by Michael R. Bott (BA)
"The
Nazis had a scheme for killing the mentally insane which
they called 'mercy-killing' or 'euthanasia' ;
apparently, they could hardly wait for the smokescreen
of war to put it into effect. Byan order dated Sept. 1,
1939 - the very day war broke out - Hitler authorised the
Chief of his chancellery, Buehler, and his private
physician, Dr. Brandt, to administer 'mercy killing' to
incurable persons."[1]
Introduction
Euthanasia,
as far as the 20th century is concerned, is no new
thing. Immediately after the Second World War,
revelations about the Nazi Holocaust meant that
euthanasia fell into disrepute. However, euthanasia,
once considered unthinkable, is now widely practised in
the Netherlands. In Australia, in our own part of the
world, the Northern Territory Government has recently
voted to allow voluntary euthanasia.
It
is with macabre irony that the capital of the Northern
Territory is named after the man whose theories have
done much to undermine Christian values - Charles
Darwin. (His 'theory' of natural selection was defined
in terms of 'survival of the fittest,' a
phrase first coined by Herbert Spencer). Practically the
next day after the Northern Territory decision, the
National MP for Hawke's Bay, Michael Laws, announced
that he would be introducing a 'Death with Dignity'
Bill to our parliament.
As
with the abortion debate, the issues are lost in emotive
words and images. Examples of 'mercy-killing' are widely
publicised, the killers being lauded as "compassionate
heroes." Hospital or bedroom scenes of people slumped
in wheelchairs or lying inert covered only in tubes, are
beamed to us via our TV screens, allegedly to evoke
sympathy for the patient's 'right to die.' In reality,
these images are often designed to revolt us and to
encourage us to remove that which is unpleasant to our
sight.
Return to Top
The
Case for Palliative Care
To
be riddled with cancer or to be in a coma, for example, is
said to be less than fully human or lacking in human
dignity. Slowly but surely, as with the child in the
womb, legislators will describe terminally ill people
in ways that dehumanise them. The pre-born baby is
labelled a "foetus" or a "bunch of cells."
How long before the human being firmly in the grip of
cancer or the elderly will be labelled as "post-human"?
Michael
Laws defends his "Death with Dignity" Bill with a
high degree of emotion and attempts to back up his case
with a list of horror stories about people who have
suffered agonising deaths. He recently stated:
I've
witnessed the pain, the suffering, and the intensely
degrading death of a close relative who begged to die.
He could not be helped, and I loathed the cruelty that
denied him the choice.[2]
This
may be true, but most people who suffer terminal illness
need not, due to the advances in palliative care offered
by the hospice movement, end their lives racked with
unbearable pain. Laws, for some reason, has little time
for hospice care, and just dismisses it with the
sweeping assertion: "...hospice care remains
controversial within the health service."[3]
Laws has
such a low view of palliative care that it appears as an
after-thought in his Bill in Section 9(1)(d), where a
consulting medical practitioner need only raise it as an
option before euthanasia. In other words, the terminally
ill patient need not have tried pain management as
offered by experts in that field.
Dr. Libby Smales is
concerned by this because people who are in absolute
agony will often choose death as a means of escaping
their pain. However, when the pain is managed, they no
longer wish to die. Smales, who runs Cranford Hospice in
Hawke's Bay, recalls a man
arriving at the hospice racked with pain and asking how
he could kill himself.
Twenty-four
hours later, his pain was fixed and he said he wanted to
go home. I said, "What about comrniting
suicide", and he said, "I can't believe I said
that." [4]
If
Laws had his way, this man would probably not have gone
to the hospice, his consulting physician need only have
mentioned the idea of hospice-care in passing, and then
asked the patient to sign the form while still in agony.
Forty-eight hours later, he would have been legally
entitled to kill him.
When
discussing arguments against euthanasia, the question
always arises: "If human life is sacred, how far
should you go in preserving life?" Most people in
the hospice movement agree that there comes a time in
the process of dying when the tubes, respirators,
medicines, etc. should be withdrawn and death be allowed
to take its natural course. To do otherwise, would be to
keep the mechanics of the body ticking over for no
apparent benefit.
The
pro-euthanasia lobby sees this withdrawal of treatment
as being no different in kind to active euthanasia.
Liberal humanist and Australian Governor General Bill
Hayden certainly thinks so.
By
consciously deciding not to do something of which I'm
capable and another person's death ensues -a death
otherwise avoidable at that point, I'm actively
collaborating and bringing about that person's death.
The distinction between that and my actively intervening to meet a dying person's wishes to avoid distress
and effect a speedy and dignified end to that person's
life seems to me to be rather narrow at most.[5]
On
the face of it, this appears to be a very seductive
argument. However, treatment for the dying is aimed
mainly at relieving pain, as well as offering comfort
and succour. Separate from this is the occasional need
to step back from some efforts at prolonging life when
such efforts serve only to extend pain and suffering.
The withdrawal of treatment, then, can in some contexts
be seen as being compatible with respect for life. This
is so when we withdraw treatment to allow death to occur
when it is obvious that the given life has reached its
end.
This
is radically different from the intentional killing of
a person out of concerns of mercy or because they are
not dying fast enough. In the first instance, we are
merely allowing an inevitable and natural process to
occur (while still administering pain relief and
providing food and water). With euthanasia, however, the
doctor becomes the agent of death through deliberate
intervention.
Return to Top
The
Freedom to End All Freedoms
It
is interesting that those who champion the cause of
euthanasia often wave the banner of individual
freedom. Laws states :
I
accept that there will be those with strong religious
views that oppose voluntary euthanasia. But my Bill does
not remove their right to dissent or hold that view.
Instead, it allows each individual to make their [sic]
own moral choice ...and, after all, "free
will" is one of God's most fundamental gifts to
humankind.[6]
In
a narrow sense, Laws is correct. Legalising euthanasia
increases human freedom by giving us one further option.
But it is a moot point whether human freedom will
actually be advanced by making voluntary euthanasia
legal. To do so would be a mistake in my view. We live
in an age where health resources are con- tinually being
cut back and patients and their families are
increasingly being asked to contribute financially to
their treatment. This is already happening with
part-charges for operations and long-term geriatric
care.
Once
voluntary euthanasia is legalised, there will be great
pressure placed on the elderly and infirm to exercise
this freedom to end all freedoms. This
"freedom" will be continually standing in
the shadows of every decision to prolong life made by
seriously ill people and their care-givers. This nagging
prodding will be exacerbated by the conscious and
subconscious subtle hints and prods applied to them by
society and perhaps even their own families.
Once
we have established the acceptability of this culture of
death, it will be easier to take voluntary euthanasia a
step further, in the name of compassion, of course. In
Holland, for example,
voluntary physician-assisted euthanasia has been
officially tolerated for some time.
However,
a recent Dutch government report released in 1991 showed
that a large proportion of Dutch patients subjected to
euthanasia, neither asked for it, nor consented to it.
Dr Richard Fenigsen, a retired Dutch cardiologist was
moved to comment:
So
it happens in Holland that when a person is admitted to
hospital which they are supposed to trust, a doctor will
evaluate the quality of his life, will make up his mind,
and without asking the patient whether he wishes this or
not, will, give him an injection which stops the
breathing and the heartbeat. One Dutchman out of 22
dies in this way.[7]
Isn't
it amazing that in an age where commentators tell us
that AIDS or cancer may be our greatest threat, some of
our MPs are actively scheming to make medicine our
biggest killer. It is not surprising that elderly
people in Holland often refuse to be admitted to
hospital. I do not believe that any of us would feel at
ease in hospital if we knew that there was a real
possibility that our examining physician might seriously
consider sending us to the chilly environment of a
morgue, as a treatment option, rather than to the
comfort of a cosy hospital bed.
Return to Top
Euthanasia
and the Bible
In
the West, morality once found its basis in the Bible.
The foundation of Judeo-Christian morality is the
Biblical moral law. Christian respect for life is
expressed in the Sixth Commandment: "You shall not
murder" (Ex. 20:13, NIV, NASB). Laws claims he is a
Christian, yet says he remains " ...unconvinced
that God has any particular role in the exact timing of
one's death."[8] He also claims that voluntary
euthanasia is a personal choice, and a choice that God
has no interest in.
The
Church has usually taught that voluntary euthanasia is
suicide. The Church has also taught that our lives are
not our own, but that they belong to God. It follows
then that in the eyes of the Church, suicide is self-murder. It is therefore prohibited by God in the Sixth
Commandment.
Laws
has problems with this and claims the support of many
(unnamed) modern theologians .Let us now examine the
reasoning that Laws brings to bear against traditional
Church teaching.
Neither
do I embrace the all-embracing command of the Sixth
Commandment -"Thou shalt not kill"
- as a valid
argument against voluntary euthanasia. Then again,
neither does the Roman Catholic Church. The concept of
"iustum bellum" (a just war) certainly
condones killing others and the Church has never opposed
capital punishment. Even now the position of the Church
on the latter issue is ambivalent. So obviously the
Sixth Commandment is not an absolute.[9]
Such
'logic' is unconvincing. The Sixth Commandment is more
accurately translated: "You shall not murder,"
as recognised by many modern translations. It is
obvious that God had a type of killing in mind when He
gave Moses the Sixth Commandment, and that type of
killing is murder. As Dr Gleason Archer says:
...much
confusion has arisen from the misleading translation of
Ex. 20:13 that occurs in most English versions. The
Hebrew original uses a specific word for murder (rasah)
in this sixth commandment and should be rendered
"You shall not murder" (NASB). This is no
prohibition against capital punishment for capital
crimes, since it is not a general term for the taking of
life, such as our English word "kill"
implies.[10]
In
Ex. 21, Moses lists several crimes deserving the death
sentence. This adds further weight to the conclusion
that the Sixth Commandment refers to murder. To say
otherwise is to say that Moses contradicts himself. We
would then have a Bible which prohibits the taking of
human life absolutely and yet which supports capital
punishment. Murder involves the intentional taking of
innocent human life. This is why killing in self-defence is not described as
"murder."
Capital
punishment is the killing of a person guilty of a
capital crime and in no way contradicts God's Law, if
biblical principles relating to evidence and justice are
adhered to. Euthanasia is the intentional taking of
innocent human life and is therefore prohibited by the
Sixth Commandment. This is supported earlier in
Scripture, most notably in the Noahic Covenant (Gen
9:1-17). At the very beginning of this new order issued in at the end of the Flood, God gave a command. It is based on respect for our common humanity as bearers of the Divine "image" (Gen. 1:27). Our postdiluvian ancestors are told to have such a deep
respect for human life, that whoever murders must forfeit his own life:
"Whoever sheds the blood of man. by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man" (Gen. 9:6, NIV).
We see here two points of interest. First, God tells us to equate a human life with a human life, no more and certainly no less. We are not told to execute the husband and children of the murderer, just the murderer. From this we can deduce the equal worth of each human life. Second, the fear of punishment should not be our only reason for not committing murder. God tells us that we must primarily respect the integrity of human life because as humans we bear His image.
On 10 July 1995, Michael Laws is reported in the Dominion (p.2) as having said that:
Christ himself had offered his own life, so could be seen as a supporter of euthanasia.
Laws may not be able to name any of the
modern theologians who support his interpretation of the Bible, but he does claim the support of Jesus Christ. To claim this, Laws must see Christ's death on the Cross as an act of
suicide. According to this interpretation, the Son of God contradicts His own Word; but is this the case? I would answer
"no," for the following reason.
Suicide is the taking of one's own life usually out of self-centred motives. Christ may have placed Himself in a situation where His death was inevitable, but He certainly did not take His own life
(Jn. l0: 17-18). Furthermore, by His own admission, Christ sacrificed His life for others. He stated:
I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me I lay down my life for the sheep
(Jn. 10:14-15. NIV)
This reminds me of my old primary school teacher, Mr Scott. He fought alongside his best friend in the Pacific Campaign against the Japanese. One night a Japanese soldier threw a grenade into the trench where Mr Scott and his friend were resting. Without hesitating Mr Scott's best friend rolled his body onto the grenade and absorbed the blast. As with Christ's death, I would distinguish this from an act of suicide. To claim otherwise, is to demean the nature of a purely selfless act of heroism. With regard to Christ's death, it shows no understanding of the nature of the atonement.
Let us give Laws' argument further
attention. Laws supports consenting physician-assisted euthanasia. Can Christ's death be seen as an example of consenting State-assisted euthanasia? By Laws' own admission, he views the actions of those who assist in the "mercy killing" of others as laudable; no doubt patients who request the assistance of doctors to hasten their own demise, do so likewise. How strange then, in Christ's case, that Judas Iscariot, who assisted in procuring the death of our Lord, should be thanked by Christ with the words:
But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born (Lk.26:24.
NIV)
To support Laws' case, the Scriptures should have read something like this:
"Blessed is the man who helps bring about the death of the Son of Man! For his name shall be great in the world [especially the Netherlands!]."
Alas, for Laws, the Scriptures say otherwise and we read that Christ in no way saw the actions of Judas as meritorious. To claim that Christ supports euthanasia is spurious
reasoning founded on an interpretation of Scripture which is untrue to the Biblical text.
Return to Top
Euthanasia and the Sancity of Life
Let us now consider these conclusions in the light of the claim that euthanasia is justified in the name of human dignity.
The first thing we observe is that euthanasia is a different act to capital punishment. Capital punishment is the punishment for committing a capital crime.
One
cannot punish the violator of human dignity in an act of
euthanasia. Cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, and so on,
are of natural origin and are not caused by human
agents. Such illnesses may attack human dignity , but
are not malevolent in themselves. These illnesses
provide great cause for sadness and may lead to feelings
of pain and frustration. We are, however, not justified
in moving beyond this to believing that just because a
person is ravaged by an illness resulting in a
diminished level of human dignity , that we can step in
and kill them. It is dangerous to establish the
principle that euthanasia is justified in instances of
diminished human dignity. Were this so, we could have in
principle a prima facie case for euthanasing children
whose dignity has been marred by the perverted actions
of child molesters.[11]
One
of the most outspoken supporters of Laws' Bill, not
surprisingly, is the Very Reverend John Murray,
former minister of the Presbyterian Church, St.
Andrew's on the Terrace and former Moderator of the NZ
Presbyterian Church. He defends euthanasia by arguing
that it upholds the sanctity of life:
Living
is the one thing we have and we have to do it as best we
can and when it becomes not life, with no purpose,
there's no sanctity.... I believe people should have the
right to say: "If this is life, I no longer wish it
and am choosing death."[12]
Several
things can be said about this type of argument. Like
most liberals, Murray derives his worth for Man not from
God but from Man himself. This worth is not innate, it
appears to be based on our functionality. For example,
if X is an artist, then X should live his life to the
fullest in painting. X trips on a gay songbook at St
Andrew's on the Terrace and becomes quadriplegic, and
can no longer paint. Because X now finds his life
purposeless, according to Murray he has no life,
therefore he should have the right to kill himself.
Implicit
in this form of reasoning is the idea that the
hopelessly crippled or terminally ill at some stage
cease to be fully human and are reduced to the status of
thing-hood. That is, society regards such people as less
than human and fails to treat them with respect and dignity.
This can lead to their manipulation in a pro-euthanasia
environment. For example, in Holland, end-stage cancer
patients are put in rooms by themselves. Dr Pieter
Admiraal, a leading Dutch practitioner of euthanasia,
outlines the reasons for this:
The
consequent isolation intensifies the loneliness of a
cancer patient, especially at night. Nights are long.
silent and dark. It is normal for patients being
immobile not to sleep very well. An hour without sleep
seems endless. Often the patient is nervous and
depressed, sorrowful about the family he is to leave
behind.[13]
Given
such psychological manipulation, is it any wonder that
many choose death, if given the luxury of choosing at
all.
Since
Murray rejects God as being the basis for innate human
worth, he is forced to adopt the secular method of
grounding the basis of human dignity in Man alone. However, many humanists claim that to assert
that humans
are special just because they are human is an example of
"speciesism" [14]
(that is, favouring one's own
species).
Peter
Singer and Helga Kuhse, of Monash University's
Centre for Bioethics, take the Rev. John Murray's
functionality argument to its logical conclusion,
stating that human worth is derived by individuals from
the possession of attributes such as: rationality,
language ability, self-knowledge and so on. They argue
that because we possess such attributes at different
stages and in different degrees in our lives, therefore
there are stages when animals have more worth than us as
individuals. Newborn infants, Singer asserts, are of
less worth than animals because a grown animal has more
abilities than the newborn child.[15] According to this
reasoning, if you are the financially impoverished
parent of an infant and you are faced with the choice of
either buying food for your child or the family dog, you
should get rid of the baby and feed the dog, because the
dog has a much greater claim to respect than the baby.
Thankfully, while Singer and Kuhse may speak for the
likes of Murray, they do not yet speak for the majority.
Long may this continue.
Return to Top
Living
Wills or Dying Hell?
The
fact is, that given human nature, it is dangerous to put
into the hands of fallible human beings the ultimate
power that one human being can have over another
innocent human being - to cause another's death. It is a
fact that many proponents of voluntary euthanasia also
propose involuntary euthanasia for classes of human
beings whom they consider to be "not living".
Such classes of humanity range from new- and pre-born
children with disabilities,[16] the elderly, mentally and
terminally ill.
Pro-euthanasia
advocates believe tha1 people who wish to be killed,
if they ever suffer illness or injury which prevents
them from making this request, should be allowed to put
this request in writing before this occurs. In
pro-euthanasia jargon, this is called a "living
will" or "advanced directive."
Support
for living will legislation is based on the supposition
that doctors always extend heroic or extraordinary
treatment without a specific request by the patient.
This belief is mistaken. Treatment is often discontinued
when it is realised that such treatment does not aid
recovery. Furthermore, the now widely- accepted
understanding of death as cessation of brain waves,
avoids the need to prescribe unnecessarily heroic or
extraordinary treatments.
People
who sign living wills also run the risk of setting a
trap which in time may spring shut on themselves when
they least want it to. Further, it is hard to tell a
doctor that you wish to change your mind and wish to
choose life rather than death, when you find it hard to
communicate.
Indeed,
you may not even be listened to even if you could
communicate, as with the late Marjory Nighbert.[17]
Miss
Nighbert had signed a living will giving her brother
control over her medical matters. She had asked
specifically not to have a feeding tube inserted if she
became terminally ill. Miss Nighbert, while not having
suffered a terminal illness, suffered a stroke and was
admitted to the Crestview Nursing and Convalescent Home.
Because Miss Nighbert had signed a living will which
stated her prior wish that doctors avoid extraordinary
levels of treatment such as feeding tubes, the home
decided to giver her no food.
Miss
Nighbert went without food for two weeks even though
she had touched one nurse on the arm and asked:
"Would you give me a little something to eat?"
Right-to-life activists took the case to court where
the judge supported the Home's decision to starve
Miss Nighbert to death by deciding that the issue was: "...whether she was 'competent' to ask to be fed."
Furthermore, as Brad Smith, the nursing home
administrator, said afterwards, installing a feeding
tube constituted "extraordinary means of
treatment." Some US cases have even established that
spoon-feeding can be considered beyond normal medical
procedure and can be denied regardless of the patient's
requests.[18]
Little
did Miss Nighbert know that when she signed her living
will she hopped on a roller-coaster ride over which she
had no control. For all intents and purposes, Miss
Nighbert, on suffering her stroke, may as well have
gone to a funeral home rather than a nursing home.
Return to Top
Conclusion
Euthanasia
is no new thing. It was taken up enthusiastically by
Nazi Germany. Closer to our own time, it has been
extremely popular with doctors in the Netherlands.
However, it is in the Dutch example that we chiefly see
the dangers of allowing euthanasia. An increasing number
of people are put to death without ever asking for it.
Health professionals and judges become the arbiters of
who may and who may not live. As with Miss Nighbert,
these decisions are barbarous. In the US constitution,
people on Death Row cannot be executed using a
"cruel and unusual" punishment. The elderly or
infirm, innocent of any capital crime, now face
the "cruel and unusual" punishment of death
through starvation even if they ask for food.
Michael
Laws, in defending his Bill, claims he is a Christian
and states that the Sixth Commandment does not
prohibit euthanasia. We are told that many modern
theologians agree with him. Unfortunately, Laws does not
even name a single such theologian. Furthermore, if
Laws had taken the time to examine a reliable Old
Testament commentary, he would see that the word
translated by the KJV as "kill" is actually
rasah, which is correctly translated "murder" by
the NIV and NASB. Euthanasia, as has been shown, is a
type of murder and is therefore prohibited by Scripture.
The
Very Rev. John Murray, the former Presbyterian
Moderator, supports euthanasia on the grounds that
individuals have the right to decide if their lives are
worth living. Like most liberals, Murray does not derive
the basis for human dignity from the Bible. In the
Bible, all human beings are to be respected regardless
of position or ability because they are made in the image
of God (Gen. 1 :27).
Instead,
Murray opts for a humanistic basis for human dignity.
This can lead to the position taken by Singer and
Kuhse, that newborn babies (especially those with
disabilities) have less worth than some animals.
The
possibility that euthanasia may be legalised in the
future is trumpeted as an advance in human freedom. In
reality, individuals making this choice may be pushed
into choosing death by fiscal or emotional pressure.
Ideally, the message any civilised society should be
sending to its members is: "Every human being is of
value, regardless of ability. You have a right to be
here." As seen with the Netherlands example, this
message is changed to: "If you are elderly or
infirm, we wouldn't mind disposing of you."
If
euthanasia becomes an option, in our user-pays
environment, there will be increasing pressure on the
dependent or disabled to justify their staying alive. In
closing, it is appropriate to give the last words to the
late Michael Edwards.
He
was a man who in his last days, despite being riddled
with cancer, found life to be worth living thanks to the
excellent palliative care in his hospice. He had this to
say:
We
feel wanted ...we cannot now give to society , but we
are still members of society. We know our families and
the staff are together in making our last days ones of
contentment and serenity. To grant any exceptions to
total concern for all will inevitably lead to more and
more exceptions, until there will be no need for a
hospice.[19]
Return to Top
Appendix:
The Slaughter of an Innocent
At
7:55 on Saturday, 28th June, 1980, John Pearson was born
at the Derby City Hospital, England. His birth was
normal with no complications. He was almost
immediately diagnosed as suffering from Down's
Syndrome, that is, he was a Mongol. However, he was
apparently healthy and was given a high APGAR rating,
indicating excellent prospects for survival.
The
child's mother, on being told that he was Mongoloid,
rejected him. Dr. Leonard Arthur, the senior consultant
physician at the hospital, was called to examine both
the mother and the baby at about midday. After discussion with the mother he wrote on the case notes:
Parents
do not wish the baby to survive. Nursing care only.
He
prescribed DF 118 (dihydrocodeine) to be taken orally at
four hourly intervals. The child was given nursing care
only and no food except water, to which, at the
discretion of the nurses, was to be added the drug
variously described as a sedative and an analgesic (a
chemical which deadens pain). The baby was placed in a
side ward.
Between
midday and 2.00 p.m., his condition began to
deteriorate. This deterioration continued and by 6.00
p.m. on June 28 John Pearson was having difficulty in
sucking and his breathing was becoming laboured. By 9.00
p.m. he was critically ill and a nurse arranged for him
to be baptized.
At
midnight a Dr. Maclnnes looked in. He was apparently the
only doctor to see the child. He made his observation
because he wanted to know when the child died so that he
could take specimens from him. At 9.00 p.m. on June 30,
the child was very restless and was struggling to
breathe by moving his arms upwards. A gastric feed (of
water and dihydrocodeine) was given by a tube and a
nurse caused him to pass water by pressing on his
bladder.
At
5:10 a.m. on Tuesday July 1, 69 hours after his birth,
John Pearson died in a nurse's arms.[20]
Return to Top
References
-
Gideon Hausner. Justice in Jerusalem (NY: Holocaust
Library, 1968), p.90. Return to text
-
Evening Post, 8 August 1995, p.
7. Return to text
-
Michael Laws. The Case for Death with Dignity 18 July
1995 (reproduced on pp. 3-4 of this issue of Apologia).
Return to text
-
Evening Post, 9 August 1995, p. 21. Return
to text
-
Evening Post, 22
June 1995 p. 11. Return to text
-
Laws. Return
to text
-
Richard Fenigsen, M.D., Ph.D. "A Gentle Man Speaks
of Fear." Fidelity (June 1994). Return to text
-
Laws. Return
to text
-
Laws. Return
to text
-
Gleason L. Archer. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1982), p. 121.
See also John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck. The Bible
Knowledge Commentary (USA: Victor, 1992), p. 140.
Return to text
-
In fact, Laws appeared on the Holmes TV programme, and
supponed euthanasia for a child with continual fits. The
Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Jim Bolger, in the recent
parliamentary defeat of Laws' bill, drew attention to
this. Mr Bolger said that Mr Laws later apologised, but
the PM rightly added: "If you don't believe it, you
cannot say it. If it was that repugnant to you, the
member promoting the bill, as it is to me, you could
never say it." Return to text
-
Evening Post, 9 August 1995, p. 22. Return
to text
-
Cited in
Humanity.
April 1995, p. 4. Return to text
-
Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer. Should the Baby Live?
(Oxford University Press, 1985) Ch. 6. Return to text
-
Kuhse and
Singer. Return to text
-
Kevin Andrews. "Life and Death Issues Surrounding
the Newborn." In The Care of the Dying. The
Proceedings
of the Eighth major Conference of the Guild of St Luke, SS
Cosmas and Damian, Wellington, held at Solway Park, Masterton,
20-22 November 1992. (Wellington, NZ.: A.D.W.
Pastoral Office, 1993), p.
50. Return to text
-
Humanity, July 1995, p.8. Return
to text
-
Ibid.
Return to text
-
Ibid, p. 5. Return
to text
-
Andrews. Return to
text
2003 Wellington Christian Apologetics Society (Inc.) All Rights Reserved.
Previously published in
Apologia (The Journal of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society)
vol. 4 no.2 (1995): 5-12
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