Editor's notebook
Jordan, Patrick
ET CETERA NEATNESS COUNTS Sisterlife, published by Feminists for Life of America, credits Samuel A. Nigro, M.D., of CaseWestern Reserve University, for this Q. and A.: "What happens when you...
...When you give them cigarettes...
...We may have justifiable fears about prolonged, painful, and seemingly purposeless suffering at life's end, but we also have realistic doubts about the final exit enthusiasts...
...Not all died the death Catholics traditionally pray for: a graceful or happy death...
...the latter arrives inevitably...
...And that's why—at least until now—physician-assisted suicide legislation has failed, even though in poll after poll over the past forty years, a majority of Americans have said they favor such legalization...
...Fortunately, when it comes to euthanasia, American voters seem to be more than simple pragmatists looking for an allpurpose silver bullet...
...But given a chance, it had its own integrity...
...Finally, there were the professionals who argued formidably that in almost all cases pain can be controlled...
...In each, the stakes are very high...
...Even in a hospice setting, death has the final word and arrives sometimes as a thief...
...Patrick Jordan...
...In the past two years, major euthanasia propositions—in the generally liberal states of Washington and California—although initially heavily favored to win, both met defeat...
...Earlier this year, the American Bar Association's Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly unanimously opposed Proposition 161...
...Hospice personnel know how to handle pain, and, when the time comes, how to accept death...
...It is death's habit of arriving stealthily, unpredictably—like the phantom caller in Muriel Spark's Momento Mori—coupled with our fear of pain, loss of bodily integrity, and the unknown, that, in part, lends strength to the present movement for legalized euthanasia in the United States...
...and that laws already on the books provide adequate protection from unwanted, prolonged, or burdensome treatment...
...The insurgents in the prayer group contend that petitioning the Lord for a moment of metanoia among the hierarchy on this topic is presumptuous since it asks for the impossible...
...To most people, they are the strongest and most convincing...
...And those who have experienced, or worked in, hospice care ought to be given special voice...
...I've been saying for years, 'No adolescent should be allowed to obtain contraceptives from a school-based clinic or anywhere else unless they have a note from their mother that their room has been properly cleaned for an entire month.'" ASK AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN Reportedly, a re mark offered by Auxiliary Bishop Austin B. Vaughan during the recent meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has splintered the ranks of those who are praying for acceptance of women's ordination...
...Yet by October 27, one week before the election, the Times reported that those in favor had seen their margin shrink to only 49 to 45 percent...
...A postelection poll conducted by the Tarrance Group indicated that voters sixty-five and older opposed the initiative by 64 to 36 percent...
...THE GOOD FIGHT ON EUTHANASIA PROPOSALS efore joining Commonweal, I worked for a number of years on the staff of a nursing care facility for terminal cancer patients...
...We can do something about the former...
...ET CETERA NEATNESS COUNTS Sisterlife, published by Feminists for Life of America, credits Samuel A. Nigro, M.D., of CaseWestern Reserve University, for this Q. and A.: "What happens when you give anything to adolescents...
...Yet with very few exceptions, each of these men, women, and children died a good death: relatively comfortable and pain-free, if not always at the expected or desired moment...
...When you give them alcohol...
...I imagine that given time, people began pondering not only the imponderables, but the practical ramifications of Proposition 161...
...That's why such referenda are not going to disappear any time soon...
...It was founded in the late 1890s by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it continues today thanks to the efforts of the Hawthorne Dominican Sisters and their co-workers...
...If one state legalizes these practices [medically assisted suicide], we will see other states adopting similar legislation in a relatively short time," predicts Ron P. Hamel, a senior associate at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics (see the center's newsletter, The CenterLine, Fall 1992...
...These pragmatic arguments may not be the most basic reasons for opposing euthanasia, but they provide the best grounds on which to fight next year's legislative battles...
...In the present health-care climate, it said, stateauthorized euthanasia would not long remain voluntary, and in terms of social equality, the commission argued, access to adequate health care "ought to be a much higher priority than access to death...
...They began to comprehend the utter finality of what 161 was proposing...
...Just two days after the defeat of California's euthanasia Proposition 161 on November 3, the New England Journal of Medicine published two opinion pieces by respected doctors at prestigious medical schools advocating physician-assisted suicide...
...This rethinking was further spurred when cancer survivors started showing up on anti-161 TV ads: people who could have been from one's own family and who testified that life is worth fighting for...
...What 4: 4 December 1992 happens when you give them a car...
...In September 1992, a Los Angeles Times poll on California Proposition 161, for instance, found that over 60 percent of those queried favored physician-assisted suicide...
...That is, after all, largely a psychospiritual gift that cannot be leveraged, even by one's certifiable merits...
...A woman priest," said Bishop Vaughan, "is as impossible as for me to have a baby...
...At Saint Rose's, I remember a variety of people as they set off into that final expanse...
...I'm afraid at this point the euthanists have yet to discover that...
...Like birth, the voyage wasn't always easy, on time, or without blood...
...During my time at Saint Rose's, death was no stranger...
...They, especially the older voters and minorities, started to think about the real potential for abuse...
...Why this shift...
...And next year alone, there will be legislative efforts to leCommonweal galize euthanasia in a number of states, including New Hampshire, Maine, and Michigan...
...And they know at what point treatment is no longer justified—morally, medically, or legally...
...Better to ask for an outbreak of male parthenogenesis among the anointed...
...They have seen patients' desire for suicide diminished as pain has been brought under control...
...And when the actual votes were finally counted, it was Proposition 161 that was declared dead on arrival, losing soundly, 54 to 46 percent...
...Saint Rose's Home overlooks the East River on Jackson Street in Lower Manhattan...
...They know from experience that it is possible to meet the needs of the dying practically, compassionately, and routinely...
...Then, I think, people started considering the revolutionary transformation 161 would mean for the reshaping of medicine, shifting it from a sometime art of healing to a licensed dispatching service...
...I saw hundreds of people die, victims of every variety of cancer in every conceivable and disastrous manifestation...
...It did so for a number of reasons, but one was most telling...
Vol. 119 • December 1992 • No. 21
