St. Paul's United Methodist Church
“The Sanctity of Human Life”
Rev. Richard W. Gray
Genesis 1: 26-28
April 3, 2005
Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed at 1:45 p.m. on Friday, March 18. She died at 9:05 a.m. on Thursday, March 31. It was an alarming event. It has exposed a culture of death.
After many court appeals, she was allowed to die. She did not suffer from a terminal illness. The only thing terminal about her was her marriage to her husband. She was able to breathe on her own. She was able to digest her food. She had a strong beating heart, and was not brain dead.
Her husband and some doctors claimed she was in a vegetative state. There were other doctors who said she was not in a vegetative state, but in a state of minimal consciousness.
Some medical experts claimed she may have been helped if she had had therapy. More than one million dollars was awarded in a malpractice lawsuit on her behalf. Three hundred thousand dollars went to her husband for his loss. More than seven hundred thousand dollars was to cover Terri's care and therapy costs. Her husband initially agreed to provide therapy for her, but later denied her the therapy. More than $430,000 of the money earmarked for Terri went to cover legal costs in her husband's battle to have her feeding tube removed.
It is interesting that during the malpractice lawsuit, nothing was said about her being in a vegetative state, and a large sum of money was awarded specifically for her therapy. It was thought then that some therapies could help, but they were not done.
When we look at the ethics of all of this, it would seem that the ethical thing to have done was to try the therapies for an adequate length of time to see if they would make a difference.
Ethically and biblically it is inappropriate to intend someone's death. Withholding food and water intended her death, and it worked.
Let's take a few minutes to talk about what Terri's death means. It seems to be such a complex situation, but what it really boils down to is this is a sanctity of life question. We are finding ourselves on a slippery slope, and we are headed down. But it is not too late to reverse the direction.
There are two rival views of human life and dignity. One view is that all of life is sacred. People are made in the image of God and everyone has great worth, no matter what their condition. Then there are those who believe that human life is an accident of evolution and human value may be negotiated.
Time magazine released a poll on March 27 showing that over 60% of Americans agreed with the decision to remove Teri Schiavo's feeding tube. Why did so many Americans support the removal of the feeding tube? An argument called “quality of life” is now widely accepted, instead of sacredness of life.
It is nice to know what the public's opinion is, but public opinion is not to determine what is right or wrong. There is a core value, a core morality, a central core of ethics apart from public opinion. What is right is not to be determined by public opinion. Our nation was founded on biblical principles and values that heralded the value and sanctity of every human life. Genesis 1:27 says we are created in the image of God. The will of God is more important than public opinion polls.
One of the problems, once the quality of life argument is accepted, is that humanity is redefined
redefined and placed on a scale, and it is not God's scale of worth. Some kind of scale will be established that determines when a person's life is no longer a quality life. Who decides the scale? How often will the scale be changed? It will be changed, and it will go down, not up, unless we do something about it now. What we are looking at is one day saying that people low on the quality of life scale should not be allowed to live.
What Terri's situation has shown us is human life only has value and is worthy of protection when a person is able to pass an alertness test.
You can see where this can go. What about people who are no longer able to care for themselves? Severely disabled people are very concerned as to where Terri's death will lead. They have a lot to lose.
Who is to say that a day will come when there will be people who will be seen as a drain on society, a burden, and something should be done about them.
George Will, writing in Newsweek magazine in 1978 about people who are old and frail, said, “When incurably ill, such people would think that an administered death as the only alternative to terrible suffering for themselves and terrible cost to their families, so their right to die would come to seem like a 'duty to die.'”
It will be their duty to die for the good of others. Do not think this cannot happen. It has happened throughout history, and may be repeated again.
Every human life has sacred worth. God even knows us in the womb before our birth. A sick person, a disabled person, a not fully alert person has God-given worth. God is concerned about the way we treat people who may not have much to offer us. We have a lot to offer them.
Jesus was teaching His disciples in Matthew 25 when He said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
The disciples asked Jesus when they had done all of these things for Jesus. Jesus replied, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
In this section of Matthew 25 Jesus describes people who have nothing to offer us, but He shows their worth. They are worth doing something for. They are worth helping and are to be helped.
Pope John Paul II has asserted, “I feel the duty to reaffirm strongly that the intrinsic value and personal dignity of every human being do not change, no matter what the concrete circumstances of his or her life. A man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man, not a 'vegetable' or an 'animal.' Even our brothers and sisters who find themselves in the clinical condition of a 'vegetative state' retain their human dignity in all its fullness. The loving gaze of God the Father continues to fall upon them.”
Decisions about quality of life and sacredness of life and life and death decisions will continue to go on, especially as the large Baby Boom generation ages and looks at end of life questions.
The church, Christians, must speak up. We must elect legislators who will have a set of core values, who know what is genuinely right or wrong, and who believe they have a moral mandate to protect human life. We must speak up and defend those who cannot speak for themselves nor defend themselves.
What about allowing people to make their own decisions? It would have been different if Terri Schiavo had had a living will in which she expressed her wishes in writing.
The ethical decision is to honor a living will. John Kilner, president of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, writes that we should question the person who has a living will to make sure that the wishes expressed are what the person really wants. He states our appropriate response as Christians needs to be, “Wait a minute, tell me about that. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Your life is precious before God and precious to other people. And we want to be there for you and provide the support you need…Without making our concern and support for them known…it just confirms their worst fears that nobody does care for them and they're not worth it…We have to honor somebody's wishes to refuse life-sustaining treatment, but we need to do everything possible to help them see that their life really is important and significant and that we're willing to care for them.”
A living will is designed to allow an individual to say that they do not wish their dying process to be prolonged. When death is inevitable and there is no hope for recovery, it is appropriate to say that we do not wish to have heroic efforts made on our behalf to keep us alive for a little longer. The Bible says there is a time to be born and a time to die (Eccelesiastes 3:2). For the Christian, death is not final. We go to be with the Lord.
In Terri Schiavo's case, since there was no living will, the medical therapies should have been tried first. The court should have protected her by appointing a truly objective person to look after her best interests. But that is not Florida's law, which allows the spouse to speak for the individual.
This is a landmark case. There are so many more questions that we cannot address this morning. The battle lines are being drawn. We must protect the dignity and sanctity of all human life. Truly we are unique as we are made in the image of God, his highest creation.
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
335 Smyth Road
Manchester, NH 03104
Sunday School: 9:00 a.m.
Sunday Worship: 8:00 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.
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603-647-7322