By Peggy Sinanian

In Michigan a jury cleared a California man of second-degree murder charges after learning how he assisted his wife in taking her own life.

Virginia and Bertram Harper, members of the Hemlock Society which supports suicide, traveled there after learning that Michigan has no law specifically barring assisted suicide.

Afflicted with terminal cancer, Mrs. Harper, accompanied by her husband and daughter, checked into a hotel and carried out a death plan which consisted of taking a fatal dose of tranquilizers and alcohol and placing a plastic bag over her head. According to The New York Times, Mrs. Harper "became uncomfortable and began trying to pull the bag off her head." After removing the bag three or four times, Mrs. Harper fell into a deep sleep.

Her daughter is quoted as saying, "At this point, my stepfather pulled the bag over her head and secured it. We waited. I have no idea how much time passed. She stopped breathing." At the trial, Mr. Harper's attorney asked the jury to remember Mr. Harper's deep love for his wife. "This is not a crime of violence," said the attorney. "This is an act of love."

Last year, a retired pathologist, Dr. Kevorkian, helped an Oregon woman, Janet Adkins, kill herself in Michigan. The subsequent murder charge against Dr. Kevorkian in connection with that death was dismissed. Another physician, Doctor Quill of Genesee Hospital in Rochester, NY, confessed in an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine how he prescribed a lethal dose of barbiturates, following a Hemlock Society formula, for a leukemia patient who wished to commit suicide. Dr. Quill concludes his article by saying: "I wonder how many families and physicians secretly help patients over the edge into death ... I wonder ... whether the Hemlock Society's way of death by suicide is the most benign."

The determined efforts of the Hemlock Society, as well as other "duty-to-die" organizations, in promoting a pernicious philosophy which threatens the dignity of human life are having an effect on physicians, legislators, media and the general public to accept euthanasia as the only humane course when difficult medical cases occur.

Currently, the Hemlock Society has two legislative initiatives pending in Washington and Oregon which will allow a physician to end the life of a conscious and mentally competent qualified patient.

In both states, according to the Oregon Catholic Conference, "Hemlock is attempting to amend existing advance directive laws to accomplish its goals: in Washington, by amending the Natural Death Act; in Oregon, by amending the power of attorney for health care and directive to physicians statutes. In both states, the proposed legislation attempts to decriminalize physician-homicide and physician-assisted suicide. The legislation also proposes to change policies that treat physician 'aid in dying' as unprofessional conduct."

In an article on euthanasia by Susanne Harvath, Ph.D., the author points out that the primary supporter of living wills has been organizations such as the Hemlock Society and the Society for the Right to Die. Over thirty-five states have passed legislation regarding the treatment of dying patients. Dr. Harvath reports that living wills touted as "one's right to privacy may have dangerous undercurrents for society." The same article states that in 1985, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State laws (NCCUSL), "a group almost unknown to the public, but highly influential in legislative circles, approved the 'Uniform Right of the Terminally Ill Act' which defined nutrition and hydration (food and fluids) as medical treatment. In accordance with its guidelines, one could be legally starved to death or dehydrated." This statement recalls the Nancy Cruzan case in which Cruzan was legally starved to death after removal of the tube that provided hydration and nutrition.

In considering the almost daily threats to the dignity of human life, it may be necessary to offer several crucially important presuppositions and principles that all caregivers should have in mind such as physicians and ethicists, as we face a future America where more and more life is considered excessively burdensome for all persons who cannot care for themselves and may have no one willing or able to care for them. These principles are taken from a document prepared for the Pope John XXIII Center and endorsed by 95 prominent American ethicists, lawyers and theologians:

1. Human bodily life is a great good. Such life is personal, not subpersonal. It is a good of the person, not merely for the person. Such life is inherently good, not merely instrumental to other goods.
2. It is never morally right to deliberately kill innocent human beings - that is, to adopt by choice and carry out a proposal to end their lives...
3. It is possible to kill innocent persons by acts of omission as well as by acts of commission. Whenever the failure to provide adequate food and fluids carries out a proposal, adopted by choice to end life, the omission of nutrition and hydration is an act of killing by omission.
4. The deliberate killing of the innocent, even if motivated by an anguished or merciful wish to terminate painful and burdened life - deliberate killing that will henceforth be called "euthanasia" - is not morally justified by that motive.
5. Morally, for a person who consents to be killed, voluntary euthanasia violates not only the dignity of innocent human life but also the right of the person who is killed not to be killed. The law of homicide should continue to apply to all forms and methods of euthanasia; none should be legalized. The law of homicide, in particular, must protect innocent human beings from being killed for reasons of mercy.
6. While competent persons have the moral and legal right to refuse any useless or excessively burdensome treatment, they must exercise great care in reaching the judgement that a treatment is useless or excessively burdensome. This is necessary both in order to avoid any intention to end life on the grounds that it is devoid of intrinsic worth and in order to fulfill properly the responsibility to respect human life.
7. Likewise, those who have the moral duty to make decisions for non-competent persons (such as infants or the permanently unconscious) have a moral right to refuse any useless or excessively burdensome treatment for them. This right must, however, be exercised with great care in order to avoid the temptation ... to devalue the lives of the non-competent or to regard such persons chiefly in terms of the utilitarian values they may represent...
8. Human life can be burdened in many ways. But no matter how burdened it may be, human life remains inherently a good of the person. Thus, remaining alive is never rightly regarded as a burden, and deliberately killing innocent human life is never rightly regarded as rendering a benefit.

The recent accounts of active euthanasia cited above should be considered as alarming. In California, when permissive abortion laws were passed, those who predicted that procured abortion would be easily accepted as a legally acceptable procedure, or that it would become a major industry opening a Pandora's box of ills were treated with derision.

Today, we are no longer shocked at the figures which show over one million abortions each year. Where is the outrage at the deterioration for the protection and care of the unborn, the handicapped, the infirm, and the old? For as Bishop James McHugh has stated, "the slippery slope has become a high-speed downhill run."

When Mr. Harper learned of the jury's not guilty verdict he said, "It feels wonderful, like I just won the lottery or something." Then he added: "Thank God for that. It's over." His "act of love" is a frightening, maudlin claim. However, it may be the byword for misplaced compassion which appears, unless we all actively engage in defeating such measures, to be a fearful prospect for us all.

(Mrs. Sinanian is director of the Pro-Life Office of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.