As 200 Roman Catholic bishops arrived in Seattle—one of the
most secularized and un-churched areas of the country—with a conference agenda
covering controversial issues, some drama was to be expected.
The United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, meeting
June 15 to 17 in Bellevue, Washington, had a full schedule, with two
issues in particular in the media’s focus: the Charter for the Protection of
Children and Young People, having to do with clergy sexual abuse issues, and a
new USCCB document on assisted suicide, having particular ramifications for
Washingtonians, whose state became the second to legalize the practice in 2008.
Members of the media were suggesting ahead of time that discussion about clergy sexual abuse would undermine
the credibility of the conference, distracting it from other issues at their
June meeting. News coverage centered almost exclusively on sexual abuse before
the bishops arrived.
There were a few members of the Survivors Network of those
Abused by Priests talking to the media outside the hotel on opening day. And a
brief flurry of activity occurred when the hotel discovered that a room
reserved under the name of a PR firm was actually to be used by the
pro-assisted suicide organization Compassion & Choices. The hotel alerted
security guards who patrolled the hallways outside the USCCB’s meeting
rooms.
But the business of the conference pressed on without
further interruption.
Addressing assisted suicide
The assisted suicide policy statement, titled “To Live Each
Day with Dignity,” was approved overwhelmingly by the bishops on June 16. Cardinal
Daniel DiNardo, from the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and chairman of the Committee
on Pro-Life Activities for the USCCB, said before the vote was taken: “If there
are any indications as to the importance of this document [to those trying to
legislate assisted suicide], we know they are watching us very closely.”
At a press conference following the document’s passage, it
was not surprising that DiNardo was asked by Ann Rogers of the Pittsburgh Gazette the question du jour: “With all the interest in the
Charter [for the Protection of Children and Young People], are you at all
concerned that all this attention on the other issue is detracting from your
ability to speak out on the assisted suicide document?”
Cardinal DiNardo responded: “I hadn’t really thought about
this until you just now mentioned it. There has been great interest, especially
by local state Catholic conferences around the country, [asking] as to when
this policy statement [on assisted suicide] will be ready.”
“I don’t think we have suffered from any delusions as to the
importance of this effort,” he added. “So in regards to your question, I think
that what we are doing on this public statement has drawn quite a bit of
interest.”
DiNardo explained that the
statement would now be available on the USCCB website, at www.usccb.org/toliveeachday,
“which will have a number of resources for use by state Catholic conferences,
and can be used at both the diocesan and parish levels.” He also mentioned, “We
are going to do a webinar with the National Catholic Partnership on Disability
[in September 2011].”
The cardinal explained that “the purpose of all this is to
engender a further discussion concerning an analysis and understanding of the
human person.”
While the bishops were meeting down
the hall, Compassion & Choices’ press conference began. The group’s national
president, Barbara Coombs Lee, was adamant about her organization’s “interest”
in what the USCCB was discussing. In an interview with Allen Schauffler of NBC affiliate KING 5 TV, Coombs
Lee stated: “Every time a bill to legalize the medical practice of ‘aid in
dying’ comes before elected representatives, the political arm of the Catholic conference
is there to vigorously oppose it.”
As the organization typically does
at its press events, Compassion & Choices introduced a possible future
recipient of “aid in dying,” Dr. Richard Wesley. Confined to a wheelchair and
suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
disease, Wesley spoke briefly and with
difficulty, saying simply: “It is my life. It is my death. And it should be my
choice.”
As Cardinal DiNardo stated later, the USCCB’s new policy
statement will be “a way of educating people who might have had the language of
groups like Compassion & Choices foisted on them about assisted suicide,
which is neither compassionate nor a good choice.”
Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain,
hosting the USCCB meeting in his archdiocese, said that the bishops’ policy
statement on physician-assisted suicide will engage the Church publicly with
lawmakers and other interested parties on the issue.
Archbishop Sartain said that the
bishops at the national level, and in their own dioceses, will be producing “more
and more pastoral kinds of responses” to educate people about the implications
of legalizing assisted suicide and the false assumptions that the law creates.
“Obviously, one of the reasons we in Washington were so supportive of the
document is that we don’t want what happened here to happen in other states,”
he said.
“So many pressures are exerted on
the sick already,” the archbishop said, “and the stress and sadness and the
pain of being ill sometimes can be compounded by the very false feelings that
when you’re ill, you’re a burden to your family, you’re a burden to society.”
“I never forgot what Pope John Paul
II said when he himself was very ill: ‘A human person is never a burden,’”
Archbishop Sartain said.
Eileen Geller, hospice registered nurse and founder of Seattle-based
True Compassion Advocates, said that Compassion & Choices appears “not to
get it.”
“Pro-suicide activists like Compassion & Choices, who
market doctor-prescribed suicide to vulnerable seniors, encourage abuse and
discrimination, not choice,” she stated.
Through her hospice work and her organization, Geller
receives “frequent calls about seniors and people with disabilities who feel
forced to consider assisted suicide because of emotional coercion or financial
difficulties.”
Since Oregon legalized assisted suicide more than a decade
ago, “that state’s suicide rates have climbed steadily, with Oregon now having
one of the highest senior suicide rates in the country,” Geller said, adding: “It
shouldn’t come as a surprise that promoting suicide and assisted suicide has
negative consequences for society, for people of all ages, who feel ill,
vulnerable, or discouraged.”
“The bishops’ policy statement speaks eloquently to the need
of saying ‘no’ to assisted suicide while saying ‘yes’ to those in need of
compassionate support,” Geller stated.
“The Catholic Church—one of the largest providers of care for
the poor, elderly, and uninsured—is welcome in joining all the advocates of
true compassion involved in disability rights, in faith communities, among
physicians and health care workers, and millions of Americans opposing assisted
suicide while supporting those at risk,” she said.
What the document
says
The bishops’ document begins with a statement of hope for
every human being, that each may live “in a manner worthy of our human dignity,”
spending his last days “in peace and comfort, surrounded by loved ones.”
The document lists the common fears people have during those
final days—of being kept alive “past life’s natural limits by burdensome
medical technology,” experiencing intolerable pain and suffering, losing
control over bodily functions, lingering with severe dementia, being abandoned,
or becoming a burden on others.
The
antidote to these fears, the document explains, is a caring community that “devotes
more attention, not less, to members facing the most vulnerable times in their
lives…assuring them of the love and assistance of others…and their inherent
worth.”
Medicine
plays an important role during this time, especially “when a cure is not
possible,” by providing palliative care, “alleviating pain and other symptoms
and meeting basic needs.”
Respect
for the seriously ill “does not demand that we attempt to prolong life by using
medical treatments that are ineffective or unduly burdensome,” the document continues, or that we “deprive
suffering patients of needed pain medications out of a misplaced or exaggerated
fear of shortening life”—an extremely low risk “when medication is adjusted to
a patient’s level of pain.”
“In
fact, severe pain can shorten life, while effective palliative care can enhance
the length, as well as the quality, of a person’s life, alleviating fears and
problems that lead some patients to the desperation of considering suicide,”
according to the policy statement.
Good
care allows patients “to devote their attention to the unfinished business of
their lives, arriving at a sense of peace with God, with loved ones, and with
themselves. No one should dismiss this time as useless or meaningless.”
The
policy statement reviews the history of assisted suicide in this country,
especially in Oregon and Washington, and ongoing attempts to pass similar laws
in other states. It notes that in 1997, the US Supreme Court firmly rejected
the idea that there was a constitutional right to assisted suicide. It upheld “state
laws against the practice as legitimate safeguards for innocent human life and
the ethical integrity of medicine.”
“With
expanded funding from wealthy donors, assisted suicide proponents have renewed
their aggressive nationwide campaign through legislation, litigation, and
public advertising, targeting states they see as most susceptible to their
message,” the document states. “If they succeed society will undergo a radical
change.”
The
bishops’ document points out that since the word “suicide” upsets many people, pro-assisted
suicide groups and individuals have pushed the use of euphemisms such as “aid
in dying” to make the issue more acceptable, even changing the original name of
the most prominent organization promoting the issue from the Hemlock Society to
Compassion & Choices.
“Plain
speaking is needed to strip away this veneer and uncover what is at stake,” the
policy statement urges, “for this agenda promotes neither free choice nor
compassion.”
The bishops’ statement outlines and
defines three examples of “the illusion of freedom” inherent in the philosophy
of the pro-death movement. First, medical professionals recognize that people
who are suicidal commonly suffer from a mental illness or clinical depression.
They can become incapable of seeing answers to their problems, believing death
is their only option.
Even
though Oregon’s and Washington’s assisted suicide laws suggest an evaluation of
a person appearing to be mentally ill or depressed before prescribing lethal
drugs, “such evaluations are rare. But even if the person is discovered to be
depressed, it does not necessarily prevent prescribing the drugs, with no
evaluation done at the time the drugs are taken,” the bishops note.
There
appears to be an effort to “avoid real scrutiny of the process—or any
inquiry into whose choice is served…all reporting [being] done solely by
the physician who prescribes lethal drugs.”
Once
the drugs are prescribed, “the law requires no assessment of whether patients
are acting freely, whether they are influenced by those who have financial or
other motives for ensuring their deaths, or even whether others actually
administer the drugs,” the statement emphasizes.
“Here
the line between assisted suicide and homicide becomes blurred,” the bishops
state.
The
document underscores the fact that people considering assisted suicide are
vulnerable, needing care and protection.
“Offering
them lethal drugs is a victory, not for freedom, but for the worst form of
neglect,” especially with the increasing cases “of elder abuse and other forms
of mistreatment and exploitation of vulnerable persons.”
The
second distortion of freedom is the fact that the elderly and ill may be “unduly
influenced by the biases and wishes of others”; the deaths of those expected to
live less than six months are frequently viewed as good and acceptable.
“By
rescinding legal protection for the lives of one group of people,” the bishops
write, “the government communicates the message that [such individuals] may be
better off dead.”
“The
excessively high premium our culture places on productivity and autonomy,” tends
to discount the lives of those who have a disability or are dependent on
others. Therefore, assisted suicide appears to some as “a reasonable response
to what they agree is a meaningless life.”
“The
assisted suicide agenda promotes a narrow and distorted notion of freedom by
creating an expectation that certain people will be served by being
helped to choose death,” the bishops conclude.
Third, assisted suicide is a threat
to authentic human freedom as understood in the Declaration of Independence,
which states that “each human being has certain inalienable rights that
government must protect.” Our founders intentionally placed life before liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. Life “is a basic human good and the condition
necessary for enjoying all other goods,” the document emphasizes.
“One
cannot uphold human freedom and dignity by devaluing human life.” Taking one’s
life “is a supreme contradiction of freedom, a choice to eliminate all choices.
A society that devalues some people’s lives, by hastening and facilitating
their deaths, will ultimately lose respect for other rights and freedoms.”
In
countries where personal autonomy is used to justify voluntary assisted suicide
and euthanasia, “physicians take the lives of adults who never asked to die,
and newborn children who have no choice in the matter. They have developed
their own concept of a ‘life not worth living,’” completely eliminating a
patient’s choice.
The
bishops point out that leaders of the “aid in dying” movement in our country “voiced
support for ending the lives of people who never asked for death, whose lives they
see as meaningless or as a costly burden on the community.”
The “better
way,” according to the USCCB’s policy, is for our society to “embrace what Pope
John Paul II called ‘the way of love and true mercy’—a readiness to surround
patients with love, support, and companionship, providing the assistance needed
to ease their physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering…anchored in
unconditional respect for their human dignity, beginning with respect for the
inherent value of their lives.”
“The
choices we make together now, will decide whether this is the kind of caring
society we will leave to future generations,” the statement concludes. “We can
help build a world in which love is stronger than death.”
A caregiver’s tale
At a
press briefing at the USCCB conference, Dorothy Coughlin, director of
the Office for People with Disabilities for the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon,
discussed her experience caring for an older sister who is profoundly disabled.
Coughlin spoke with great emotion
about a trip to the emergency room with her sister, and how it convinced her,
more than ever, that we must all be “protectors” for the most vulnerable among
us. It was the language used by an emergency room
physician in diagnosing her disabled sister that haunts Coughlin.
“In cases like this, I revert to
the approach of veterinary medicine,” he told her.
He determined “there is no
diagnosis that can justify admitting her,” and discharged her as suffering
merely from “back strain.” In obvious physical agony, her sister was then
rushed by ambulance to another hospital, where she was discovered to be
suffering septic shock.
This time, with attentive doctors
and medical staff correctly diagnosing her critical condition, Coughlin’s
sister was immediately prepared for surgery. Twenty-one days later, she left
the hospital to begin a months-long recovery.
Coughlin warned, “The risk is great in the care
offered by medical professionals when the once-assumed safeguards, that respect
the life of every person, are no longer assured for many vulnerable people.”