THE 'SANCTITY' OF LIFE

Meyer, Ernest L.

The Sanctity Of Life By ERNEST L. MEYER IN MASSACHUSETTS there is coming to trial soon a homicide case which has attracted considerable interest. The case involves a highly reputable citizen...

...They march, singing, away to war...
...No soldier has angina pectoris or tuberculosis or cancer or paresis...
...No soldier is sick, and no soldier is a hydrocephalic imbecile...
...Only recently four young men, two still in their 'teens, walked to the electric chair and no public outcry followed the slaughter...
...The case involves a highly reputable citizen accused of the "mercy killing" of an infant son who had been found to be an incurable imbecile by competent doctors...
...Draft boards, backed by the power to imprison resisters, summon the young men of each nation to offer their anatomy to enemy bullets and bayonets...
...Outside the church-bells proclaim a victory in battle and another thousand young and healthy men cut to ribbons and rotting in the fox-holes...
...The call to arms is sounded...
...They hold that such a practice would put too much power in the hands of physicians and alienists...
...Millions and more millions are physically examined to make sure that the foe's shrapnel will not be wasted on inferior flesh...
...Stirred by this loftiest of ideals, the nations go to war...
...So sacred that a nation is aroused at the news that thousands of civilians, men, women, and children have been slain by bombs dropped over peaceful cities...
...Human life is sacred...
...He begs his doctor: "End it...
...Life," he says," is something only the Lord can grant or take away...
...He has been in agony three years...
...For months he has been kept alive "by intravenous injections, and is generally under the influence of an opiate to deaden the excruciating pain...
...Joe Smith has his pastor summoned...
...A jury sentences him to death...
...Objectors to euthanasia, of course, come forward with familiar arguments...
...Human life is sacred...
...So Life Is Sacred His doctor gives him soothing and lying words, though he knows he stands at the bedside of a man condemned to live yet another half year in a living hell...
...On the battlefields, the vaunted "flower of manhood" yields itself to the reaper...
...But we are not talking of the church bells sounding joyful paeans and the radios crackling jubilant bulletins at the news that another 10,000 sacred lives have been snuffed out, another 10,000 sound, healthy bodies left torn and lifeless under the rubble of ruined cities...
...On a distant planet a philosopher, observing the earth and taking down notes, is overtaken by a fit of laughter, and dies...
...Sound, sane, healthy adults and children, most of them...
...And the wanton slaughter so arouses the nation that in retaliation vast fleets of bigger and better planes shower death on thousands and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in the cities of enemy lands...
...Time and time again men have confessed crimes for which an innocent victim was hanged...
...In a parish in Louisiana a white girl is assaulted and slain by an itinerant white farm-hand, who flees...
...His pastor trembles with pious horror...
...For the love of God, let them kill me...
...The malady has eaten away half his stomach...
...When the drug wears off, at times he suffers agony...
...Sweated in a third degree, and with a lynch mob surrounding the jail, Moses Brown confesses...
...The fortunes of war, in which all is fair...
...And in the course of this public debate the old concept of the "inviolate sanctity of human life" has been dusted off and re-broadcast...
...Looking at the issue with realism rather than piety, one finds the notion of the sanctity of life bound up with curious ironies and contradictions...
...And their sound flesh is ripped by leaden pellets, mangled by hand grenades, crushed under mammoth steel monsters...
...Yet a reasonable person will place more faith in a board of highly trained experts than in the judgments of the average haphazard juries who hold the power of life or death over prisoners before the court...
...Human life is sacred...
...Human life is sacred...
...Moses Brown, Negro, is accused of the crime and arrested...
...But doctors—cry the foes of mercy killing—make mistakes ! * * * Life On The Battlefield Human life is sacred...
...Only God," cried one aroused opponent of euthanasia, "can grant life, and only God should have the power to take life away...
...And their sound sane minds up to the last moment comprehend the anguish endured by themselves and their fellow soldiers until death mercifully blots out the horror...
...Human life is so sacred that a score of civilized commonwealths have Jaws on their statute books giving executioners the right to hang or roast alive homicidal malefactors...
...Give me an overdose of morphine...
...In tiie same issue of the paper containing the news of the execution, there is an editorial condemning euthanasia for incurables...
...Joe Smith's wasted face writhes on the pillow...
...Regardless of the guilt or innocence of this particular defendant, the case has evoked much and often heated discussion on the ethics of "euthanasia," the painless putting to death of persons whose madness or a horribly painful physical malady make them a burden to themselves and society...
...In a bed in his home Joe Smith is dying of cancer...
...Doctors," it says, "can make mistakes...

Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 46


 
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