Book Release!

Assisted suicide and euthanasia are being legalized or at least debated throughout much of the world today. But should suicide ever be assisted? When someone is suffering and no longer wants to live, and asks another to help him end his life, what is the right response? In this powerful volume in Word on Fire’s Dignity Series, Stephanie Gray Connors engages both the mind and the heart in answering these increasingly urgent questions. Through ten proposed principles to help guide the conversation, On Assisted Suicide will draw readers into the mysteries of joy and suffering, life and death, and the unconditional dignity of the human person. 

Order your copy today!

Please note, for those familiar with Stephanie’s previously published work, Start with What: 10 Principles for Thinking about Assisted Suicide, that book is out of print and On Assisted Suicide is the updated version.

Living with ALS, by Stephanie Gray Connors

Hugh Whelchel

Earlier this year I was on Dr. Sean McDowell’s YouTube channel discussing my book on assisted suicide. One of the listeners, Doug, wrote in a question. He said that he’s an atheist and his sister died while on a feeding tube, suffering with MS, and had been living in extreme pain every day. He said things were so brutal that even family wished for her to die. He also disclosed that she was a Christian. I was asked to comment on a Christian suffering in the way this woman did, and what insight in particular I had to offer an atheist like her brother.

You can listen to my full answer here, which begins at 42:17, but I wanted to draw attention to this part I said in particular:

  “It sounds like,” I answered, “she held to her Christian faith, so I would encourage the listener, who is an atheist, to explore in the silence of his heart, to really think about if she could go through that brutal suffering and still believe God existed and that God was good, what was it that she knew or she felt or she believed that I could at least give some time and attention to? That's what has really touched me as I've studied people who’ve suffered... they not only didn’t get angry at God, they would thank God and love God.”

  And that brings to mind two Christians whose stories I encountered recently. Both men faced the brutal condition of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. One man has already passed away while the other is fighting to live. One of the things that makes ALS so terrible is that while the body’s muscles waste away, the brain stays strong, meaning that with one’s advancing inability to move (or talk), he can become a mind trapped in a body.

  While this is undoubtedly scary, perhaps what is more incredible is the perspective some suffering souls have when faced with this condition. Take, for example, John Geiger.

  He wrote the following:

  Mucus (phlegm) is constantly swallowed by the average person. Due to ALS my swallowing is minimal and my ability to cough and clear my throat is practically nil. So, the mucus builds and lodges in my air passage (I have dubbed this — The Mucus Monster). The effort to clear this and breathe is traumatic. It is a real battle.

  During the five hour struggle [I experienced one day] my brain was still functioning well. A comforting thought kept going through my mind: ‘I am only gasping for air! I am only gasping for air! The important issues of life are settled.’

  I reminded myself I wasn’t gasping for truth — ‘Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

  I reminded myself I wasn’t gasping for love — ‘This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son [Jesus] as an atoning sacrifice.’

  I reminded myself I wasn’t gasping for peace — ‘Peace I [Jesus] leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.’

  I reminded myself I wasn’t gasping for salvation — ‘And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name [Jesus] under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’

  Or consider what John’s son Soren said when John ultimately succumbed to death from ALS:

  His body was failing him, but his spirit remained as strong as ever, it even became more determined. He was focused on the finish line and the prize that awaited him. He would not waiver from the course. And he was a crowd favorite. He captured our attention, and he inspired us. We saw him and said to ourselves, ‘That’s how you run the race.’ And what else could we do but cheer him on, follow his example, and congratulate him on a race well run. Like Paul, he could say, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’…

  ...The marathon my dad ran was a grueling one at the end, but that did not deter him from running hard, running straight, and running to proclaim with his last breath the joyous news that ‘we win.’ Remember 1 Corinthians 15: ‘But thanks be to God! He gives us the VICTORY through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.’

  Let me end by encouraging you with something my father shared with me after he learned that, due to his diminished lung capacity, he only had weeks to live. I asked him if he was scared. He said, ‘No,’ but he wished his family did not have to see him suffer because he knew that what would follow would be hard. But then he reminded me that Jesus even allowed his own family and loved ones to watch him suffer and die. My father’s point was not to compare himself to Jesus, but to remind me that Jesus knows our pain; he knows our hurt; he loves us through it; and he promises that one day sin and death will be no more.

  John Geiger knew something not everyone does. And his ability to embrace the truth of Christianity while suffering profoundly is a legacy of wisdom for us to explore and heed.

  I also think about Hugh Whelchel. As I write this, Hugh is still living with, and fighting, ALS. In March 2020 when he heard the doctor diagnose him with the condition, at the same time he heard God tell him it would be used for His glory.

  That Spring, Hugh wrote this in a blog:

  I began a Sunday school class I taught several weeks ago on ‘God’s Sovereignty and Our Responsibility’ with the following statement:

You will never be able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil unless you believe in God’s sovereignty.

  I believe that God is working out his master plan to restore the whole of creation, in all things, working for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28). At the epicenter of his plan is the event we will celebrate on Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

  And yet, it was days after preaching those words that Hugh would receive the terrible diagnosis of ALS. He went on to say,

  You might think that this revelation has been a great challenge to my faith; if anything, it has reinforced it. That is not to say that I am excited about the turn my life has taken. I hate it. I hate the brokenness of this world now more than ever.

  But as I have turned to 1 Corinthians 15 to study over Holy Week, as has become my tradition, I am deeply moved by the power of the resurrection and the fantastic way in which Paul ends this chapter.

  It seems like Paul would say, ‘Since there is a resurrection, look forward to this glorious future?’ No. He says something quite different:

  Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

  Even with declining health, Hugh writes, “Every morning we need to get up, lace up our shoes and run the race as hard as we can; that is our responsibility. It is God who lays out the path on which we run. We have no control over that, as I was reminded two weeks ago. The good news is that we can confidently run the race because Jesus, the pioneer, and perfecter of our faith, has already crossed the finish line, defeating the powers of sin and death.”

  Hugh reflects more on his experiences here. Like John, Hugh is living through suffering in this broken and sinful world with an attitude that our good God is not to be blamed but instead to be embraced. Both men are shining examples for us to follow.

Reflections on Debating Peter Singer, Part 4, by Stephanie Gray Connors

Should Doctors be Killers?

  At one point in the debate, Peter Singer branched from abortion to euthanasia.  He mentioned that there are some health conditions after birth where he thinks parents, in consultation with physicians, should be able to euthanize their disabled infant.  Euthanasia is a topic that needs its own debate to be adequately addressed.  Because I have already blogged extensively about it here and am releasing a book on the topic at the end of 2020, I will keep my remarks here brief so as to stay focused on abortion.  I will say this, though:

  I suppose to give Peter credit, he was being consistent—but consistently wrong.  Beyond the aforementioned point that parents shouldn’t kill their children, I would suggest that physicians also shouldn’t kill their patients.  I am reminded of a quote by a physician of Quebec’s Jewish General Hospital, Dr. Michael Bouhadana, who said, “A doctor’s job is to cure sometimes, relieve often, comfort always, kill never.”   Or consider the drug company Pfizer: They didn’t want their pharmaceuticals being used in the death penalty.  These reasonable perspectives make their way back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates who declared, “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, no[r] will I make a suggestion to this effect.”

When writing about this Hippocratic Oath, which became commonplace for physicians to publicly declare, anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing… With the Greeks, the distinction was made clear. One profession… dedicated completely to life under all circumstances… the life of a slave, the life of the Emperor… the life of a defective child. … This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish…”

  So what happens, then, when there isn’t a complete separation between killing and curing?  Well, what’s happened historically when those charged with curing become those involved with killing?  In short, the Holocaust, which, as a matter of tragic fact, ended the lives of three of Peter Singer’s grandparents. 

  Holocaust-survivor Elie Wiesel wrote an essay titled, “Without Conscience,” which was published in 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine and read by medical students at UBC in Canada.  Wiesel wrote about the role of doctors in killing, saying,

  “[I]nstead of doing their job, instead of bringing assistance and comfort to the sick people who needed them most, instead of helping the mutilated and the handicapped to live, eat, and hope one more day, one more hour, doctors became their executioners…Why did some know how to bring honor to humankind, while others renounced humankind with hatred?  It is a question of choice.  A choice that even now belongs to us—to uniformed soldiers, but even more so to doctors.  The killers could have decided not to kill.”

  It’s truly bewildering when you have someone, like Peter, who is so close to the brutality and loss that was inflicted by the Nazis who nonetheless holds a view that is similar; namely, that there are human lives unworthy of life.  Lawyer Wesley J. Smith pointed this out in a lecture he gave.  He noted (around 8:22) how the Nazis would kill disabled children.  He mentions how a father of a disabled child wrote Hitler and asked Hitler if his child, who had defective limbs and other difficulties, could be euthanized.  Smith describes how Hitler responded by sending his personal physician Karl Brandt to the father:

  “Dr. Brandt explained to me [said the father] that the Fuhrer had personally sent him and that my son's case interested The Fuhrer very, very much. The Fuhrer wanted to explore the problem of people who had no future, those whose life was worthless.  From then on we wouldn't have to suffer from this terrible misfortune, because The Fuhrer had granted the mercy killing of our son.  Later we could have other children, handsome and healthy, of whom The Reich could be proud.”

  Smith then paralleled the above with an almost identical sentiment written by Peter Singer himself in his book Practical Ethics: “When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.  The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second.  Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.”

  Peter Singer is right to want to reduce suffering and produce a better life for people than they are already experiencing.  Those are goals.  But he is wrong about the means to achieve those goals.  In the debate I made an analogy to someone who wants to go to university to become a scientist to do a great thing like find a cure for cancer.  We can all agree that that is a good goal.  But what if the means the person used to achieve the goal was to bribe a university with money in order to be accepted?  We can all agree that means is not ethical.  So I am not questioning Peter’s desire to reduce suffering.  I am questioning his means to achieve that; namely, allowing homicide.

To read Part 5, click here.

Photo by Online Marketing on Unsplash

Response to the Canadian Government's "MAiD" Consultation, by Stephanie Gray

The Canadian Department of Justice is looking at expanding access to assisted suicide. According to their website, “During the development and implementation of MAID (Bill C-14) in 2016, many Canadians voiced their support for broader access to MAID. As a result, the Government of Canada committed to study a wider variety of medical circumstances where a person may want to access MAID.”

As the government moves forward on this, it has put together a questionnaire for Canadians to fill out on this topic, with a submission deadline of January 27, 2020. I found that the phraseology of some questions implied support for assisted suicide (the term I more accurately use rather than the euphemism “MAiD” for Medical Assistance in Dying). I therefore chose to only answer the questions where I could write a paragraph response in comment boxes. As an aid to help others filling this survey out, or who want more information on an apologetic on this topic, I’ve shared my submissions below:

Comment Box 1: 

I find it troubling that a country which has not legalized the medical killing of prisoners has legalized, and considering expanding access to, the medical killing of patients.  We reject the death penalty but we embrace assisted suicide?  Rather than expanding access to suicide assistance, we should only have suicide prevention.  If suicide is wrong and if homicide is wrong, blending the two together in a type of suicide/homicide (which is what assisted suicide is) doesn't make them right.

Comment Box 2: 

We cannot know today how we will feel about experiences in the future when the future eventually arrives.  The thought of becoming paralyzed today could fill someone with despair; however, if that were to actually occur down the road, it's entirely possible the person would adapt.  Consider Matt Hampson or Henry Fraser, men from the UK who became quadriplegic and have fulfilling lives where they are happy and help others. People should not be aided in suicide.

Comment Box 3: 

Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl said "Despair is suffering without meaning."  The job of compassionate people is not to leave someone in despair, it's not to aid someone in despair; rather, it's to help the person find meaning so as to eliminate the despair without eliminating the person.  Embracing suicide assistance, and expanding access to it, goes against the search for meaning Frankl wisely wrote about.  Civil societies should help vulnerable citizens, not kill them.

*Image source from Unsplash: patrick lanza, @abyss_

ADVERTISEMENT:

Courage: When Boldness Faces Fear, by Stephanie Gray

In the first film from Lord of the Rings, Frodo says to the wizard Gandalf, “I wish none of this had ever happened.  I wish the ring had never come to me.”  And Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

  Speaking to a medical audience of physicians, nurses, and medical students in early November, I used those words to capture the sentiment pro-life medical professionals often feel in this world that is increasingly hostile to a pro-life worldview.  At a time when abortion is widespread, assisted suicide is increasing, and conscience rights are lessening, understandably the pro-life medical professional thinks,

  “I wish none of this had ever happened.”

  And of course, that’s a good wish.  But the reality is—it has happened.  All we have to decide is how we are going to respond.  And now, more than ever, we need pro-life medical professionals to respond with courage, not cowardice.

  The challenge?  Fear.

  Fear can be paralyzing but it doesn’t have to be.  Fear is the tie that actually binds both courage and cowardice.  What separates them, however, is how each responds to fear.  Courage controls fear.  Cowardice is controlled by fear.

  In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., remarked, “There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society…”

  Ah.  A thermometer versus a thermostat.  One tells us the temperature.  The other changes it.  The courage we so badly need at a time like this involves being thermostats.  It involves recognizing the temperature needs to change, and being the ones to change it, channeling any fear we feel into energy that drives change forward. 

  What helps us be bold?  What enables us to courageously change the temperature to the level it should be?  In my presentation I focused on 5 things:

  1)     Know your why

2)     Unleash the power of your mind

3)     Study people who said no

4)     Practise what you preach

5)     Be magnetic

  Know Your Why

  Author Simon Sinek has given one of the most popular TED Talks and he speaks about the importance of knowing the reasons behind the positions we hold.  Pro-life medical professionals need to make sure they know not simply what they believe but also why, and be trained to articulate that winsomely, as that will give confidence, and confidence is an ingredient for controlling fear and driving change.  Clicking here and here and here and here are good places to start to know your why.

  Unleash the Power of Your Mind

Have you ever gone car shopping, perhaps for a white Toyota corolla, test driven one, and then the following week noticed white Toyota corollas everywhere you go?  It’s not that Toyota is following you and planting their cars so you buy one.  Instead, what we think about—what we put in our minds—becomes part of our reality.  There aren’t more Toyotas on the road the week after you test drove; instead, the car is in your mind and you are more prone to notice what you had previously ignored.

If the thoughts we put in our head are what we end up noticing, what thoughts are pro-life medical professionals putting in their heads?  If it’s overwhelming fear of losing one’s licence, of possible complaints by patients, etc., then, well, that is more likely to come to fruition.  If, instead, pro-life professionals focus on being the best doctor, etc., to their patients, of having the best bedside manner, of building an excellent rapport with patients, etc., then not only will they experience the good fruits that flow from that, but if there are complaints there will be an army of patients rising up to defend the beloved physician.  Having said that, I’m not saying we should be naïve and unprepared for challenges or critiques that could come.  I’m saying that we should be wise about the present reality, equipped for possible negative outcomes, while not being obsessed or overly focused on them.  It’s the old adage, “Prepare for the worst but hope for the best.”

Study People Who Said “No”

If you were to ask a crowd of people what comes to mind when you say “Tiananmen Square” they will likely recall this photo. The quiet but steady defiance of one man against an army of tanks is an example for us all.  Sometimes to unjust power structures we need to simply stand up and say “No.”  Come what may.  Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her bus seat in 1955, is another example of the power of saying no.  So is Dr. Halima Bashir. 

She’s a physician from Darfur who wrote the book “Tears of the Desert.” In it she shares her story of witnessing, in an emergency room, the results of genocide.  When asked by media about what she was observing, she spoke.  Several days later, a group of men showed up at the hospital to try to intimidate her into not speaking out again.  Fast forward to when she moved to work in a small village.  One day, people ran to her clinic carrying blood-covered children.  Soldiers had invaded a school and gang-raped children as young as 8.  Dr. Bashir did what she could to respond to what was a scene from hell.  A short while later, as word spread about what happened, UN officials showed up to ask her if the reports of the gang rapes were true.  Dr. Bashir could have been influenced by the intimidation and threats previously directed at her when she spoke up at her other job.  She could have been silent.  But she knew that silence in the face of the injustice was the wrong response.  So she spoke.  But it came with a horrifying personal cost: Dr. Bashir was kidnapped, beaten, tied in a dark room with rats, and gang-raped for days—all because she spoke up; all because she said no to corruption and to cover-up.

Practise What You Preach

What is at the heart of the pro-life message?  What are we asking of women in crisis pregnancies?  What are we asking of patients with illness or disability who don’t know when their life will naturally end?  We are asking them to let go of control.  We are asking them to ride the waves and float into the unknown.  We are asking them to consider the long-term effects of their choices, not just the short-term.  We are asking them to not create a false dilemma where it’s a) or b)—that sometimes c) “none of the above” can be their story.  We are asking them to do the right thing even when it’s hard.  We are asking them to remember that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil. 

And so, for the pro-life medical professional who is scared about speaking out, about the risk to their job, etc., they need to heed those same messages about control, long-term focus, resisting false dilemmas, and doing the right thing.

Be Magnetic

Magnetism is an extraordinary ability, or power, to attract.  Our pro-life professionals may have unpopular positions but if they are known for being experts in their field, and for having compassionate doctor-patient interactions, this will attract people.  Sure, there will be an element of mystery (“I don’t get it; she’s such a great doctor but her view on abortion is so strange”); however, it’s that mystery that will draw people in more.  And we want to draw people in, for it is probing that leads to discovery.

I am reminded of a TV show my mom and I used to watch together, Columbo.   In this mystery series, a homicide detective’s work always leads to a discovery of who committed a crime, but it’s his personality and approach that is magnetic.  He appears simple, and a little odd, but he’s actually quite shrewd.  He asks lots of questions, draws people in, and in doing so, exposes the true criminal.

The person who asks the questions controls the conversation.  When pro-life medical professionals come under fire, they should respond by asking questions of their interrogators, Columbo-style, compelling them to stay in conversation, to think through their claims, and to attempt to defend inconsistencies or problematic positions they hold—which will expose the false worldview for the shaky ground on which it’s built.

Another way to be magnetic is to be real, to not be afraid to show the fullness of your emotions.  Jordan Peterson is an example of this.  Although there are plenty of people who do not like him, he nonetheless has an aura of intrigue, even to his opponents.  He’s an intellectual and academic but he’s known for frequently getting emotional.  In fact, if you search “Jordan Peterson crying” you will get results like this, a 15-minute compilation of his various bouts of weeping. 

When I neared the end of that clip I thought to myself, “What kind of person makes a video like that?”  It seemed like such a strange thing to do.  But the final screen put it all in perspective: “Jordan Peterson gets a lot of unfair and undeserved criticism.  That’s why I created this video, to show that a man that breaks down when talking about the suffering of individuals and the way to overcome it, can’t have any other desire but the deep desire to reduce suffering in the world and to oppose anything that causes its increase….This video is the best way to show to those who oppose Jordan that what they think of him is wrong.  This video has the potential to decrease the amount of criticism he gets, and show that he deeply cares about people.”

It is this blend between the head and the heart, the intellect and the emotion, this fullness of what it means to be human that attracts people to pay attention to him, even when they don’t always agree.  It’s magnetic.

*Image source from Unsplash by Dan LeFebvre.

Suicide: To Assist or Not? That is the Question, by Stephanie Gray

     This past week my newsfeed filled with news of the suicides of two famous people, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain.  It has struck me that there is consensus among the posts I see that these deaths were tragic, that the loss of their lives is something to be mourned, and that the cause of their death—suicide—is something to be prevented—or is it?

     As best we know, Spade and Bourdain died alone, at their own hands.  But what if they hadn’t been alone?  What if their suicides had been assisted?  What if their actions were aided by a physician?  In our confused culture, a subtle change of facts can make the thing we prevent the thing some assist. 

     Which brings to mind an experience I had on a plane last weekend.  I was flying to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to speak at a conference for physicians on the topic of assisted suicide, newly legal in Canada as well as in places like DC, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, The Netherlands, and Belgium, to name a few.  During my flight I read a phenomenal book on the subject by my friends Jonathon Van Maren and Blaise Alleyne: “A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide.” Shortly before landing, a passenger next to me noticed the cover and commented to me, “That’s certainly not light reading!” he said.  In a brief conversation I learned that he had elderly relatives and his wife worked in healthcare.  “Would you like to have my copy?” I asked.  “It’s a short read—I finished it on this flight.”  He gratefully accepted it and promised to e-mail me his thoughts.

     Van Maren and Alleyne have brilliantly distilled the assisted suicide/euthanasia debate to this central question:

     Who gets suicide assistance and who gets suicide prevention?

     When the debate is framed that way it becomes difficult to give anyone suicide assistance—which is the point.  If we believe in human dignity and equality then everyone inclined to suicide should get suicide prevention, not suicide assistance.  Van Maren and Alleyne help explain it this way: A lot of times in the assisted suicide debate people will say it’s about choice, about the freedom of an individual to choose whether she herself lives or dies.  And yet, if we would try to prevent some people’s suicides (e.g., Spade and Bourdain) then it’s not about choice at all.  By trying to stop their deaths we are overriding their choice.  Which means rather than being about choice, assisting with some suicides is about judgment—about other parties making a judgment about whether someone’s life is worth saving—or not, about whether someone is better off dead—or not.  If person X would prevent Spade’s suicide but assist with grandma’s suicide, then person X is making a judgment about each person’s life and not valuing them equally.  And that’s the problem.

     Van Maren and Alleyne write,

     “Most people who support assisted suicide also support suicide prevention. This is The Split Position… [which] considers suicide and assisted suicide as totally separate topics. People who hold to this position have often never tried to reconcile their conflicting beliefs. Our goal in responding to The Split Position in conversation is to attack this cognitive dissonance – to pit their own beliefs in preventing suicide and assisting suicide against each other, and show that The Split Position is a basic human rights violation because it splits people into protected and unprotected classes. Suicidal despair is always a symptom of some other unmet need. The desire to die is changeable, suicide prevention is a human right, suicide assistance is a human rights violation, and our moral duty to the suicidal is to prevent self-harm, never to facilitate it.”

     In articulating why the “Split Position” should be rejected (as well as the position which favors suicide assistance for anyone), Van Maren and Alleyne explain the pro-life position of total suicide prevention:

     “In a society that truly values each and every human life, we have a responsibility to view the desire for suicide as an opportunity to love that person better, and to love that person more. What someone is saying when they express the desire for suicide is that they are in pain, and that they feel unloved. We have a responsibility to respond. From a personal and social standpoint, we need to ask questions such as: What is our duty to the suicidal? Are we responsible to care for and love those who cannot love us back? How can we love this person better?

     “Opposing assisted suicide does not mean a refusal to recognize how dire situations of extreme suffering or how painful the final days of terminal illness can be. It simply means rejecting assisted suicide as an ethical, humane, or life-affirming response to those circumstances. Instead, we propose that treatment centred around the person (rather than ending that person’s life) be implemented.”

     They further observe,

     “John Paul II wrote that ‘the world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love.’  Suffering unleashes love, it demands our creative response, and a response to alleviate suffering, but never to eliminate the sufferer. Our duty to the suicidal is suicide prevention, and even in the face of a terminal prognosis or incurable condition, never to ‘quit’ on someone and give into suicidal despair. Rather, we must work to relieve unbearable suffering and apply our creativity and imagination to improve quality of life, even when it is in short supply, even in a person’s darkest moments or final days.”

     And so, in the wake of the tragic deaths of Spade and Bourdain, let us remember that just as they deserved suicide prevention—not assistance, so do the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the dying.  To further understand why, get a copy of Van Maren and Alleyne’s book today.  It is the best apologetic I’ve read on the subject.  

ADVERTISEMENT:

Assisted Suicide in Select Cases? by Stephanie Gray

If suicide is wrong, why is assisting it right?

     Last week I gave a presentation to teenagers on the topic of assisted suicide and euthanasia.  Afterwards, a student had a question for me: She said she was against euthanasia in the vast majority of cases, but said that, for a minority of cases, if someone is at the end of his life and his last dying wish is to have assistance with suicide rather than continue “waiting” for life to naturally end, shouldn’t we give it to him?

     That question can be answered by asking a series of questions:

     *If we refuse to assist with some deaths, but not others, we are making a value judgment about peoples’ lives—whether we realize it or not.  In other words, we are making the call that some lives are worth preserving and some aren’t.  Who are we to decide that?

     *Moreover, who’s to determine which people would be close enough to death to get assistance with suicide?  Would natural death need to be hours, days, weeks, or months away?

     *Even if we could get consensus on how close to death a patient ought to be to qualify, what if the estimated time is wrong?  My friend’s father was told he had days left to live.  Three years later, he is alive and living back at home.

     *But, for the sake of argument, if we could get accuracy on proximity to natural death, and if the only assisted suicide cases allowed had to be within weeks of natural death, then what harm, in the grand scheme of things, is a few more weeks on earth—especially when compared to the harms of introducing killing as a solution to problems?

     *If the concern is that the person, in his final weeks, would suffer, then shouldn’t we provide palliative care which alleviates suffering instead of eliminates the sufferer?

     *If we argue that we ought to act on someone’s wishes just because he wishes it, we need to be reminded that we humans can have disordered desires.  A case in point is regarding those struggling with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID).  Consider the story of Jewel Shuping, who had her psychologist put drain cleaner in her eyes because she wanted to be blind.  Intentionally maiming a healthy part of one’s body may be the desire for someone with BIID, but isn’t this proof that not all humans’ desires should be acted upon?

     *If we say it’s okay to assist with some suicides, then what if another person, because of this, asks for assistance with suicide out of guilt, out of thinking he’s a burden and that he should do what others before him have done?  He may even claim to want assisted suicide, but deep down he is asking for it out of duty, thinking he ought to because others have done so already.  Since death is permanent, shouldn’t we err on the side of caution?  In other words, if we had to choose between a society that either a) deprives someone of death when he wants it, or b) gives someone death before he actually wants it, which should we pick?  The person being “deprived” of assisted suicide will still get death—just not at his own, personally-calculated time.  But the person being deprived of life will never get that living time back.

     *If we don’t think health care professionals should be involved in terminating guilty criminals’ lives, why do we think they should be involved in terminating innocent patients’ lives?  In 2016, the New York Times reported that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer “had imposed sweeping controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none are used in lethal injections.”  More than twenty other drug companies had done the same.  And the American Medical Association has also raised concerns, stating, “The AMA's policy is clear and unambiguous — requiring physicians to participate in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes public confidence in the medical profession.”  Couldn’t the same be said about health care workers’ involvement in assisted suicide?

     Finally, it is worth considering this insight from palliative care physician Dr. Margaret Cottle:

     In places where euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are legal, there has been a rapid expansion and total absence of enforcement of the so-called ‘safeguards.’ Patients with mental illnesses, early stage eye disease and even ringing in the ears have been euthanized. Children and patients with dementia, neither of whom can provide meaningful ‘consent,’ have also been targets. In one study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2010, the physicians who reported that they caused the death of patients admitted anonymously that one in every three of those patients never gave explicit consent.

      A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2015 reviewed the most recent data in Belgium around hastened death. It showed that 4.6 percent of all deaths in Belgium were euthanasia deaths, while 1.7 percent of all deaths were euthanasia deaths without the explicit consent of the patient.

     While these percentages seem rather small, serious concerns emerge when compared to the mortality statistics in the U.S. There were 2,596,993 deaths in the U.S. in 2013, and 4.6 percent of that is almost 120,000 deaths. This would qualify physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia as the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., almost as many as the fifth leading cause of death, strokes, with about 129,000 deaths...

      Patients do not need hastened death; they need excellent care and a deep understanding of their difficult situations. They need all of us to be present with them in profound solidarity. They need the palliative care resources that the majority of patients and families do not have. It is a major human rights violation to be suggesting death as an “answer” to our society’s lack of commitment to care for our vulnerable citizens!

     Every physician knows it is frighteningly easy for patients to die – keeping them alive is the hard work, and caring for them respectfully and compassionately in the process is even tougher. It takes courage and hope to treat patients, especially when the outcome is far from certain.

     Agreeing with patients that their lives are not worth living and helping them die destroys the trust between patients and physicians, while also revealing a distinct lack of ingenuity in our treatments.

     Real compassion is shown by finding ways to be innovative in our approach instead of just following a set of guidelines, thereby reaching people in despair, both at the end of life and in other circumstances, and making it clear they matter to us, their lives are important and we will be with them in their troubles.

Image Source: Public Domain 

An Encounter with Grace, by Stephanie Gray

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love.” –Mother Teresa

     It was Lent three years ago when a 19-year-old old Canadian teenager set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land—well, that’s how she described her plan to her friends.  But where she was going was not the traditional Holy Land of Israel where Christ once walked; instead, her Holy Land would take her to India where Christ still walked—in the suffering human souls she would serve.  “We all have the desire to help somebody, to do something good,” Grace, one of my recent audience members, said, “but for me it was more that I wanted to meet Christ and have an encounter with him and I knew that’s what Mother Teresa and her sisters found in the poor.”

The Face of Christ

     It was the most solemn day of the Christian calendar—Good Friday, the day where Christ-followers around the world remember the sacrifice of Jesus laying down His life on the cross.  For the volunteers at the Missionaries of Charity’s home for the dying, this is a day off to enter into prayer and reflection.  Grace, however, felt compelled to ask for a special exception: Since the sisters had to serve the sick that day anyway, could she help them as long as she did so slowly and in a spirit of prayer?  They said yes, providing an opportunity for Grace to enter deeply into the “Stations of the Cross” in a way more real than ever before. 

     When one reads of Christ’s torture, we see how some close to him betrayed and abandoned him.  But then there were the others—those like Simon of Cyrene and Mary His mother—who stood by His side and by their presence were a comfort.  This was the example Grace knew to follow.  At one point she found herself kneeling beside the bed of a dying man, slowly and patiently administrating hydration through a dropper; it was then where the words of Christ played over in her mind: “I thirst.”  As she was reminded of Christ dying on the cross with a crucifix on the wall, she knew she was also encountering Christ in the individual lying in the bed before her.  While incapable of eliminating suffering, she did what she could to alleviate it.

     These moments taught that loving glances, hand-holding, sitting with, and gentle patience can bring much peace to those who are suffering.  As Grace remarked, “Regardless of what life experiences a person has had before death, when they go through such great suffering it has a transformative power—when the person allows himself to be loved and cared for by others there’s such a deep and beautiful reflection of God’s love between the sufferer and the one who is suffering with.”

     Some people who arrived at Mother Teresa’s home were extremely sick and expected to die, but with good care they were restored to health.  Others, however, had their last breath—not on a dirty street ignored by passersby, but in a home surrounded by people caring for them.  Grace told me that the few deaths she saw were incredibly peaceful: “I think it’s because the patients knew they were loved.”

     She shared another story about a man who had a severe facial cancer and most of his face was distorted or missing as a result—his jaw was gone, even some of his neck, so that it was just his eyes, the bridge of his nose, and then the rest was bandaged off.  “I had the honor of being able to be with him the last half an hour before he died,” Grace shared (although she didn’t know at the time he was so close to death).  “I remember making eye contact with him across the room for the first time and then going to see him and greet him and that was the moment that bound my heart to Christ, and the dying, and the home for the dying.  She didn’t see the grotesqueness of what cancer had done to his face; instead, she told me that she peered deep into his eyes and was captivated by the beauty of his soul.

Dignity

     We prove that a sick, fragile human being has dignity by how we treat him.  Grace explained how this was upheld at the home for the dying: she and the others would help patients brush their teeth, assist men with shaving, and brush women’s hair.  The fact that the individuals were dying did not mean such basic grooming should be withheld.  Far from it, to do such simple acts was to stress the dignity of the person—to acknowledge that they were worth caring for regardless of their condition.

     I’ve therefore been mystified by the notion of euthanasia advocates that to be denied assisted suicide is to be denied a death with “dignity.” The not-so-subtle implication is that if one dies naturally, entirely dependent on others to feed him, change him, or wipe his drool, that he has somehow lost his dignity.

     A simple dictionary definition of dignity is this: “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed.”  A sick person cannot lose her dignity because she is—in other words, by her existence she ought to be honored, respected, and cared for. 

     Consider that when something is valuable in and of itself we act differently around it—we treat it as its nature demands.  Consider an expensive, one-of-a-kind painting: a museum curator is going to make sure the valuable artwork is “handled with care.”  Or consider a sleeping newborn baby: parents will walk quietly and gently into the bedroom to check on the child, avoiding making startling noises.  When a painting is covered with dust or a baby soils her diaper we do not say these have lost their dignity—rather, we respond in such a way (by dusting the painting and changing the child) as to acknowledge the dignity that lies within.

     So ought our response be to those who are dying—not hastening death, not eliminating the person, but instead being present and caring for the individual with the gentleness and reverence that their dignity inspires.

The Gift of Presence

     When I think of Grace’s experience caring for the dying, I am reminded of a powerful reflection by author and blogger Ann Voskamp, who wrote about her friend Kara Tippetts story of dying from cancer.  Ann wrote,

All the faces of humanity carry the image of God.

What if deciding to end a human life is somehow the desecration of God’s image?

What if a human life is not only a gift of grace right till the end – but is a reflection of God’s face right till the end?

What if we are not at liberty to end or destroy human life, no matter how noble the motive, because all of life is impressed with the noble image of God? 

***

Kara taught us that:

In our efforts to terminate suffering — too often we can be forced to terminate the sufferer — when we were meant to liberate the aloneness of the sufferer, by choosing to participate in the sufferings — choosing to stand with the suffering, stay with the suffering, let the suffering be shaped into meaning that transcends the suffering.

 ***

 The word “suffer,” it comes from the Latin that literally means to ‘bear under’ — suffering is an act of surrender, to bear under that which is not under our control — but beyond our control.

That is why suffering is an affront to an autonomous society:

Suffering asks us to ultimately bear under that which is ultimately not under our control — which proves we are ultimately not the ones in control.

***

She chose to bear under the suffering — because she humbly chose to bear depending on others…. being a community, being a body, being human beings who belong to each other and will carry each other as much as humanly possible.

If suffering is about bearing under — suffering is a call for us all to be a community to stand together and carry the weight of bearing under — only to find that we are all being carried by a Greater Love.

Suffering is a call to come, to show up, to be there. Suffering can be a gift because it’s a call for presence; it’s a call for us to be present. 

      So whether it’s a young mom like Kara dying in Colorado, an old man dying in India, or a suffering soul right in the midst of our own backyard, each of us has the capacity to respond to our neighbor’s suffering as Grace did, with the gift of our presence.

Note: A beautiful book about achieving a good death in the face of suffering is The Measure of My Days.

Comfortable in His Skin, by Stephanie Gray

     It was an encounter science predicted would never happen.   As I sat sipping coffee, my interviewee, a 30-year-old teacher, enjoyed a Root Beer, masking the reality that he normally consumed nutrition by a feeding tube.  But I guess Root Beer isn’t really nutritious.  I suppose if you’re going to ingest it, you may as well let it serve its only purpose—to treat the taste buds.

     Moe Tapp was “supposed” to be dead 28 years ago.  But sometimes people defy the odds.  I learned about his condition two years before learning about him.  Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) is something I tell my audiences about when I speak on assisted suicide and suffering.  I tell the story of Jonathan Pitre, a 16-year old who lives with this excruciatingly painful condition, and talk about how killing people ought not be the solution when we need to kill pain.

     And then, one day recently, a person with EB showed up in my audience: Moe was grateful someone was telling others about “the worst disease you’ve never heard of,” as an EB research association describes it.

     When we subsequently met at an A&W in downtown Vancouver for him to tell me his story, I reacted the way most do when they encounter someone whose skin is as fragile as a butterfly’s wings, whose painful blisters cover a majority of his bandaged body: “Is it okay to hug you?” I cautiously asked.

     “Yes,” he said.  “Don’t worry.  If it would hurt me, trust me, I wouldn’t let you.”  He does, though, have a fear of falling and typically needs assistance walking down stairs to ensure he doesn’t fall—because he has, and there aren’t words to describe the searing pain of blistered skin slamming against hard floor.

     It has been said that “Two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different,” which demonstrates that “Perspective is everything.” That is certainly true when considering Moe’s story.

     One could focus on Moe’s bedtime routine: How he connects his feeding tube so liquid nutrients can be slowly dripped into him while he sleeps. 

     But better would be to focus on what Moe wakes up for: his employment at a high school where he works with students from grades 8-12 who have learning issues of all kinds, whether ADHD, dyslexia, autism, etc.  His own experience of suffering, and rising above it, gives him profound compassion.  He is fulfilled in being needed by his students, who are fulfilled by him connecting with them, by his belief in them and their ability to achieve.

     Moe could be frustrated by the stares and questions he gets about why he looks different, and whether or not he was burned in a fire or car crash.

     But instead he seizes the inquiries as opportunities to raise awareness about EB.  As Moe said, “We won’t find a cure if people don’t care, and people won’t care if people don’t know.”  Moe confidently initiates discussion of his condition every year with a new crop of students.  He encourages their inquisitiveness.  In doing so, he not only teaches them about his condition, he teaches them how to be accepting of one’s difference.

     One could focus on the brief period of anger Moe went through in his mid-twenties.  Blisters in his throat caused such severe pain he couldn’t eat at all by mouth.  He realized then that he would never be able to be spontaneous and just go travelling without doing weeks of research to make sure all he needed could be addressed in a new environment.

     But better would be to focus on the camp he went to in Minnesota where anyone in the world who has a skin disease gathered.  He first went as an attendee and then returned as a volunteer.  Knowing he was part of a broader community of people whose shared experience enabled them to readily empathize with each other gave him encouragement.  Attendees cheered each other on with this philosophy: “If you can do this, if you can overcome, so can I.” 

     One could spend time dwelling on the burden and pain of baths and dressing changes every 2-3 days that cost $1,000/month—and the infections and exhaustion that come along with living with EB.

     But better would be to reflect on how his Catholic faith has sustained him (and become more personal and real for him in adulthood), and how his family and friends have rallied around him and stood by his side.  Moe is a gamer.  He also loves watching wrestling (and dreams of being a commentator for pro-wrestling).  Old school Rock and Roll is his music genre of choice and reading is also on his list of enjoyable activities.

     Moe has never thought of suicide.  But on that topic, and its close relative euthanasia, he said he does understand why people would consider them due to pain—not that he supports them; in fact, he views both as wrong and would instead focus on pain relief and comfort.  He noted that he got swayed against euthanasia when he heard a compelling pro-life presentation; moreover, he realized that to say someone like him should be allowed assisted suicide, but others should not, is to make the judgment that his life is somehow less valuable than someone who is 100% capable.  He said if someone wanted to end their life he would ask why, then see what their life was like at home, at school, etc., and then work to make that person’s life better. 

     “There’s hope, always hope,” he declared.  “I know it sounds corny, but it’s true.  People will always be around you that care.”

     Of course, if such people are lacking, it would be better to introduce supportive people rather than eliminate a suffering person.  Moe himself has reached out to families whose babies are diagnosed with EB.  They first connect over the condition, but remain friends because of a familial bond that forms.

     At the beginning of the interview I asked Moe how he would describe himself.  “Good natured,” he said.   “[A] good dude, pretty chill.”  That definitely captures my observation of him; and when I think of that, plus the full and satisfying life he leads, even with—and perhaps because of—such a debilitating condition, I think about how, in a paradoxical way, Moe Tapp is comfortable in his skin.

Watch Moe's story here:

Moe Tapp is not your average activist. He has a rare genetic condition called epidermolysis bullosa, or EB. Only 1 in 2.5 million people share his condition. Moe wants the world to know about the disease, so he’s participating in the Human Library project part of Vancouver’s PUSH Festival. Watch to find out more about Moe's journey.

Watch a commercial about EB:

To donate, please visit: debra.org/give

See more commercials by clicking here. 

The Impact of Choices, by Stephanie Gray

Photo Credit: Nyx Sanguino, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zuly_Sanguino_is_an_environmental_lover.jpg

     At a recent presentation I gave on euthanasia and assisted suicide, an audience member asked about how to respond to people who say that ultimately the debate is about “choice” and if someone wants to choose to end their own life, it’s their body and their choice; it doesn’t affect anyone else so we should allow assisted suicide.

     I’ve already written here about “our” lives and the responsibility we have toward being good stewards of these gifts.  Now I’d like to reflect on the concept of choice and whether any one person’s choice is really independent of, and without effect on, the other.

     In my first year English class at UBC we were assigned to read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.  His magnificent writing moved me deeply and so many of his statements became quotable quotes for me; in particular I was struck by these words:

     “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

     Choices we make, big or small, positive or negative—these have a permeating influence.  They don’t just affect us.  Like a drop of food coloring in a glass of water, they diffuse into the surrounding area and impact people who, upon being touched, make other choices that in turn affect others.

     Consider smoking.  Besides the obvious impact on others being second-hand smoke, if someone only ever smoked in isolation, the effects on his body because of smoking would still impact others: subsequent lung disease would create a use of the medical system, which would impact society.  If he died early as a result and never accomplished things he would have if he had remained healthy—that would impact society too.

     The interconnectedness of our choices to other peoples’ lives can be seen in a delightfully simple illustration: Several years ago in Newington, Connecticut, a customer at a coffee shop decided to pay the order of the patron behind him.  That led to a chain reaction so that the next one thousand customers paid for the order of the person behind them.

     How true it is that we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

     Or consider Zuly Sanguino, a Colombian woman who has overcome profound suffering: She was born without arms and legs.  Her father committed suicide when she was two.  She was raped when she was seven.  She was bullied as a child and almost attempted suicide at 15.  Now, however, she is an artist and motivational speaker who lives an incredibly full and rewarding life. 

     She said, “It gives me so much happiness to know I'm helping people. One boy was about to take his own life with a gun when he saw a TV show I was on. He realized he had to be brave and decided not to take his life. He wrote to me and we're now really good friends. I get letters from lots of people who say I've helped them through difficult situations.”

     How many peoples’ lives are better because of Zuly’s witness?  Correspondingly, had she committed suicide (on her own or with assistance) how many peoples’ lives would be worse (and even over) because of her absence from this world? 

     How true it is: We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

     Our choices impact people for better—or for worse.  Consider the story of Will, a young man who was killed via the death penalty.  His lawyer, David Dow, recounts Will’s story in a TED Talk: Will’s dad left his mom while she was pregnant with Will.  Will’s mom, afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia, tried to kill Will with a butcher knife when he was 5 years old.  Will was taken into the care of his brother until that brother committed suicide.  By age 9, Will was living on his own.  He eventually joined a gang and committed murder.

     The choices of Will’s father, mother, and brother undoubtedly impacted Will.  There is simply no denying that we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

     So the next time someone supports euthanasia or assisted suicide because such a choice “only affects the people who want to die” we can use the above stories as analogies to show that that simply isn’t true.  Involving medical professionals in Person A’s assisted suicide means Person B may no longer trust her health care provider to properly care for her life.  Person A’s assisted suicide will impact the disposition of the individual who supplies the life-ending drugs or injects the deadly poison because you cannot kill another human being without that leaving a mark on your mind, your emotions, and your interactions with others.  Person A’s legally endorsed assisted suicide will create a climate where Person B asks for assisted suicide too—not because she truly wants it, but because she feels guilted into it by a culture that embraces it and makes her feel like a useless burden.  Person A’s assisted suicide will influence others to respond to their own suffering and obstacles by giving up instead of turning them into opportunities (as Zuly did).  How do I know this?  Because as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has said, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”