The country of the old
McCarthy, Abigail
Supreme Court terminated the nationwide debate in the state capitols by usurping jurisdiction. And when this happens, all those Americans in the middle will no longer be able to avoid the issue....
...More than half THE GRAYMOOR PRIZE The Friars of the Atonement announce the second annual Graymoor Prize, to be awarded to the best essay on any aspect of ecumenical or interreligious affairs...
...Again, just as most Americans die peacefully, most elderly Americans never go into nursing homes...
...See, Commonweal Supplement, August 9, 1991...
...But among the prochoice party and its sympa- thizers, some are aware, some are not...
...Nursing homes are clearly not the best answer to housing in the country of the old...
...The prize is intended to encourage and support new ecumenical and interreligious ideas and perspectives...
...All other essays will be returned to their authors after January 1. ~OHHOH~t,J~L 15 Dutch Street New York New York 10038 506: Commonweal were in good or excellent health a year before they died...
...At all events, such a framing of the question will be a service to clarity in what will probably be the most important public debate in the next generation...
...Yet if we frame the question in the right way, it may produce a certain amount of light as well...
...that some views of the good life are plainly superior to others...
...The battle will oth- erwise be exceedingly intense and distaste- ful...
...Most elderly Americans, for example, die peaceful and relatively pain- less deaths...
...The reason for all this intensity and unpleasantness has to do with more than just abortion versus choice, important though those subjects are...
...The prize-winning essay will be published in COMMONWEAL'S January 17, 1992 issue...
...Fortunately, there is no chance of that happening this time around...
...As we find out what the situation in the country of the old is, we find more and more ways of making it habitable--a place in time where there is opportunity for rest, reflection, and enjoyment, t i...
...In doing so we have resorted to extreme solutions...
...Today's is the first large population of elderly to live such long and such active lives...
...If you and I differ in our moral views, there is no way either of us can prove the other wrong...
...The New York Times (August 18, 1991) reported in an editorial that Oregon recently sought and received a waiver to move Medicaid patients out of nursing homes and into apartments...
...The huge controversy that waits around OF SEVERAL MINDS the comer is bound to produce much bit- temess...
...the prolifers are not...
...But if there is no science of the good life and no inner light to reveal it to me, how do I find my values and my moral code...
...Abigail McCarthy THE COUNTRY OF THE OLD BETI'ER THAN WE THINK o be old in America is to live in a strange uncharted coun- try...
...Announcement of Prize: December 15, 1991...
...Small-scale warfare is about to be replaced by total war...
...The award- winning submission, which may take the form of a scholarly or critical essay or a personal narrative, should appeal to the interests of the general educated reader...
...Brother will argue against brother, sister against sister, parents against children...
...The state provided day help and, when necessary, nursing services...
...that differ- ences between right and wrong are know- able...
...They fear that their families will be overburdened by their 13 September 1991:505 prolonged care and the expense it entails...
...They fear a long, painful, and disfiguring death, or death in a vegetative state hooked to sophisti- cated machines while hospital bills eat up their insurance and savings...
...In the world of the moral agnostic, choice is the essential action and tolerance the supreme virtue...
...But apparently the old in this new extended time do not feel blessed...
...Whatever the benefits of a longer life they seem to be overshadowed by the spectral fears haunting the elderly...
...All in all, it will be a very unpleasant business...
...there is no alternative...
...Technology, as the hos- pice movement teaches us, is not neces- sarily the answer to suffering or deteri- oration...
...I believe the prolife party is already pretty much aware of the moral epistemology that underlies its position...
...How is it then in the counlry of the old...
...About 10 percent were in good health the day before...
...The first was reported by William Booth in an article in the Washington Post (July 22, 1991)--an article since widely syndi- cated---on a study by the National Institute on Aging of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 1,000 persons over sixty-five in Fairfield County, Connecticut...
...I simply choose...
...Costs went down and the quality of life went up...
...The winning essay will receive a prize of $1,000 and will be published in COMMONWEAL...
...And many experienced a feeling of hope...
...We have a strong national government now, which was not the case in the middle of the 1800s...
...So it is likely to be the hottest moral struggle since the abolition/slavery fight of the 1830s, '40s, and '50s...
...I don't say this to suggest that the country is on the verge of falling apart or plunging into civil war...
...Prolifers con- sider abortion to be a far greater evil than prohibitionists considered alcohol...
...But they are the twin peaks of a much larger moral iceberg...
...When they vote for their fifty governors and their 7,461 state legislators, they will be forced to take into consideration the position can- didates hold on the abortion/choice ques- tion...
...Health did not deteriorate until fairly near the end in most cases...
...A manual for suicide is a runaway on the best seller list...
...Added to the findings of the National Institute (also reported by Booth) are those of M. Powell Lawton of The Philadelphia Geriatric Center...
...As we know, the life expectancy of the average American has been extended more than thirty years since the turn of the century...
...About one- third knew death was approaching...
...The deeper philosophical disagreement is this: The prochoicers are moral agnostics...
...Deadline: October 1, 1991...
...This promises to be the deepest and most intense moral controversy to rock the nation since Prohibition, perhaps since slavery...
...Because the country of the old is so largely uncharted the prevailing perception has been warped by a focus on the tragic expe- rience of a minority of the dying...
...While value agnostics on the abortion question, they reserve the right to be value dogmatists on other questions...
...Political careers will be made and bro- ken...
...From this moral agnosticism the prolifer dissents totally, believing instead that moral values are objective realities...
...all we can do is tolerate our mutual differences...
...Generations have thought of long life as a blessing...
...That was the surprising finding of two recent studies...
...and that we are not reduced to sheer choice when searching for direction in life...
...Old friends will stop speaking...
...I choose...
...the psalms promise that the days of the upright "shall be long in the land...
...Thus there can be no agreement as to what constitutes the good life for human beings...
...There is day care for the elderly, for instance, and shared housing--the partnering of those who can help each other...
...The former have no belief in the objec- tivity of moral values, or at least no con- fidence that those values can be known...
...All this is sad because these fears and the perceptions, based on the exceptional, which fuel them are belied by the actual experience of those living in the country of the old...
...Creative alternatives for the care of those with flag- ging energies abound...
...And when it does dawn on them, many among them will recoil from their position...
...They dread losing control of their lives by consignment to nursing homes where they may well be in the hands of callous and un-trained caregivers...
...It has not yet dawned on them that you can't have it both ways, at least not in the long run...
...Like ancient mapmakers we have filled the uncharted areas with chimeras and drag- ons...
...If the prolife party can frame the abortion question as part of the larger question --moral skepticism and nihilism versus moral rationality and order--then some of the marginal prochoicers and their fellow travelers may be won over...
...Original and unpublished essays of approximately 2500-4000 words should be submitted to the editors of COMMONWEAL who will make the final decision following consultation with a panel of experts...
...Every person's individual view of the good life is just as valid as every other person's...
...In fact, it will probably be fiercer than the prohibition battle, since the oppos- ing parties stand further apart in their views in the current controversy...
...What ultimately divides the prolife from the prochoice party is not simply a dis- agreement on the right to abortion but a much deeper philosophical disagreement, from which their differences on abortion follow the way a conclusion follows from its premises...
...One of our supposedly most civilized states, the state of Washington, advances toward the legal- ization of euthanasia...
...There are no precedents for living in that extended time, no history of people having ever done so...
...and prochoicers consider the right to abortion a far more sacred right than the "wets" con- sidered their right to drink...
...These were people who died of the same causes and in similar proportions to the average elderly American: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and pneumonia led the list...
...Besides, the prolife/prochoice division does not cut sharply along sectional lines, even though the prolife party tends to be stronger in the South than elsewhere...
...The editors reserve the right not to award the prize...
...Having hope didn't mean they believed they were going to live," Lawton said, "it meant they had something to live a little while longer for...
...This essay will become the property of the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute...
...Based on his queries of the survivors of recently deceased persons, Lawton's conclusions were that even in their last month 65 per- cent of those who died had a positive qual- ity of life...
...Many understand very clearly that they are moral agnostics and that this agnosticism implies moral anarchy...
...But others are far from having thought the matter through...
...How different is this experience of death from that so widely feared and that against which we seek to legislate...
...and they are content that this should be so...
...The majority of those studied spent their last days at home with family and friends, "fully aware of their surroundings, often in control of their bodily functions and without pain...
...But the avoidance of civil war may be one of the few consolations the years to come will have to offer...
Vol. 118 • September 1991 • No. 15
