Euthanasia Archives - Page 13 of 13 - Protection of Conscience Project Library

Giving death a helping hand

Mina Gasser Battagin

Canadian Medical Association Journal, CMAJ — Canadian Medical Association Journal

Extract
Can Christians accept martyrdom on the one hand and reject euthanasia on the other? What makes one form of killing acceptable, the other reprehensible? What judgements are to be made, for example, if, during childbirth, a choice must be made between saving the life of the child or the life of the mother? How do we decide whose life is more important and, therefore, whose life must be saved? Who has the most to lose or the most to gain? What is fair? And who makes that decision?

Battagin MG. Giving death a helping hand. Can Med Assoc J. 1991;144(3):358-359.

(Correspondence) CMA’s response to abortion bill

Donald S Stephens

Extract
Doctors, won’t you admit yet that abortion is the only medical act other than euthanasia whose purpose is to kill people?

Stephens DS. (Correspondence) CMA’s response to abortion bill. Can Med Assoc J. 1990 Apr 15;142(8):798.

(Correspondence) The CMA’s position on abortion

R Lee Isaacs

Extract
Well! The CMA has certainly done the “in” thing with its resolution on abortion. . . It has never been traditional or ethical to prescribe according to the demands of the patient, whether for narcotics or for euthanasia or for abortion. Minds can change, but death is final. The resolution portrays abandonment of principle, not leadership.

Isaacs RL. (Correspondence) The CMA’s position on abortion. Can Med Assoc J. 1988 Nov 15;139(10):929.

Abortion: it is time for doctors to get off the fence

Myre Sim

Extract
When Germany occupied Holland during the Second World War, it declared that it would introduce its Nuremberg Laws. They allowed for the sterilization and liquidation of the “unfit” and other acts that were later declared crimes against humanity. . . .Dutch physicians declared that they had to accept the fact they were living in an occupied country during wartime and were, therefore, bound by certain laws, but they reaffirmed their responsibility to respect all human life. They would not yield on the issue. . . . Dutch doctors preserved their ethical code. . . .[a] medical procedure [that] involves the destruction of human life. . . strikes at the roots of medical ethics: respect for human life. I consider abortion on demand the precursor of euthanasia on demand. . . Are doctors to wait to see which way things are going before they decide which path to follow, or should they take a lead in restoring honour to the profession?

Sim M. Abortion: it is time for doctors to get off the fence. Can Med Assoc J. 1988 Apr 15;138(8):742-743.

The Nurse’s Appeal to Conscience

Ellen W Bemal, Patricia S Hoover

Abstract
A case is presented in which a registered nurse caring for a 63-year-old patient in severe pain from terminal cancer disagrees with the attending physician’s order of morphine for fear that it will hasten the patient’s death. The nurse finds herself on duty alone one night when the patient and her daughter request more morphine. Bernal and Hoover contend that, because the nurse apparently took no prior action to explore alternative courses of pain relief for the patient or to make other arrangements for care, her duty of care overrides her appeal to conscience in the immediate situation. Aroskar believes that the nurse in this situation must give the injection, find someone else who can, or contact the physician. She holds, however, that nurses should be allowed to refuse to carry out particular procedures based on an appeal to personal conscience if the decision is founded on accurate information, acceptance of consequences, and advance planning.

Bemal EW, Hoover PS. The Nurse’s Appeal to Conscience. Hastings Cent Rep. 1987;25-26. Available from:

(Correspondence) Life devoid of value?

Heiko Baunemann

Extract
Dr. Rapp’s distinction between human beings and “potential” human beings is mystifying. . . The fetus is not a “potential” human being; it is a human being with potential. . . the impetus for the mass killing of mental patients came not from the Nazis but from members of the medical profession. . . . the connection between abortion and euthanasia . . . is quite clear to other proabortionists [including] Joseph Fletcher, a member of the Euthanasia Education Council, and the late Dr. Alan Guttmacher, also a member of that council. . . Abortion and euthanasia are related by a common set of basic assumptions – that human life is not an absolute but rather a variable value that is socially determinable, and that it may be terminated. One form of euthanasia makes this particularly clear – the killing of the handicapped newborn. Arguments for abortion of mongoloid fetuses and mercy killing of mongoloid newborns are identical. . . .

Baunemann H. (Correspondence) Life devoid of value?. Can Med Assoc J. 1977;116(6):591-592.

(Correspondence) Life devoid of value?

Heiko Baunemann

Extract
In “The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value” Hoche, a distinguished psychiatrist, and Binding, a highly respected jurist, persuasively developed the concept of “worthless human beings”, such as the hopelessly crippled, deformed and insane. They stressed the misery and futility of such unfortunate lives and the cruel economic burden they represented to their relatives and society. . . the legalization of abortion by the Canadian Parliament in 1969 have laid the foundation for the legalization of euthanasia, or the killing of people medically judged to be “incapable of meaningful life”, such as mongoloid idiots, imbeciles, the terminally ill, persons with senile melancholia, stroke victims living like “vegetables”, and – well, the sort of people, besides unwanted babies, who would be “better off dead”. Be patient: euthanasia is coming.

Baunemann H. (Correspondence) Life devoid of value?. Can Med Assoc J. 1976;115(11):1086.

(Correspondence) GMC and Abortion Act, 1967

Myre Sim

British Medical Journal, BMJ — British Medical Journal

Extract
It is difficult for the ordinary doctor like myself to understand the role of the G.M.C. as regards medical ethics. Its change in attitude over abortion would suggest that the law of the land takes precedence over medical ethics, for the present law permits abortion for non-medical reasons. Does this mean that the G.M.C. will maintain only those medical ethics which do not conflict with the law, and that laws permitting euthanasia and sterilization of the unfit would receive similar sanction ? There is surely a conflict here not only between the G.M.C. and individual doctors but between the G.M.C. and those medical ethics which have international recognition..

Sim M. (Correspondence) GMC and Abortion Act, 1967. Br Med J. 1968 May 4;2(5600):298.

The Problem of Social Control of the Congenital Defective: Education, Sterilization, Euthanasia

Foster Kennedy

Extract
. . . What to do with the hopelessly unfit? I had thought at a younger time of my life that the legalizing of euthanasia . . . Now my face is set against the legalization of euthanasia for any person, who, having been well, has at last become ill . . . But I am in favor of euthanasia for those hopeless ones who should never have been born-Nature’s mistakes.

. . . should the social organism grow up and forward to the desire to relieve decently from living the utterly unfit, sterilize the less unfit, and educate the still less unfit-then the Law must also grow, along with the amplitude of our new ideas for a wiser and better world, and fit the growing organism easily and well; and thereafter civilization will pass on and on in beauty.

Kennedy F. The Problem of Social Control of the Congenital Defective: Education, Sterilization, Euthanasia. Am J Psychiatry. 1942 Jul;99(1):13-16.