From bookstores to ballot boxes, debate over euthanasia moves from quiet corners to center stage.

When Robert Kingsbury came out of medical school, he felt much like Saint George, “ready to attack the dragons of disease.” But in the years that followed, says the St. Louis general surgeon, he learned that “Saint George’s sword in the twentieth century turns into a costly, complex, isolating instrument that takes on a life of its own.”

Kingsbury confesses that new technologies and the fear of death present physicians with two temptations: becoming “technicians who merely run the machines in frantic attempts to prolong life at all costs” or becoming “medical executioners” in the name of compassion. As an evangelical Christian and a founder of the American Hospice Academy, Kingsbury rejects both extremes. But as a practitioner who daily wrestles with the individual situations of patients and their families, he admits the area in-between is becoming increasingly complex.

In many ways, Kingsbury’s personal struggle mirrors national debate as American society increasingly confronts issues of life, death, and medical intervention. This year debate over the end of life turned particularly turbulent, culminating last month with the surprise defeat of a Washington initiative that would have made the state the first jurisdiction in the world to legalize active euthanasia.

Assessing Momentum

The year began with news of the death of Nancy Cruzan, a 32-year-old brain-damaged woman who died after her food and water tubes were removed. Cruzan’s family had fought a lengthy court battle for permission to remove the tubes (CT, Feb. 11, 1991, p. 56). In March, New York physician Timothy Quill admitted in a New England Journal of Medicine article that he had prescribed sleeping pills to a leukemia patient, knowing she would use them to kill herself.

In October, pathologist Jack Kevorkian defied a court injunction and lent the use of his “suicide machines” to two chronically ill women. (Kevorkian had participated in the first publicly acknowledged, physician-assisted suicide in June 1990, when Janet Adkins took her life by using his “Mercitron.”) And throughout the late summer and fall, Final Exit, the suicide how-to manual written by National Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry, remained on best-seller lists.

When Washington voters went to the polls last month, many across the nation expected a continuation of the “medicide” momentum. Initiative 119, called the “Death with Dignity” act, would have allowed doctors to provide “aid-in-dying” measures, such as lethal injections, to patients diagnosed as being terminally ill. (Before a doctor-assisted death could occur, the measure required that at least two physicians diagnose the patient as having six months or less to live or as being in a persistent vegetative state. The initiative would also have specified that individuals have the right, through a living will, to refuse treatment or request the removal of food and water tubes.)

Article continues below

As late as mid-October, polls in the state indicated the measure was favored by a 2-to-1 margin. However, opponents of 119 embarked on a heavy educational effort in the last days of the campaign, emphasizing problems in the law’s implementation and the potential for abuse, rather than a philosophical argument against euthanasia. Their strategy apparently paid off as Washington voters defeated the initiative, 54 percent to 46 percent.

Curt Young, pastor of Green Lake Presbyterian Church in Washington and a leader in the “No to 119” campaign, said the evangelical community played a key role in the defeat. The King County Christian Action Council produced an anti-119 video that was widely distributed among churches and Christian organizations. Christian radio stations produced programming about the initiative, and one Seattle station held a telethon that raised more than $100,000 toward buying advertising space. Several prayer rallies and campaigns took place across the state.

Young, former executive director of the national Christian Action Council, was jubilant about the significance of the victory. “If radical, liberal Washington State … is extremely reluctant to support 119 on euthanasia, that tells us that the center on this issue is far more reluctant than is generally perceived,” he said. “The backbone of the euthanasia movement has been broken.”

Rita Marker, director of the Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, agreed this was a “resounding defeat” for the euthanasia movement nationwide, but she noted that “this issue is not going to go away.”

Gray Areas

Outside the political arena, debate is seldom as simple as a yes or no vote. Some of that complexity was highlighted last month as Christian physicians gathered in Washington, D.C., for a national conference sponsored by the Paul Tournier Institute of the Christian Medical and Dental Society (CMDS). Leading a session called “The Christian Physician and Death and Dying,” Kingsbury exhorted his colleagues to fulfill the biblical calling “to provide true dimensions of compassionate care” in all phases of life. Kingsbury’s was the only session on the subject, but questions about end-of-life issues and ethical boundaries surfaced throughout the conference.

Article continues below

The CMDS has issued a clear statement opposing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; however, Kingsbury acknowledged that there is debate within the Christian medical community over some of the “grayer” issues, such as removal of food and water tubes, withdrawal of medical treatment, and the administration of pain killers that a physician knows will shorten a patient’s life.

According to Kingsbury, doctors may get some help in those areas from new federal regulations that went into effect December 1, which require all hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, and health-maintenance organizations participating in Medicare or Medicaid to inform patients about their rights, including the right to refuse treatment and the right to make an “advance directive,” such as a living will.

The Anti-Euthanasia Task Force believes the regulations hold inherent “dangers” and strong possibilities for abuse. The task force has developed its own measure, which would allow persons to designate someone they trust to make health-care decisions for them if they are unable to do so.

As the debate continues to spread, Kingsbury believes Christian doctors, and indeed all Christians, need to be more proactive in speaking out “for the eternal perspective” on these issues. “God forbid we should see the courts coming in and lawyers at the bedsides determining those things,” he says.

Yet, in many cases, that is exactly what is happening. Last month the Missouri Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether the parents of 21-year-old Christine Busalacchi can move their brain-damaged daughter to Minnesota, where her food and water tubes can be more easily removed legally. The court has remanded the case back to lower courts to examine her current medical condition.

One thing that all sides of the issue do agree on is that the debate is far from over. While the Hemlock Society’s Humphry expressed disappointment after the failure of the Washington initiative, he said he had already set his sights on a similar referendum that could appear on the California ballot in 1992. “The great debate of the 1990s about the right to choose to die will be settled in California next year with a much more carefully framed law,” he said. Efforts to legalize euthanasia are also under way in Arizona, Florida, and Oregon.

Article continues below

By Kim A. Lawton.

Hemlock Society: Built on a Myth?

Proponents of euthanasia, led by the National Hemlock Society, have long made compassion and mercy the rallying themes of their movement. “Compassionate physicians who choose voluntarily to help ease the suffering and pain of dying patients should not be penalized for their care,” reiterated Hemlock Society executive director Derek Humphry last month in a fund-raising letter for Americans Against Human Suffering, a Hemlock affiliate.
Yet the tragic suicide last October of Humphry’s former wife and Hemlock cofounder Ann Wickett, and statements she made prior to her death, have raised new questions about the depth of Hemlock’s compassion.
Humphry and Wickett married in 1976, 11 months after he helped his first wife, Jean, commit suicide during the last stages of her battle with breast cancer. Together, Humphry and Wickett wrote Jean’s Way, a book that describes Derek and Jean’s final goodbyes before he brought her a cup of coffee laced with secobarbital and codeine. Derek said he waited with Jean as she slipped into death, ready with pillows to smother her if the drugs made her too uncomfortable.
In 1980, Humphry and Wickett founded the National Hemlock Society, an organization dedicated to the passage of legislation to legalize assisted suicide for the terminally ill. They worked side by side at Hemlock until 1989, when Wickett was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the marriage broke up.
During a February 1990 interview with Christian radio station WMUZ in Detroit, Wickett said Humphry deserted her three weeks after her cancer surgery, leaving a message on the answering machine saying he would not be back. She said that her breast cancer reminded Humphry of Jean’s death and created “a high degree of terror and fear” for him.
In the interview, Wickett also gave hints of backing away from the organization she had founded and the philosophy she had espoused. Wickett said that during her illness, chemotherapy, and divorce the Hemlock board of directors followed Humphry’s lead and froze her out of the organization. She asserted that not a single Hemlock board member offered her any practical or emotional support.
Article continues below
“If an organization cannot translate its philosophy into something which is humanitarian when one of its members—especially a cofounder—is very much in deep trouble, then I say, ‘Of what use is it, indeed?’ ” Wickett said. “I personally have felt a great deal of pressure to simply get out of the way.”
Ironically, in the two years prior to her death, Wickett became close friends with her former “courteous adversary,” Rita Marker, executive director of the Anti-Euthanasia Task Force. The two kept their friendship a secret so it would not be exploited, particularly by Derek Humphry, Marker told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. In an interview last month, Marker said that Wickett’s views on euthanasia “began to change very drastically.” Wickett came to believe “the legalization of euthanasia was not good,” and she came to “deeply regret” assisting, with Humphry’s help, her parents commit suicide.
On October 2, Wickett went into the Oregon wilderness near her farm and took a fatal dose of drugs. Her body was not found until almost a week later. Wickett left two copies of a note to Humphry—one addressed to Marker—highlighting the bitterness she had come to feel for me movement she helped to create:
Derek: There. You got what you wanted. Ever since I was diagnosed as having cancer, you have done everything conceivable to precipitate my death. I was not alone in recognizing what you were doing. What you did, desertion and abandonment, and subsequent harassment of a dying woman is so unspeakable, there are no words to describe the horror of it. Yet, you know and others know too. You will have to live with this until you die. May you never, ever forget. Ann.
At the bottom was a hand-written postscript to Marker:
Rita, my final words to Derek. He is a killer. I know. Jean actually died of suffocation. I could never say it until now. Who would| believe me? Do the best you can. Ann.
Marker released news of her friendship with Wickett and the letter’s contents to a reporter in England and two in the U.S. Further media coverage has followed. Though Marker’s copy was challenged by Humphry, Wickett’s son, who found the letters, has confirmed its validity. Marker said she was fulfilling what she believed to be Wickett’s desire to make her comments public and was prompted by Humphry’s response to her death.
Article continues below
Humphry has denied the accusation that he killed his first wife, Jean, and has declined to comment beyond a press statement released on October 10, which asserts Wickett had suffered from “emotional illness” during her life. “My colleagues and I will remember the noble and pioneering work of Ann Wickett Humphry for the right of the terminally ill to choose to die. That she eventually chose another path takes nothing away from that,” he said. Parts of the statement appeared in an ad placed by Humphry in the New York Times. He declined CT’s request for an interview.
Marker called Humphry’s statement a continuation of his pattern of “using words to batter [Ann].… She had recognized for a long time that Hemlock was built on a myth, and I think [the note] was her final way of setting the record straight.”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.

Our digital archives are a work in progress. Let us know if corrections need to be made.

Tags:
Issue: