Healthy Living

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Is Euthanasia Really Necessary?
©
by

Stephen A. Peterson


Not a day goes by that we as Americans and Christians are not faced with national, state and local issues with regards to euthanasia and the attempt to make it legal across the land.

For all of us, this is an important moment in the history of health care. Will the doctors and other licensed health practitioners become authorized by society to kill people when he or she cannot heal a person? Or will any individual regardless of their qualification be given the legal authority to kill individuals who is believed a non-contributing person of society?

As a hospice volunteer for nearly three years and having worked with terminally ill patients and their families, many of these issues may not be so if our society and the faithful responded to the needs of the dying. Maybe the prominence of euthanasia and such acts as assisted suicide would not be considered alternatives to life. As a society, death and dying is mostly feared and denied as long as we are able to do so. Rather we emphasize youth, meism, active, promiscuous sexual expression, materialism and discarding of anything blocking our indulgences in them. In other words, we do not take care of the suffering and the dying as our faith suggests. Therefore, the results are:

• Tendencies to over treat and not allow the dying patient to make reasonable decisions about their care.
• An overuse of technology that depersonalizes and isolates people who are dying.
• Under funded hospices and other programs who support the dying and their families.
• A lack of places to refer people who require long-term chronic care or who have no family or family members able to care for them...

People who are dying need to be as close to home as possible with a much
support as possible. Institutionalization whether it is a hospital like environment or group home environment, should be a last resort. These institutions have a tendency to be impersonal making such environments nothing more than group death homes. Terminally ill persons report as one of their greatest fears is being along and dying alone or being impersonally treated by persons who do not care about them and their needs.

Why has American society come to this? Some thanatologists believe medical technological advances have raised new moral questions with regards to quality of life and who will live and allowed to live. Confusion about death and dying is due to a fear of this process and the contemporary approach to moral issues reflected in the abortion issue. As with abortion, American society tends to dissolve moral issues into procedural issues. Rather than ask “What are we deciding”? the contemporary question only asks “Who decides?” In other words, in addition to a fear of death and dying, we also fear not being “socially correct”, “with it, “in vogue”. We have a tendency to say we will do whatever the individual wants regardless of what this decision does to patient, doctor, and society.

Offering euthanasia as a choice changes the patient-doctor relationship. Whereas the patient-doctor relationship is currently a healing relationship, euthanasia erodes the trust the patient has towards her/his doctor. The doctor now becomes authorized to legally kill her/him for whatever reason or reasons without legal or seemingly moral recourse.

Christian moral tradition is not just against any form of euthanasia but IS for the care of, respect for and total good of the dying person as expressed in the Bible.

Rather than take the life of someone who is dying or allow the dying to be reduced to extreme forms of depression, suffering in isolation and pain in isolation so that euthanasia becomes a option as advocates or euthanasia urge, the challenge is to help the dying celebrates their earthly life and the eternal live they are about to experience as promised by Jesus Christ Himself!!!!

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