Germany Has Opened Pandora’s Box with Decision in Favor of Doctor Assisted Suicide
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| German Supreme Court |
Germany’s Supreme Court on February 26th, 2020 decided in favor of doctor assisted suicide. This opens pandoras box and can only lead down a slippery slope of unbiblical ethics on end of life issues. The whole western world is abuzz with such ethical issues on the “sanctity of life.” Today I would like to deal with these from Biblical terms and what a Christian response should be.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”
Psalms 139:13-17 ESV
A healthy God honoring culture takes care of the weakest members of its society to the best of its abilities. God has ordained and created life from conception to natural death (Psalm 139:13-16; Job 10:11) And we should honor and do our best to protect and preserve every image bearing creation of God. With this recent Supreme Court decision to allow for doctor assisted suicide, these issues come up again. It is a sad day indeed that a country would not legally protect life from God ordained conception (Psalm 139:13-16; Job 10:11) until the numbered days are fulfilled to one’s natural death (Psalm 139:16; Job 14:5).
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| Entrance to Auschwitz used for the "Final Solution" above "Arbeit Macht Frei" means "Work Makes You Free" |
This could and will lead to the eventuality that we saw under the evil Hitler regime of the “final solution” in ridding the “master race” of all impurities such as disability, and any other racial imperfections. The “final solution” was not just the eradication of the Jewish race, it was the eradication of any unwanted and unnecessary burden on the victory of the 3rd Reich. Those expendables were systematically exterminated or imprisoned with impunity. This is the slippery slope that we humans find ourselves on. Germans didn’t wake up one day and think, “let’s kill 6 million Jews and untold others with disabilities and other unwanted.” It was a series of unethical and unchristian compromises that led to the full acceptance of the “final solution.”
How does a culture come to allow such atrocities? They make simple “compassionate compromises” like the “allowance of suffering people to die with dignity.” But long before that a culture must have decided to abandon faith in and obedience to God.
This is not a judgement on Germany, but rather an indictment on the whole western world that has abandoned the belief in the sanctity of life. When a culture abandons trust in God, and obedience to his word, the abandonment of the sanctity of all life is soon to follow. Most western countries have long before abandoned their trust and reliance on God with the rise of secularism. On the dollar bill in America stands the phrase “In God We Trust,” which ironically has not been the case since at least the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of January 22, 1973.
There are tenuous and treacherous days ahead of us. Especially with the themes that are also on the table now in many western countries. One theme being, if medical insurance companies should offer and or require prenatal testing of pregnant women. The natural outcome of such a practice can only lead to more abortions of disability pre-diagnoses. In our day and age, with the constant sanctity of life issues that are finding their way to national political levels, we find ourselves not just on a slippery slope, but rather we are racing down a jagged cliff toward the dangerous end of all hindrance or protections for the weakest in our societies the elderly, sick, disabled, and babies in the womb. A current development that proves that the “slippery slope” is not a crazy conspiracy theory argument is a current case being argued before the US supreme court. The legal right to abortion was not enough for abortion rights, but now a case is being heard that could tip the scales in favor of easy access for everyone to abortions. June Medical Services LLC v. Russo[1] could very well be the decision if Roe v. Wade was enough or should every woman everywhere have the right and full access to an easy and convenient abortion. The slippery slope exists in this “sanctity of life” ethical fight. It is not a conspiracy theory construct by the “right to life” groups. There are a consistent litany of cases coming, and the lines keep getting pushed further and further away from a reasonable and rational ethic of the sanctity of life.
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| Terry Shiavo with her mother in 2001 |
I am by no means an Ethical expert, but needless to say these current developments stand in clear opposition to Biblical Ethics. I remember years ago when the Terrry Schiavo story was played out in front of the public eye. Terry was as a young woman who suffered a heart attack and was deemed brain dead and proclaimed in a “persistent vegetative state.” This was the first “right to die” case of its kind in modern medical history. Her husband and legal guardian pursued the right to remove the feeding tube from Terry and in all practicality let her starve to death. Schiavo’s parents contended against his wishes and a prolonged legal battle for Terry’s life ensued. This case was battled out in the public eye from 1990-2005. Of course, these are complex medical issues. The question certainly arises, “when is someone truly dead, and when is someone only being held alive by machines?”
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| Peter Singer in 2013 |
The question I would like to address is, at what point does an immortal life begin and end? Many ethicists have sought to answer the question. The infamous Peter Singer, professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, believes and teaches that it is morally and ethically acceptable that a baby would be killed up to six months after birth. He argues that a chimpanzee could have a greater right to life than a human infant. He even goes so far as to argue that killing a human baby can be the right thing to do. Should a six-month-old be required to prove their personhood? Should a six-month-old be protected? Should the life of the elderly and the suffering likewise be protected? Should a terminal patient that cannot prove or validate their personhood be given the same rights as the hard working and fit 30-year-old construction worker? If the Christian scriptures and its moral and ethical standards are not our full and final authority, then Singer’s ethics make sense. Why not take this ethic to its logical
conclusion, and fully engage with the evolutionary ethic “Survival of the Fittest?” Why should we take care of the weakest members of our society at all? When they become a drain then people in all stages of life become expendable. Those who are fit should survive and those who cannot should be exterminated by the fittest. This is the ethic that the western world and now Germany has bought into. Singer is not alone in his ethical stance. In the landmark Roe v. Wade decision Justice Harry Blackmun introduced the idea of a “useful life.” He described that ending a life that is deemed not useful, is not only permissible, but required of a sensitively ethical person. Thus, the sanctity of life from conception to natural death was done away with. Here we witnessed a shift in sanctity of life ethics. Things shifted and the calculating argument became no longer “sanctity of life,” but rather “quality of life."
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Justice Harry Blackmun
author of the majority
opinion in Roe v. Wade
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To help answer that question of who is an immortal life and when it begins and ends, I turn to Robertson McQuilken’s book “An Introduction to Biblical Ethics.”
“Because of recent advances in our knowledge of prenatal life, virtually all agree that the zygote (fertilized egg) is alive and that it is human. The contention of some pro-choice advocates that the embryo is merely tissue or organ of the mother, like her appendix, gave way in the seventies before the weight of scientific evidence. Virtually all agree that zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are individuals of the human species. The zygote's unique DNA code is already determining its independent existence, including the processes of the pregnancy itself. So, the debate has shifted from the question of when human life begins to the question of the value of various forms of life.”[2]
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| Dr. C. Everett Koop 13th Surgeon General of the United States |
The question is not for us whether or not babies, elderly, and those suffering belong to the human community. It is a question of wether those pre-born, elderly, disabled, suffering, and the terminally ill are immortal lives with eternal souls. The Bible is however clear that all Image bearing humans have eternal souls. McQuilken explains further how movement to Abortion and Euthanasia did not happen in a vacuum. He describes how in the 1930’s the humanism movement strongly pushed abortion and euthanasia early on and that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was a foregone conclusion to the Humanism/Feminism movements. Within Roe V. Wade is built in the new framework that the only child that should be born is the child that is “wanted.” Closely linked to these stories is the case of “Baby Doe” in 1982 and this story resonates with me personally because the child in this case had Down syndrome. The parents of this child declined surgery to fix esophageal atresia which lead to the baby’s death. Dr. C. Everett Koop who was the surgeon General at the time believed that the boy was denied treatment and sustenance, not because of the risk, but because of the child’s Down syndrome. Koop was publicly vocal about his disagreement with withholding treatment as he himself had successfully performed hundreds of such procedures. He was of the opinion by the year 1982 that if such a procedure was done that it would have been most certainly successful. Thankfully through Koop's efforts the “Baby Doe Amendment” was passed into law on October 9th, 1984. The amendment defined child abuse as withholding sustenance, medically reasonable care from disabled children. However, in 1986 it was struck down on the grounds that the “Rehabilitation Act didn’t apply to medical care of handicapped infants.”[3]
The robust argument against the logic of abortion on the basis of desirability is the unequal application of protection that a baby in utero is provided. If a baby is wanted, it is protected in the womb. Let’s say for instance, two different women are pregnant. One has decided to have an abortion and goes through with it. The other has decided to have the baby and wants to carry it to term and deliver it. God forbid, but the second mother in the term of her pregnancy is attacked by a mugger. Let’s say he violently strikes her in the stomach during the mugging and the baby in the womb dies and the woman miscarries. That man could and should be charged with murder or at the least manslaughter. What is the difference in the two cases? The one woman has decided that her child in utero is not wanted and the other woman has decided that her child is wanted. The protection of personhood is not equitably applied across all cases as seen in this example. As seen in this example, we obviously make exceptions for the protection of innocent life in the case of wanted and unwanted pregnancies. It follows then that with the “right to die” that people eventually who are “not wanted” will soon become expendable as seen in our inequitable application of justice in the abortion of the “unwanted” child and the “wanted” child. This will also be the inevitable outcome on the slippery slope of doctor assisted suicide. It is just a matter of time. We have seen that in the case of abortion, how the slippery slope of ethics of the protection of desired personhood and unwanted personhood works.
In His Seminal work “Ethics” Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the “right to bodily life” this way,
“Bodily life, which we receive without any action on our own part, carries within itself the right to its own preservation. This is not a right that we have justly or unjustly appropriated to ourselves, but it is in the strictest sense an “innate” right, one which we have passively received, and which preexists our will, a right which rests upon the nature of things as they are. Since it is God's will that there should be human life on earth only in the form of bodily life, it follows that it is for the sake of the whole man that the body possesses the right to be preserved. And since all rights are extinguished at death, it follows that the preservation of the life of the body is the foundation of all natural rights without exception and it is, therefore, invested with a particular importance. The underlying right of natural life is the safeguarding of nature against intentional injury, violation and killing. That may sound very jejune and unheroic. But somebody does not exist primarily in order to be sacrificed, but in order that it may be preserved. Different and more exalted considerations may give rise to the right or the duty of sacrificing the body, but this in itself presupposes the underlying right to the conservation of bodily life... According to the Christian doctrine, the body possesses a higher dignity. Man is a bodily being and remains so in eternity as well. Bodiliness and human life belong inseparably together.”[4]
Bonhoeffer continues,
“Among free independent persons any conscious injury to the body of another constitutes the destruction of the first natural right of man; it means that he is in principle deprived of all his rights and that natural life is destroyed. The first right of natural life consists in the safeguarding of the life of the body against arbitrary killing. One must speak of arbitrary killing were ever innocent life is deliberately destroyed... All deliberate killing of innocent life is arbitrary.”[5]
In regard to euthanasia, and doctor assisted suicide Bonhoeffer says, “If there is even the slightest responsible possibility of allowing others to remain alive, then the destruction of their lives would be arbitrary killing, murder. Killing and keeping alive are never of equal value in the taking of this decision; the sparing of life has an incomparably higher claim than killing can have.”[6]
Bonhoeffer goes on to describe that if a patient does not give or cannot give explicit consent for help with dying then the argument is moot and truly unethical. He even argues that a person who is depressed who has asked with help to die, that it cannot be taken as and treated with the same ethical standard because the person is no longer “his own master.”[7] Bonhoeffer clearly displays in this passage that the “right to life” takes inherent precedent over the demand for death. Within this whole passage Bonhoeffer displays the slippery slope and how when we start on it without the ultimate innate value of the “right to life” then we have strayed off the “Biblical Ethical course.”
We can see this in our activities with the cart blanche abortion of babies with disabilities. As previously stated, the question was debated recently in German parliament, “should health insurances offer as a rule prenatal testing to all pregnancies?” This would and could only lead to systematic abortion of babies with prenatal diagnoses of disabilities. Moreover, it could even lead to health insurances denying coverage or demanding that women abort babies with prenatal diagnoses of disability. Insurances could make it a rule, and then the rule becomes the procedure, and then the procedure moves to demands of the insured to comply with “lower costs” or what an insurance company labels “high risk.” Pretty soon, as we slide down this slippery ethical slope, insurance companies will have risk assessments labeling such pregnancies outside the scope of coverage. People could be penalized when they decide to bring babies to term instead of terminating their pregnancy. Because the insurance provider’s risk assessment model shows that the costs of such babies and children, and even adults will be a larger financial burden on the insurance company.
Let us seek now to lay a biblical case against doctor assisted suicide and abortion. Is there a biblical precedent for the “right to life” from conception to natural death? The Bible undoubtedly supports the view that life begins at conception albeit not necessarily with clear directives or commands. First, Scripture teaches that human life is precious, and that murder is wrong (Genesis 9:6). Uniquely among all creatures only man has the capacity for a relationship with God. Only man has a soul. Only man was made in God’s image, God’s
likeness (Genesis 1:26). The Bible talks of God knowing an individual from conception (Jeremiah 1:5). Additionally, David said he was “sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5) So David was in need of a Savior from the very point of his conception. In other words, he was like every man affected from conception by the fall of Adam. Paul later alludes to that fall, “For in Adam all men die (1 Cor 15:22).” Job speaks of God molding him like clay and forming his skin, flesh and bones.
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| The Bible says we are image bearers of God |
One of the greatest examples of this is Psalm 139, the Psalmist praises God whom he says, “created my inmost being … [and] knit me together in my mother’s womb”. Human beings are the only one of God’s creatures that scripture singularity describes as being “God’s needlework.” More spectacularly, God’s knowledge of the Psalmist goes back to his creation in the womb when he “was made in the secret place”. God saw his “unformed body”, that is, God saw the Psalmist as an embryo. None of God’s creation is so uniquely formed and so thoroughly known by God in the womb. In Luke 1:41-45 the baby, John the Baptist, leaps for joy in his mother’s womb. Elizabeth, his mother, heard the voice of Mary far off, and John the Baby “leaped in her womb.” Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. It is obvious that John the Baptist was leaping for joy in the Lord because of the presence of Mary the Mother of Jesus. Why did he leap for joy? More than likely, because the Angel previously reported that John the Baptist would be “filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15).” How is it that a person could be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, if a baby in the womb is not an eternal person with image bearing quality? Only people can be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is one of the most telling arguments for personhood from conception.
Christ similarly received his mortal body at conception. Jesus' conception is a tremendous example of this. He was uniquely “conceived by the Holy Spirit,” and subsequently began his earthly life at his conception. The incarnation of Jesus Christ began at his Holy Spirit conception, not in a manger in Bethlehem. God became in-carnate wrapped in flesh in an embryo. It follows then that the human soul must be present from conception. Therefore, body and soul cannot be separated until natural death.
Furthermore, to take a life toward the end of life would also be against the commands of God, Jesus repeated the ten commands in particularly the commandment not to murder when he said, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire (Matthew 5:21-22).” For these biblical reasons a person has an eternal soul from the time of conception until death. Anything that interrupts that is an affront to God, and a transgression against the law of God. Although God is sovereign and has numbered the days of man (Job 14:5; Psalm 139:16), man has no such mandate to interfere or to seek to “play God.” in the interference with the “image bearing” life that God has ordained and created.
We see the further prohibition of “shedding blood” laid out in the beginning of Genesis. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” What is the basis and foundation against killing an innocent person? It is the image of God in man that is the basis of this prohibition. We are prohibited from shedding blood precisely because God has made us and because we carry his image. Thus, our significance, or our claim to self-protection and outside protection of any life is not based on the “quality of life,” gifts, abilities, or any other status but the status of being made in the image of God. Our dignity is not based on what we can do, but in our creation identity. We do not earn or lose the right to be treated like image-bearers. It is intrinsic in all men according to our “made-ness.” “In the image of God, he created them male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27; 5:2).” Jesus in Matthew 19:4 reiterates this creation order that “He (God) made them male and female (Matthew 19:4).”
An embryo is not a potential human being, it is a human being with potential. Similarly, a life nearing its conclusion is no less human. A life with a flickering flame is not extinguished unless the days numbered for us have come to a close. It is a life until the flame of life has been extinguished by its creator and its potential has been fulfilled. Such flickering flames should fall under the protection and care of other image bearers. They fall under the care of the image giver, why should they not fall under our care and protection as well? Why do we not let every man fall under our care and love? Convenience, expediency, usefulness, pain, injury, money, depression, or that they have become a burden on the society? These are not grounds enough for the extinguishing of that flame. Jesus himself was the one at creation who gave us our image bearing quality. He still lovingly to this day continually upholds us by the power of his mighty word (Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:1-4). It is in the mind and purpose of Christ to sustain us and continue to breathe the breath of life into our lungs. He purposes to keep us alive. He continually speaks from heaven, “Exist, exist, exist,” and we exist. Paul said in his address at the Areopagus, “In him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).” He is the sustainer of all life. Sustaining of life is one of the purposes of Christ. We ought to likewise have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and also seek to uphold our fellow image-bearers and do our utmost to that end. It is the Christ-like thing to do.
[1] https://apple.news/AzR66PGNJTdSbDYsVrn9jTA,accessed March 3, 2020
[2] McQuilkin, J. Robertson. An Introduction to Biblical Ethics. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1995. Print. Page 310.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Doe_Law
[4] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, and Eberhard Bethge. Ethics. New York, NY, Etc.: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Print. Page 154-155.
[5] Ibid, page 158.
[6] Ibid, page 159.
[7] Ibid, page 160.
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