Euthanasia's Growing Acceptance
Zenit.org
Monday, Jan. 9, 2006
LONDON -- Euthanasia is legal in only a few countries, but even
where it is prohibited judges are increasingly reluctant to punish
offenders. A recent example is the case of English father, Andrew
Wragg.
Wragg's 10-year-old son, Jacob, suffered from the degenerative
disease of Hunter's syndrome and had multiple disabilities. On July
24, 2004, his father smothered Jacob, afterward calling the police
to tell them he had killed his son, the BBC reported Dec. 12.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Wragg's act was a
"selfish killing," carried out because he could no longer cope with
looking after the boy. But the judge, Justice Anne Rafferty, said
the case was "exceptional" and that there was nothing to be gained
by sending the father to jail. Wragg was given a suspended jail
sentence.
A similar case occurred three months earlier. On Sept. 3 the Times
reported that Donald Mawditt admitted helping to kill his wife by
giving her antidepressants, then suffocating her. His wife,
Maureen, suffered from hemochromatosis, a condition that causes too
much iron in the blood, damaging the liver and pancreas and causing
heart failure. She was told she had only a 50% chance of living
longer than two years.
During proceedings, evidence showed that the couple had made a pact
when they married to end each other's life if they fell terminally
ill. Judge Thomas Crowther decided that the case was "exceptional"
and spared him a prison term. Mawditt received a three-year
conditional discharge.
Another 2005 case was that of Brian Blackburn, who pleaded guilty
to the manslaughter of his wife, Margaret. The Guardian newspaper
last Jan. 15 reported that Blackburn killed his wife, then
unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide.
His wife had an advanced case of stomach cancer and would have died
within weeks. Judge Richard Hawkins said that the case was one of
"exceptional circumstances," and Blackburn received a suspended
jail sentence.
Australian judges are also sparing relatives from jail in similar
cases. A case in point is that of Catherine Anne Pryor, in the
state of Tasmania.
Pryor was found guilty of the attempted murder of her mother and
pleaded guilty to helping her father commit suicide, the local
Mercury newspaper reported Dec. 20. In March 2003 she gave her
mother an injection of insulin, and about eight months later
injected her father with insulin and pethidine and put a plastic
bag over his head until he stopped breathing.
The court was told that both parents were in poor health. Anne
Grant was 77 and in the early stages of dementia and Peter Grant
was 79 and suffering from terminal cancer. Pryor received two
suspended jail sentences. Justice Michael Hill declared "he did not
think the community would want her to go to jail," the article
reported.
Earlier last year, in the first case of its kind in the state of
New South Wales, a local court magistrate, Alan Railton, set free
Fred Thompson after he killed his wife, Katerina. According to the
Sydney Morning Herald of Feb. 21, he gave her six sleeping tablets,
then suffocated her.
She was suffering from advanced multiple sclerosis. Initially,
authorities thought it was a natural death, but later Thompson
admitted his deed to the police.
Some commentators criticized the leniency shown in the case of
Andrew Wragg in England. In the opinion pages of the British
Telegraph of Dec. 18, Mary Wakefield wrote that while the official
verdict in the case was that Wragg suffered from "diminished
responsibility," the argument that really swayed the court was that
he was motivated to kill his son out of love.
This judgment could encourage others to think that the law is
lenient toward mercy killing, commented Wakefield. Moreover, it
seemed "that Andrew Wragg didn't love Jacob enough to want to
continue the day-to-day grind of caring for him until the natural
end of his life; he only loved him enough to kill him," she
noted.
Muriel Gray, writing in the Sunday Herald, a Scottish paper, on
Dec. 18, observed that Jacob was "innocent of everything but being
born with a chromosomal deficiency." Jacob suffered from his
illness, but the judge concentrated more on the suffering of the
parents, Gray said.
She further noted that the judge justified the husband's decision
to kill his son, even though he was not the primary caregiver; it
was Wragg's wife who took the main strain of looking after Jacob.
What the decision means, continued Gray, is that "our disabled
children's lives are worth considerably less than the
able-bodied."
Pressure also continues for easing the law on euthanasia in
Britain. In the House of Lords last year a private bill by Lord
Joel Joffe sought to allow the terminally ill to legally request
aid to commit suicide.
Commenting on the proposal, Archbishop Peter Smith, chairman of the
English and Welsh bishops' Department for Christian Responsibility
and Citizenship, said that what is needed instead is better
palliative care. "Terminally ill people need to be cared for
properly, safe in the knowledge that their lives are of value, and
that society does not wish them dead," the archbishop said in a
Nov. 9 press release. "They need to be cared for, not killed
off."
Disturbing news, meanwhile, continued to come from the Netherlands,
the country that pioneered legal euthanasia. On May 7 the British
Medical Journal reported that for the first time the official Dutch
assessment system approved a request for assisted suicide from a
patient with Alzheimer's disease.
Then, on Sept. 9, the Irish Examiner newspaper reported that a
study carried out by researchers from the Erasmus Medical Center in
Rotterdam found that doctors are helping to hasten the deaths of
sick children in a variety of ways, sometimes acting at the edges
of the law.
The study was published in the September issue of Archives of
Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. It looked at 64 deaths of
sick children during a four-month period. Of those, 42 cases
involved medical decisions that could hasten death.
On Sept. 29 the Associated Press reported that the Dutch government
intends to expand its euthanasia policy, setting guidelines for
when doctors may end the lives of terminally ill newborns with the
parents' consent.
The guidelines were drawn up in 2004 by doctors at the Groningen
University Medical Center. They contemplate permitting euthanasia
in cases when a child is terminally ill with no prospect of
recovery; when it is suffering great pain; when two sets of doctors
agree the situation is hopeless; and when parents give their
consent.
The Dec. 10 issue of the British Medical Journal gave further
details on the changes. Doctors who end the lives of babies will be
judged by a committee of medical and legal experts to whom all
cases must be reported.
Ending the life of a baby will remain illegal, but if the doctors
adhere to the established criteria they are unlikely to be
prosecuted. According to the medical journal, 22 cases of doctors
ending the life of newborns have been reported to the public
prosecution service since 1997. After two test case acquittals in
the 1990s, all have been dismissed.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that painkillers can
be used to alleviate the suffering of those who are dying, even
when this shortens their life (No. 2279). But direct euthanasia
that seeks to end the lives of the handicapped, the sick or dying
"is morally unacceptable," warns the Catechism in No. 2277. A
message lawmakers and judges alike are increasingly
overlooking.
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If you are dying, will you accept
Euthanasia? Why?
