveThe1.com from Rochester Hills, Michigan. This blog originally appeared at www.keepingourfaith.com  
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