"Human suffering is a reminder of our need of the Savior Jesus Christ and the eternal life that comes through His atoning death and resurrection."  Gary Knapp from his pastoral statement on euthanasia from his site The Undershepherd. 

The statement (full post here):

A Pastoral Statement on Euthanasia and Imposing Death by Starvation and Dehydration

Believing that human life at all stages from conception until natural death and in every condition regardless of disability or cognitive ability bears the image of God, we, the undersigned offer our voice in support of life and in opposition to imposing death on the ill and disabled, in particular through starvation and dehydration.

Those of us who minister in Delaware have a special concern at the potential imposed death by starvation of one of our citizens, Lauren Richardson. We urge those who have influence over Lauren’s life, her guardian and the Delaware court system, to act on the basis of hope which comes from faith and reverence for human life, of which God is the author and finisher (Deuteronomy 32:39).

Acknowledging the tragedy and difficulty of human suffering we ask our fellow citizens to consider the following:

1. Euthanasia is an act of hopelessness. Human suffering humbles us as we see our inability to heal suffering despite our many medical advancements. But by imposing death on the ill and disabled, society is declaring that there is no purpose in suffering. This is contrary to the message of Scripture as seen in the lives of many people, most notably Job, and ultimately our Lord Jesus Christ.

2. God has told us clearly that He is the author and finisher of our existence. Fear of God should prevent us from ever seeking to end our own life or the life of another prematurely, especially by depriving them of the sustenance that is essential to human existence.

3. We express our concern that nutrition and hydration have been classified as medical treatment by many medical authorities and in the legal system. Food and water are now referred to in some legal documents as “life support”. This classification then becomes the basis for interpreting unguarded or uninformed comments from individuals about life support as an expressed declaration of their intent. The result is a deceptive vehicle by which many people are starved to death.

4. We urge our citizens to reject the claim that euthanasia is a private act. Even if one’s wishes to have his life ended prematurely were documented (Lauren Richardson left no such written documentation), society must give its approval to euthanize, which it has not done. Euthanasia advocates demand that society validate the so called private decision and make provision for the practice of imposing death. By depicting euthanasia as a purely private act, euthanasia advocates hide the reality that if Lauren is starved to death, we will all share in the decision to do this to her.

5. New Jersey recently ceased capital punishment calling death by injection “cruel and unusual punishment”. If imposing death by injection is cruel, how much more so death by starvation, which can be a two week process!

6. Faith leads to hope. We readily acknowledge that suffering is tragic and painful, both for the one suffering and for their loved ones. But because God is real and active, the end of our life is not certain until He makes it so. Often doctors using their best judgment declare that there is no hope; often they are wrong. Faith believes that God can heal, and that if He doesn’t, He is with us and has a purpose for our suffering.

7. Human suffering is ultimately a result of the fall by which our first parents Adam and Eve turned away from God and brought death (physical and spiritual) upon themselves and their offspring. Human suffering is a reminder of our need of the Savior Jesus Christ and the eternal life that comes through His atoning death and resurrection.

• We call our fellow citizens to acknowledge God’s prerogative in beginning and ending life.
• We encourage prayer to God in Jesus’ name on behalf of those who suffer.
• We call on the medical profession and government to turn from their irreverence for God demonstrated in the sinful act of starving and dehydrating the ill and disabled.
• We remind us all that because mankind bears God’s image our treatment of life is taken as our attitude toward God Himself (Genesis 9:6).
• Finally, we remind us that God sees our actions and will render to each one of us according to our deeds (Jeremiah 17:10

From West Palm Beach Florida:

Family's Fight Over Feeding Tube Reminiscent Of Schiavo Case

Husband, Mom At Odds Over Tube

A Florida woman put on a feeding tube after she had a stroke is at the center of a court case similar to the dispute over whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive.

Karen Weber's husband wants to have her feeding tube removed and have her transferred to a hospital ward, where she would likely die. He claims that his 57-year-old wife is in a vegetative state, but Weber's family is fighting to keep her alive, arguing she's alert and responsive...

...A judge in Weber's case has issued an injunction prohibiting the feeding tube's removal while a committee determines the woman's competency. She does not have a living will and can not talk.

Her husband, Raymond Weber, said he doesn't want this to become a media event, but her mother, Martha Tatro, said she refuses to let her daughter die.

Read complete story here.

Now, I have some questions.  For one, is this woman alert and responsive or not?  If so then she is not in a so-called 'vegetative state'.  I understand that due to privacy laws, Mrs. Weber's doctors may not explain her condition to the media.  But either she is or she isn't.

(I use the word 'so-called' because the terminology of vegetative state is ridiculous and undignified.  An individual in such a state is not a plant in the corner being kept watered occasionally.  He or she is someone who has lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment but retains noncognitive function and a preserved sleep-wake cycle.  In other words, he or she is still a person, one with profound cognitive disabilities.) 

Second question, since there many cases of misdiagnosis of and treatment for this state, such as the sleeping pill Zolpidem which can temporarily revive people in a so-called permanent vegetative state, or one similar, to the point where they can have conversations, have these treatments been attempted?

Thirdly, why is removing her feeding tube even an option.  Mrs. Weber is alive, with brain function and breathing on her own.  A feeding tube has technically legally been deemed life support lately, but unlike removing a breathing tube of someone with absolutely no brain activity who will instantly die when that breathing tube is removed because he or she is already dead, pulling out the feeding tube of Mrs. Weber is not 'letting her die'.  It is refusing to feed a woman who needs help eating; it is willful neglect.  It is death by neglect.  It is murder.

Lastly, what difference does it make whether she is in a 'vegetative state' or not?  What if Mrs. Weber never regains awareness of her surroundings or even of her very existence? What if she remains totally and completely dependent on others the rest of her life for every aspect of her life? 

I wonder if a life like hers is testimony that a person's worth to us and to God is not at all dependent on abilities, but on simply the fact that she is a fellow human being.  Now is our chance to show we believe that idea when we tell our children, "God loves you for who you are, not for what you can do" by protesting this woman's murder, caring for those most in need of caring around us, and caring for their families.

Some say that it would be undignified to 'allow' Mrs. Weber to remain alive in such an event.  However, is it not more undignified to refer to her as a vegetable, rescind her status of personhood, and starve her to death?

From their website, "In Washington, the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide has formed to combat I-1000, the assisted suicide initiative that is being promoted for the 2008 ballot."

With the passing of this law assisted suicide would be legal in Washington State, allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients with terminal illnesses to kill themselves.  This law would be modeled after Oregon's Law.

In the Netherlands, where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been practiced for the last 20 years, since both have become less of a rare occurance and more of a standard practive, improvements in pain management and palliative care have slown down.  "Pressure for improved pallitive care seems to have evaporated," according to Herbert Hendin, M.D., a Director of Suicide Prevention International.

From the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide website, we see what a slippery slope the acceptance of assisted suicide is:

"Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally to deny more active medical (assistance to die), i.e. euthanasia, to those who could not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination.

Involuntary euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for patients not [medically] competent to choose for themselves."  

Research shows that, for one thousand people a year in the Netherlands, physicians have ended their patients' lives without any request from or consultation with the patients.

This would be our future.  Go to the website and offer support now.

From Christian Examiner Online (emphasis mine):

California Assembly approves legislation promoting euthanasia of terminally ill patients
Christian Examiner staff report

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An end-of-life bill that would require doctors to tell their terminal patients about options to hasten their deaths, including starving themselves, passed the Assembly May 28 and will be heard on the Senate floor.

According to an analysis by Concerned Women for America, the bill undercuts established medical advances to ease dying for terminal patients and, in some cases, would allow end-of-life medical care to be passed on to less qualified health-care providers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

“While careful pain management and palliative care at the end of a truly terminal illness are extremely important and support must be given to dying patients and their families, this bill, as written, is a step down a very slippery slope toward the assisted suicide bill we fought in last year’s session,” the CWA analysis reads.

Opponents of the bill say that it paves the way for a shift in pallative care that goes beyond pain relief to unconscious dehydration and starvation through the use of strong sedatives.

Further, they argue that the one-year-left-to-live diagnosis is arbitrary and often wrong, and requiring doctors to offer end-of-life options hits patients when they are most vulnerable. Some medical experts also believe that forcing doctors to even discuss those issues constitutes endorsement of the practices.

Finally, opponents are concerned those without health insurance and who are poor, might feel pressured into end-of-life decisions because of burdensome financial legacies for their families.

But Patty Berg, a Santa Rosa Democrat, who sponsored the bill with Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, said the legislation is merely promoting “honest talk” about medical options. Berg, who was unsuccessful in three previous attempts to legislate physician-assisted suicide, decided this year to try a different approach.

Her latest bill is supported by Compassion and Choices, a pro-euthanasia group that was formerly called the Hemlock Society.

“Unlike my previous end-of-life bill, which was rejected and which I no longer am pursuing, my new bill doesn’t give anyone any new options,” Berg wrote in a May 15 opinion piece for Capitol Weekly. Everything that is illegal now—and that most notably includes physician-aided dying—would remain illegal. AB 2747 changes none of that. Instead, it provides a precious commodity— information.

“Most people in the Capitol understand the difference. Some, however, are still fighting last year’s battle and are trying to convince the gullible that my new bill is a Trojan horse, designed somehow to legalize aid-in-dying. That is simply not the case.”

But Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, disagrees and in a May 22 rebuttal in Capitol Weekly.

“The real ‘honest talk’ about AB 2747 is that it has very little to do with improving care,” Golden wrote. “For this bill, the devil is really in the details. Close inspection reveals it to be a vehicle for Compassion and Choices’ long-term agenda: facilitating assisted suicide. Let’s not forget that this is the organization formerly known as the Hemlock Society and one of the primary sponsors of this legislation. The bill includes many elements that would significantly undermine end-of-life care in service of this goal.”

The Assembly vote was 42-34. The bill will now be heard in the Senate Judiciary committee.

For more information on AB 2747, the end-of-life bill visit these links:

• Assembly bill text and history
• Concerned Women for America
• California ProLife Council
• Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund

Click here to see-  How the Calif. assembly members voted on the end-of-life bill

 

From Life News:

Undaunted by their repeated failure to get the California legislature to approve a bill legalizing assisted suicide, the sponsors of the bill are moving forward with a new measure that promotes euthanasia in limited circumstances. Pro-life groups are asking for phone calls to defeat the bill.

Last Tuesday, on a straight party line vote, the Assembly Judiciary Committee sent AB 2747 to the Assembly floor.

Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, the authors of the pro-assisted suicide bill, are behind the bill.

Brian Johnston, the head of the California Pro-Life Council and the author of a seminal book on assisted suicide, talked with LifeNews.com about the measure's problems.

"On the surface, AB 2747 seems like a simple bill benefiting the hospice care industry," he said. "However, it contains a sneaky loophole that will permit doctors and health care providers to transform the rarely used practice of 'palliative sedation' into a vehicle permitting assisted suicide."

Palliative sedation, otherwise known as deep sedation, is the sedation of a suffering and imminently dying patient to the point of unconsciousness and the bill changes the standards surrounding its use.

Johnston says AB 2747 has a host of other problems -- including defining terminal illness as having one year or less to live.

"We believe this is very arbitrary and subjective because predicting a patient’s time from death is merely a lifespan forecast," he says.

He says the bill also would create situations where cost considerations could affect treatment options, as assisted suicide options are generally cheaper than treatment.

Ultimately, Johnston told LifeNews.com that "AB 2747 promotes practices which may hasten death, overlooking what should be the primary focus of counseling to a patient approaching the end of life, chiefly excellent palliative care and hospice referral."

Pro-life groups fear that deep sedation, once introduced and promoted in California, will become a frequent occurrence as it has been in the Netherlands, one of the few nations to approve assisted suicide and euthanasia.

An April study finds the number of patients killed via deep sedation is on the rise.

Researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam found 1,800 people -- or 7.1 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands in 2005 -- involved deep sedation.

That percentage rose from 5.6 percent of all deaths involving deep sedation in 2001 while, during the same time period, euthanasia death fell from 2.6 percent of all deaths to 1.7 percent.

Judith Rietjens of Erasmus University told Reuters, “The increased use of continuous deep sedation for patients nearing death in the Netherlands and the limited use of palliative consultation suggests that this practice is increasingly considered as part of a regular medical practice.”

American author and attorney Wesley J. Smith commented on the recent research.

“Demonstrating the subversive nature of the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement on proper medical care, Dutch doctors are switching from lethally injecting patients to sedating them into a permanent coma so they die by dehydration over a period of days or weeks,” he said.

Smith said he thinks physicians are changing the way they kill patients so they don't have to be present during the actual death and can assuage their consciences.

ACTION: Please contact your member of the California Assembly immediately and urge strong opposition to AB 2747 because it promotes euthanasia. You can find contact information at http://www.assembly.ca.gov.  

Who is she to me?  Why do I seem so interested with her story on this blog?

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of Terri Schiavo's death.  I remember hearing bits and pieces of her story months before she was killed and trying really hard to not hear about it.  To not become aware of all the facts about human euthanasia, and so forth.  I knew what would happen.  I would began to feel passionate again.  And passion hurts.

I had been living a life where I had allowed my heart to become numb to things of the Truth.  But both the threat to Mrs. Schiavo's life and God calling me out of a life of lies about who I was and Who God was coincided.  At the end of Mrs. Schiavo's life, God had me the begining of a place of honesty and healing.

One night, before the courts handed down the final decision about Mrs. Schiavo's fate, I couldn't hold back anymore.  I began to beg God Almighty for Terri's life.  In obedience to God, I conceded to the Truth that human life was sacred, both Terri's and mine, and talked to God in a way I hadn't done in years.  A desperate sort of 'real' prayer.

That prayer changed my life.  I would slowly allow God into my heart in times of desperation after that.  I see life differently now, as something that belongs to God.  Its worth is dependent on God's value of it, not man's judgment of it.

I feel very attached to Terri Schiavo.  And indebted.

I think another reason I feel connected to Mrs. Schiavo, is because I've known people like her, or with disabilities similar to hers, anyway.  In fact, at the time of Mrs. Schiavo's death I had just quit a job working with a man and a woman who also had profound cognitive disabilities, used feeding tubes, etc.  Only they had been born with their disabilities.  So, when I see pictures of videos of Mrs. Schiavo I think of those people I cared for and cared about.

I grieve for Mrs. Schiavo and for our numb-to-the-Truth nation and what we have done.  What will become of us?

Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.  James 1:9-10

I appreciated the irony tonight while watching 20/20.  No, 'appreciate' is not the correct word.  I noticed irony.  Or incongruency, rather.

I remember a movie called Twillight of the Golds about a family with a pregnant daughter whose baby tests positive for the 'gay gene'.  Abortion is considered and recommended for this pregnancy by her family and husband, and, of course, we the audience come to understand how immoral that idea would be.  (And, of course, it would be quite immoral to end an unborn life because it may be carrying the so-called 'gay gene'.)

I was thinking of that movie while watching this 20/20 segment and then watched the next story on this same episode tonight about a man who surprised his parents by being born with no limbs.

I was thinking about the irony (or incongruency) that the popular, pc public wouldn't think twice if this man's parents had known he would be born with this kind of disability and chosen to terminate that pregnency.  And how silent that public remains about the fact that the idea of euthenasia for such infants is creeping upon us here the US as it has in Europe.  And how that same public would cry out if abortion, etc. were to be considered for pregnancies where the 'gay gene' was detected- as they should cry out, of course.  But they remain silent for other 'kinds' of pregnancies being terminated.

Ironic, or incongruent.

Just in case you don't have enough blogs and websites to keep up with, I've been reading a very informative blog lately called Secondhand Smoke.  It's authored by Wesley J. Smith, "a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture."  (From the site.) 

His blog consists of his view point regarding bioethics, etc.  If you go to his site, you'll need your eyedrops, as his blog is quite the eye opener... so, your eyes will get dry after awhile from being open so long while reading... okay, sorry. 

Incidentally, he's also the speaker from the lecture I wrote about a few days ago regarding the absolute value of human life.  I found a short five minute clip of that lecture, btw.