By Rita McInerney

Euthanasia has nothing to do with letting someone die. It’s about making them die, it’s the right to kill, Rita Marker told an attentive crowd Sept. 10 at All Saints, Dunwoody.

Aid in dying, which voters have rejected in Washington state and California referendums, is a “deceptively soothing term for what is called, in most states, first-degree murder,” she stated.

Guest speaker at the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s pro-life conference, Mrs. Marker is executive director of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force (IAETF), based in Steubenville, Ohio. Formed in 1987, the group helps meet the need for individuals and organizations to work together.

Two hundred people attended the conference held at the All Saints activity center. Archbishop John F. Donoghue and Father Stephen Churchwell spoke at the morning session. Father Churchwell, a canon lawyer, is pastor of Sacred Heart Church, Atlanta.

The Good and Faithful Servant award was presented in memory of Daphne Madol, a member of Holy Family Parish, Marietta, and was accepted by the daughter Margarita. Mrs. Madol worked unceasingly for the pro-life cause before her death March 22.

Mrs. Marker, the afternoon speaker, described for her audience another West Coast referendum, to be voted on in November by Oregon voters.

This latest attempt by promoters of euthanasia will give doctors the right to prescribe lethal overdoses of drugs to patients with an incurable or irreversible condition. She pointed out that the language of the bill does not say that the medicine has to be self-administered.

“There are enough loopholes (in the bill) you could drive a hearse through it,” she commented.

It includes among “safeguards” the stipulation that patients must make at least three requests for the lethal prescription, two oral and one written, with the former not required to be witnessed. The patient must be a resident of Oregon, a legality not hard to attain, she claimed.

“It would be a good idea” to include family notification, but this is not required, the speaker said.

If the voters approve the measure, it would allow doctors to intentionally prescribe lethal doses of drugs and “would make Jack Kevorkian’s machine just another piece of medical equipment.”

There are three court challenges to bans on assisted dying in San Francisco, Florida, and New York, with the Hemlock Society, the organization in the forefront of the right-to-die movement, planning to challenge the Florida law.

“All cases are on the fast track to the Supreme Court,” Mrs. Marker predicted.

She next spoke of the Netherlands where euthanasia is widely practiced while remaining technically illegal. The first report issued by the Dutch government on the issue showed 9.1 percent of all people who die yearly in Holland had aid in dying. When Dutch doctors are convicted of assisting, sentences are extremely lenient.

Dr. Kevorkian was a debate opponent of Mrs. Marker before he found his first victim, she said. He is the point man for the euthanasia movement in the U.S. and the Hemlock Society has lauded him for acting in “the tradition of a caring and courageous physician.”

The death doctor had to select his first victim carefully, according to Mrs. Marker. “He had to score a bull’s eye to win over public support.” Instead, the public reacted with horror.

Many times when a patient says, “I want to die,” they are actually looking for someone to affirm that they should stay alive, Mrs. Marker cautioned the audience.

She concluded her 50-minute talk with a sad account of a friendship that began when a one-time euthanasia promoter learned she had cancer. The friend was Ann Humphrey, ex-wife of Derek Humphrey and co-founder with him of the Hemlock Society.

“One event made her question her involvement in the movement,” the speaker said. That was her role in the death of her parents who each took a lethal overdose.

After Ann Humphrey was diagnosed with cancer, she lost her husband and her job as deputy director of the Hemlock Society because she had come to realize that “euthanasia should not be legalized. She killed herself in 1991 with the same medicine that had killed her parents.” Her suicide note included a message to Rita Marker: “Do the best you can.”

“She wanted people to know that those who do the killing are harmed along with the dead person. I urge you to do the best you can to let people know the truth about euthanasia.”

An account of her friend’s death and arguments challenging the right-to-die are related in her book, Deadly Compassion: The Death of Ann Humphrey and the Truth About Euthanasia, published by William Morrow.

In his remarks, Archbishop Donoghue said some people who would resurrect the brutal notions of the strong vanquishing the weak and abandoning the old, think they can hide behind words like “population management,” “quality of life criteria,” “death with dignity,” and “assisted termination.”

Such tendencies exist in “extreme movements such as those proposed by the so-called doctor of death, Jack Kevorkian, or by such groups as the Hemlock Society,” he remarked.

“But even more subtly, the propagandists of the anti-gospel are now emerging in the halls of Congress where they shamelessly acclaim the right to kill and call it the right of choice or the right to privacy … the anti-gospel is also seen in the moves that are presently underfoot to revolutionize health care in this country. For whether they admit it or not, many of the proposals suggested by our health care engineers are in actuality thinly disguised moves towards health care rationing. And we all know that when there is not enough to go around it is the health of the very young and the very old who will likely bear the burden of being considered not worth the time and the expenditure.”

In concluding his talk the archbishop told the audience, “It is you who are present today that I choose to help me in the Church’s efforts to go on defending life … It is you who have shown the courage to place yourselves in personal jeopardy for the sake of defending life that I want to encourage … It is you, who have come to me with heartfelt enthusiasm and to whom I also turn as brothers and sisters, who might walk with me on this path and shoulder part of the heavy burden…”

In presenting the award to Mrs. Madol’s daughter, Archbishop Donoghue said that “with a confirmed Christian’s fearless strength she established the recitation of the rosary outside the Northside Women’s Clinic, an infamous local abortion mill, and when she knew she was dying, she offered all her suffering and her remaining strength for the sake of the pro-life cause.”

The first speaker of the day, Father Churchwell directed his audience to the Catechism of the Catholic Church for “a clear enunciation of the Church’s teaching on euthanasia.” The topic is treated under the heading of the Fifth Commandment, he said.

For a definition of euthanasia, Father Churchwell referred them to the Declaration on Euthanasia issued June 26, 1980, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document was approved for publication by Pope John Paul II.

It was written after a number of bishops and Episcopal conferences sought guidance from Rome on the question. Experts on the “various aspects” of euthanasia were consulted in its preparation.

The Declaration states: “By euthanasia is understood an action or omission which of itself or by intention causes death in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated …

“It is necessary to state firmly once more that nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying.

“Furthermore no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action. For it is a question of the violation of the divine law, an offence against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life and an attack on humanity.”

The declaration acknowledges the fact that there can be times when a person is in such pain that they may ask for death rather than a continuation of such pain. This is almost always an “anguished plea for help and love.” A sick person needs to be surrounded by the “human and supernatural warmth” of all those close to him or her, parents and children, doctors and nurses, Father Churchwell said.

Speakers were introduced by Father Richard Lopez, teacher of religion at St. Pius X High School, Atlanta.

Peggy Sinanian, director of the archdiocesan Pro-Life Office, planned the program.