Confessing Evangelical

I'm not altogether sure what I think about the case of Charlotte Wyatt, the 11-month old baby whom the High Court has ruled should not be resuscitated, though she should continue to be cared for fully until the need for resuscitation arises.

On the one hand, I can see why the judge ruled as he did. Sitting here in the cold light of day, with an unbroken heart, my feeling is that if one of our children were in such a desperate situation, I would probably reach the same decision as the judge, given how aggressive and damaging the process of resuscitation is. But that's the point: my wife and I would be making that decision as the parents. To see that decision taken away from oneself and made by other people - doctors, judges - must surely be one of the most crushing and dehumanising experiences imaginable.

My concerns about the likely effects of this judgment were only increased by the leading article in today's Independent, which came out with one of the most chilling comments I've heard in a long time: "[the decision] gives the professional judgement of the doctors precedence over the highly personal appeals of the parents". Is that really a world we wish to live in?

(That reminds me: I must look up the chapter in Gene Veith's Modern Fascism, entitled "Life not worthy of life", where he looks at how modern, "liberal" views on euthanasia have a strong resemblance to, and indeed share a common origin with, fascist views on the subject. Watch this space).

Tom Utley in today's Daily Telegraph writes on how "The baby Charlotte judgment has put us on a slippery slope". The subeditor who came up with that headline is behind the times - we've been skidding down that slope for some time already. The wedge, thin end and all, had been driven at least half, if not two-thirds of the way down before poor Charlotte was even born. But Utley makes some good points in the article itself.

While making it clear that he is not "accusing anybody [involved in the case] of wickedness", and despite the careful nuances of the judgment given by Mr Justice Hedley (himself a Christian, like Charlotte's parents), Utley says:

I see great dangers in the judge's decision to overrule Charlotte's parents and allow her doctors to let her die. Rightly or wrongly, it will be seen to have established the principle in English law that some lives are worth saving, and others aren't ... The idea has been sown in the minds of money-conscious NHS trusts that it is up to them to decide who should live or die, according to a doctor's assessment of his patient's "quality of life".

Now, of course, doctors "have been making this sort of decision since the dawn of medical science", and Utley writes movingly of his own father's death from cancer, which was undoubtedly hastened (by a matter of hours) by the high doses of painkillers given to him by his doctors:

The point is that it was not in order to hasten my father's death that the doctor prescribed the painkillers (although she would have known that they would probably have that effect). She did it in order to ease his pain. This may sound like a pedantic distinction, but it strikes me as a very important one.

Utley continues by saying "how very sad it is that the High Court has become involved", and that these things are best settled by agreement between the parents and doctors (as, to be fair, they are in the vast majority of these cases):

The only hard-and-fast principle that I would recommend is: when in doubt, opt for life.

He quotes the American lawyer Alexander Capron:

"I never want to wonder whether the physician coming into my hospital room is wearing the white coat of the healer or the black hood of the executioner"

and goes on to describe what has happened in the Netherlands, following the Dutch parliament's vote four years ago to legalise euthanasia (after years of it being "winked at"):

One immediate effect of that was that it fundamentally changed the relationship between doctors and their patients. Thousands of Dutch people began to carry documents, begging their doctors not to kill them if they fell ill. [...]

Another effect of the Dutch legislation has been the decline of palliative medicine in Holland. Far less effort is made now than before to keep old people alive and comfortable. Meanwhile, it has become practically a rule that no attempt should be made to revive babies born after only 23 or 24 weeks of gestation [one report today even suggests there is a legal requirement not to resuscitate babies born at or before 25 weeks] - even though medical science offers more and more of them a good chance of survival.

The Dutch law, framed with the noble intention of relieving the suffering of the terminally ill, has had the effect of devaluing human life for everyone in Holland.

He concludes:

I realise that there is an important distinction between allowing doctors to kill their patients and merely permitting them not to revive them. But it is a slippery slope that we are treading. I wish that Mr Justice Hedley had opted for life.

On balance, so do I.

Finally, it astonishes me that Arthur Hugh Clough's couplet, "Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive/Officiously to keep alive" has become an almost universally-accepted moral principle, given that it comes from a satirical poem called "The Latest Decalogue", which also includes lines such as, "Thou shalt have one God only; who/Would tax himself to worship two?", and "Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,/When 'tis so lucrative to cheat".