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Fall 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW FALL 2001

the HUMANLIFE REVIEW FALL 2001 Featured in this issue Ellen Wilson Fielding on When Rights Collide Brian Caulfield on Grief and Grace at Ground Zero Mark Pickup on The Silver Linings of Fear Nancy L Harvey on Hitler's Children Final Decisions Assisted Life v Assisted Death Rita Marker Kathryn Jean Lopez F P Tros Wesley J Smith Lynette Burrows on No Birth and No Control William Murchison on Sex Rediscovered Raymond J Adamek on Roe's Days Are Numbered Also in this issue Debra Saunders William Saletan Maggie Gallagher Eric Cohen William Kristol J Bottum David van Gend The Wall Street Journal Published by The Human Life Foundation Inc New York New York Vol XXVII No 4 5.00 a copy

ABOUT THIS ISSUE one nice thing about being late with this issue okay the only nice thing is that our sabbaticalling senior editor Bill Murchison is back earlier than we'd expected In Sex Rediscovered page 61 Murchison reviews Modern Sex Liberation and Its Discontents an excellent new collection of essays edited by Myron Magnet and published by the Manhattan Institute it's good value too posted at just 11.96 on amazon com Raymond J Adamek is also returning to our pages after an interval of 24 years Dr Adamek professor emeritus of sociology at Kent State University has written extensively about abortion and his contribution here Roe's Days Are Numbered page 69 reflects the sober assessment of someone who's been taking the public pulse for a long time The same can be said of F P Tros a new contributor who reports on recent surprising cracks in the euthanasia regime that's grown up over the past two decades in his native Holland Last year Mr Tros contacted us wanting to know how he could get in touch with Wesley Smith the anti euthanasia activist whose articles frequently appear here see The Birth of Hospice page 57 Mr Tros letter initiated an amicable correspondence between him and senior editor Faith Abbott who was delighted when he sent us Too Big for Their Wooden Shoes page 53 Another new contributor Mrs Nancy L Harvey is sadly deceased Faith Abbott's epistolary energy was the moving force again behind our publication of Hitler's Children page 31 Mrs Harvey's final essay An extended editor's note preceding it will tell you something about the quality of the author's life as she endured a disabling but not dispiriting disease Hardly an issue goes by these days that doesn't include something from the must read editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal Our thanks for permission to reprint Mount Clone page 85 and also No It's A Moral Monstrosity page 89 by Eric Cohen and William Kristo Thanks also go to Slate magazine slate com for allowing us to share with you William Saletan's The Ethicist's New Clothes page 81 and to the Weekly Standard where J Bottum's While the Senate Slel ps page 92 originally appeared Finally we'd like to publicly acknowledge our gratitude to Dr David van Gend secretary of the Queensland Australia branch of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life not only for the good work he does but for sending us the occasional article The First Clone Nobody's Child page 94 was published in the December issue of News Weekly we're happy to have it provide a strong finish to our Fall egads issue We do apologize for being late ANNE CONLON MANAGING EDITOR

INDEX

the HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Fall 2001 William Saletan Eric Cohen William Kristol J Bottum Vol XXVII No 4 Debra Saunders Maggie Gallagher David van Gend The Wall Street Journal Published by THE HUMAN LIFE FOUNDATION INC Editorial Office 215 Lexington Avenue 4th Floor New York N Y 10016 The editors will consider all manuscripts submitted but assume no responsibility for unsolicited material Editorial and subscription inquiries and requests for reprint permission should be sent directly to our editorial office Subscription price 20 per year Canada and foreign 25 U S currency ISSN 0097 9783 2002 by THE HUMAN LIFE FOUNDATION INC New York N Y Printed in the U S A Editor Maria McFadden Senior Editors Ellen Wilson Fielding Faith Abbott McFadden John Muggeridge William Murchison Managing Editor Anne Conlon Consulting Editor Europe Mary Kenny London Contributors Lynette Burrows James Hitchcock Rita Marker William McGurn George McKenna Mary Meehan David Quinn Wesley J Smith Business Manager Rose Flynn DeMaio Production Manager Ray Lopez Circulation Manager Esther Burke Publishing Consultant Edward A Capano Founding Editor J P McFadden Introduction 2 Maria McFadden When Rights Collide 7 Ellen Wilson Fielding Griefand Grace at Ground Zero 19 Brian Caulfield Freedom in Surrender The Silver Linings ofFear and Uncertainty 25 Mark Pickup Hitler's Children 31 Nancy L Harvey No Birth and No Control The IPPF Formula for a Brave New World 34 Lynette Burrows Final Decisions Assisted Life v Assisted Death Rita Marker 42 Kathryn Jean Lopez 46 F P Tros 53 Wesley J Smith 57 11 Sex Rediscovered 61 William Murchison Roe's Days Are Numbered 69 Raymond J Adamek Appendices 79

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION IN HIS MESSAGE FOR THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE JANUARY 1 Pope John Paul II said Terrorism is built on contempt for human life Those who kill by acts of terrorism actually despair of humanity of life of the future Terrorism one might say is an ultimate expression of the culture of death No political or religious end can justify such brutal disregard for innocent human life Welcome to a unique issue of our Review unique because it has been written in an unprecedented time Though I write this in the early days of 2002 this is our regrettably delayed Fall issue mostly written during the season that began 10 days after the worst day many of us have known I think most of our authors here would agree no words came in the days following the attacks Our minds were dumbfounded foggy with shock grief and fear It even seemed in those first days that the work of the Review to counter abortion euthanasia and related ills had been eclipsed Who could focus on stem cell research when people had watched at the scene and on television human beings leaping to their deaths when families watched the towers crumble some knowing that their loved ones were inside And yet as we found our voices again it became increasingly clear that our issues were more relevant than ever The stark contrast between the cultures of death and life of despair and hope were apparent immediately after the attacks while a multitude of Americans responded to the horror with stunning acts of bravery and goodness Planned Parenthood of New York as its response to the attacks on the city offered free reproductive services for the rest of September As Brian Caulfield writes in this issue One can only wonder how deep the ethic of death can go when the answer to thousands dead at Ground Zero is the killing of more innocents in the womb Nevertheless this offer was not big news as it was largely overwhelmed by a slew of press stories about babies the baby born to the widow of one of the men on a hijacked plane a day or so after the 11th the baby born to a woman who escaped the towers and went immediately into labor we couldn't get enough news about babies News anchors commented on such stories by exclaiming to each other that babies are a sign of hope for the world aren't they a sign that life goes on In a recent follow up story in the New York Times which tracked pregnant women widowed on September 11th there was no hand wringing over whether the pregnancies were desirable under the circumstances the article focused on the poignancy of the women's 2 FALL 2001

THE HUMANLIFE REvIEW pregnancies and the tenderness they brought out in strangers One widow who suffered a miscarriage in the weeks following the 11 th described the experience of losing her baby as having the towers fall again that was how devastated she was to lose the life that she and her husband had created As the articles in this issue illustrate though our landscape has been literally and metaphorically changed forever our focus remains the same we seek to help others make connections between the so called choices promoted by the culture of death and the disregard for individual life which diminishes us all Our Senior Editor Ellen Wilson Fielding in her lead article takes as a starting point the juxtaposition of the 11th when Americans recoiled in horror from the brutal calculus that could assign life or death on the basis of which best prospered the terrorist cause and the late November announcement from Advanced Cell Technology of the self proclaimed initial success in cloning briefly viable human embryos another sort of moral calculus about life The embryos would be created purely for the benefit they could bring others and then disposed of a means to an end When businessmen determine to use unborn human beings as a means to what seems to them a noble end the mitigation of disabilities the cure of illness they are choosing not merely a bad means but an inhumane one Fielding goes on to expose the paradox involved in the touted scientific advances in cloning and embryonic stem cell research the supposed beneficiaries of the research many of whom lobby most desperately for the use of fetal tissue the disabled and their advocacy groups are the very people who need to be concerned most with how or if our society chooses to protect its weakest members How sure are they that they lie far enough up the slope of human worthiness and usefulness to be safe from flunking the same utilitarian test they've imposed on the unborn We go next to two direct reflections on the terrorist attacks Brian Caulfield fast becoming a regular to our pages has quite a story to tell Not only were his wife and infant son at their home only blocks away from the twin towers when the planes hit but until her pregnancy Maria had worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of Tower One Caulfield writes For me a lifelong New Yorker who has lived from his teen years in the shadow of the towers the terrorist attacks are more than distant images They are personal Caulfield takes us on a tour of Grief and Grace at Ground Zero pondering the evil including Planned Parenthood's typical mix of twisted morality and self serving publicity and the bravery He asks how we can hold on to the good that came out of that awful day Either we become the better persons we were forced to be on that day and love our neighbors as ourselves or we will surrender to the evil that attacked us Mark Pickup a Canadian is a disability rights and anti euthanasia activist who suffers from multiple sclerosis In his reflection on the September attacks he FALL 200113

NrRODUcnON draws a parallel between the new fear of terrorism and the terrorism of a disease Life with MS he writes means waiting for the next strike I would go to bed at night not knowing what function I would wake up with or without Yet Pickup has realized that humans are by nature resilient we are not made to live in constant fear and dread He has found a silver lining in his own struggle which he offers to us in an inspiring essay Pickup stresses the importance to the disabled of an interdependent community People with disabilities are particularly susceptible to a sense of isolation and exclusion from society Our next piece which came to us under unusual circumstances read our editor's note p 31 was written by a disabled woman who found a loving sense of inclusion in a place with a troubled history The late Nancy Harvey who also suffered from a debilitating disease was an opponent of abortion and euthanasia Hitler's Children a reflection and a warning based on her thoughts and experiences during a visit to Germany in March of 2001 was her last formal essay she died in July We are honored to include it here Lynette Burrows is the Review's British treasure Her essays are always lively and often contain unusual information and her latest is no exception In No Birth and No Control The IPPF Formula for a Brave New World Burrows takes on the International Planned Parenthood Federation and its dangerous agenda for born children Burrows came across a chilling leaked memo from the contraceptive giant which confirmed her worst suspicions the organization is mobilizing efforts to get European governments to ratify sexual rights for children and to further marginalise parents in their efforts to protect their own As she discusses the tragic consequences Planned Parenthood's agenda has had on the young Burrows includes some shocking facts about other treacherous ideas passed off by experts in British history you'll do a mental double take it's so incredible Sadly though the destruction caused by today's sexperts needs to be acknowledged One day soon we are going to have to face the waste of time and life involved in children not yet out of their teens having to visit genito urinary clinics as if they were seasoned old soldiers or dirty old men In the special section which follows we shift our attention to decisions regarding the end of life In November while the press focused on anthrax and the war on terror Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum to the Drug Enforcement Administration informing Administrator Asa Hutchinson that doctors in Oregon despite that state's Death with Dignity Act of 1997 were still answerable to federal law when it came to prescribing federally controlled substances to assist a suicide Outraged reaction was immediate and indignant editorials claimed Ashcroft was egregiously discounting states rights to further his personal agenda Not surprisingly average newspaper readers don't have a handle on the 4 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW facts which is convenient for advocates of the right to die Our esteemed friend Rita Marker the indefatigable leader of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide graciously agreed to contribute needed clarification on the issue She explains how it was actually Janet Reno in a ruling in 1998 who decided to er reinterpret the law when it came to states rights versus federal regulations Ashcroft is merely affirming the fact that federal laws do indeed apply to Oregonians NationaL Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez writes next about a notorious figure in the death movement Down Under Australia's Dr Philip Nitschke Lopez has interviewed Nitschke and she asked him about some of his worst ideasthe so called peaceful pill and his not so novel notion of a suicide boat a La the abortion boat dreamed up by Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts see Chris Weinkopf's The Abortion Boat Winter 2001 Nitschke's lethal logic is based on his idea that a right to life necessarily includes a right to death at the time and manner of a person's choosing regardless of circumstances or age he advocates the suicide option for ill chiLdren Nitschke's crusade of course is not unique In Holland much of what he has dreamed about has been in practice for some time Our next author is a Review subscriber from Holland F P Tros surprised us by sending in English an essay which affords a fascinating glimpse of Dutch society He writes specifically about a current irony now that euthanasia in Holland has been legalized unofficially it has gone unpunished for years the doctors themselves are asking to opt out of prescribing death The very doctors who have gathered for years to provide Euthanasia Consultation and Support to their colleagues are feeling traumatized themselves and wondering why they hadn't concentrated on palliative care first A piece about true palliative care concludes our special section In an essay that includes moving details about his own family Review contributor Wesley Smith has given us a portrait of the hospice movement and of its founder Dame Cicely Saunders Smith met with the octogenarian Saunders in her native England and he tells us her story how she was moved by her conviction not only that uneven pain control was a universal problem for the dying but that the patient's total pain physical spiritual pyschological and social ought to be treated Our Senior Editor William Murchison back from a six month sabbatical asked us if we'd be interested in a review of a book out from the Manhattan Institute a collection of essays titled Modern Sex Liberation and Its Discontents Well we find Murchison's prose marvelous no matter what his subject and this gem is no exception so we said of course but this article is especially valuable because it dares speak the obvious There can be no change in attitudes about abortion without a sea change in attitudes about sex Only in a culture where the creation of life had taken an official backseat to the FALL 200115

NrRODUCfION cultivation of pleasure could the Roe v Wade regime be enforced sex as a right and the consequences of sex rendered optional at best Though the authors included in this book have not produced an anti abortion document they have much to say Murchison reports about the sad consequences of divorcing sex from its purpose Our final article by Raymond Adamek Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Kent State is likewise especially valuable It exposes the reality of the Roe v Wade decision a decision characterized by poor logic poor history poor social science and poor jurisprudence Adamek also shows that Americans attitudes about abortion do not support the abortion on demand allowed by Roe v Wade but initiatives to reform abortion law are harmed nonetheless by wide acceptance of numerous pro choice myths which Adamek deftly debunks with the facts We're back to our purpose once again for things to change the public must be educated about the realities of deadly choices We have so many articles featured in this issue that we didn't have room for a large number of appendices The seven included here are all fine complements to the articles which precede Debra Saunders a San Francisco columnist who happens to be married to Wesley Smith writes about the Ashcroft assisted suicide directive we have several columns of fact and opinion about issues surrounding cloning written by the excellent editors of the Wall Street Journal Eric Cohen of the New America Foundation William Kristol and J Bottum of the Weekly Standard columnist Maggie Gallagher and our pro life colleague from Australia David van Gend We've also reprinted a trenchant piece on ethicists by Slate writer William Saletan The Ethicist's New Clothes It is in the nature of our journal to discuss issues at times painful to contemplate perhaps this time the emotions evoked by some of our content may be especially keen We include our usual breathers Nick Downes unique cartoons which we hope will provide comforting chuckles I'd like to wrap up the Review's 27th year of continuous publication with words spoken last March by our President whose leadership sorely tried beyond his worst imaginings no doubt has been an inspiration which well express our hope for America The culture of life is a welcoming culture never excluding never dividing never despairing and always affirming the goodness of life in all its seasons MARIA McFADDEN EDITOR 6 FALL 2001

WHEN "RIGHTS" COLLIDE

When Rights Collide Ellen Wilson Fielding Onthe morning of September 11 2001 a group of Islamic terrorists seized control of four planes carrying the usual assortment of men women and children and sacrificed them for the higher end of ajihad against the West Almost unanimously Americans recoiled in horror from the brutal calculus that could assign life or death on the basis of which best prospered the terrorist cause While smoke was rising from New York and Washington D C a group of scientists in Worcester Massachusetts were going about the job of attempting to clone the world's first human embryos In late November while American ground troops were fighting in Afghanistan and the FBI continued tracking down leads to the September 11th terrorists newspapers gave front page space to the Worcester firm's self proclaimed initial success in cloning briefly viable human embryos Advanced Cell Technology the Worcester company that seized the headlines and the stem ceIl research momentum defended its activities by assuring the public that the company had no intention ofever bringing a cloned human child to birth The aim of their scientists prolonged trial and error experimentation was to harvest stem cells from cloned human embryos at very early stages of development after which the embryos could be disposed of In other words the embryos would be confected purely for the benefit they could bring others with the knowledge that there could be no possible benefit to them either directly or indirectly They would not be loved into existence so that they could experience the fullness of life but manipulated into existence for a brief period of usefulness Advanced Cell Technology plans to use its cloned embryos as means to an end just as food is used for nourishment and wood for burning and building and machinery for manufacturing When businessmen determine to use unborn human beings as means to what seems to them a noble end the mitigation of disabilities the cure of illnessthey are choosing not merely a bad means but an inhumane one It is inhumane to deliberately and directly sacrifice one set of innocent human beings to help save another set because this entails a refusal to recognize the implications of being human and the nature of the claims of human beings upon us Such exploitation has sobering implications for the very classes of people Ellen Wilson Fielding our senior editor is the author of An Even Dozen Human Life Press FALL 200117

ELLEN WILSON FIELDING themselves targeted as beneficiaries of this procedure who lobby most desperately for the use of fetal tissue and embryonic stem cell research The disabled and those who love them need to think long and hard both about the claims of these young fellow human beings upon them and about the fragile nature of the protection society is willing to accord its weakest members The disabled and those with degenerative diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's often feel pushed aside undervalued and ignored because their condition places them in some or many respects outside the normal flow of life for most people Many years of legal and political campaigning and lobbying and heretofore unimaginable technological inventions have brought them greater protections and accommodations in the workplace and in society than they have ever enjoyed They and their families and friends have become so great a force to be reckoned with that they have thus far blocked the protection of the unborn and almost born from scientific manipulation and experimentation But this apparently impregnable political strength which has swelled with the aging of the Baby Boomers their experience with caring for infirm parents and their concerns about possible future disabling illnesses they themselves may suffer is in some ways illusory It is based not so much on the hard rock of principle as on the uncertain sand of sympathy and fellowfeeling It is natural for people who have loved disabled ones to feel they would do anything to prevent their suffering and in this era of long lifespans it is also natural for them to dread the possibility of living with a similar condition And all of us fear the isolating onslaught of Alzheimer's which repels and horrifies us today somewhat as leprosy has always done Seeming to offer an escape hatch from these fears modern science points to its already impressive record in medically and mechanically improving the prospects and potential of the ill and disabled With so many previously unimaginable feats accomplished science's ability to effectively cure or compensate for most disabilities seems feasible to a degree never even hoped for in earlier eras But observe carefully the nature of the language and the arguments made for the handicapped to detect the dark cloud lying within this silver lining Yes some of the disabled and their advocates handle sanctity of life sorts of arguments and most use the familiar Jeffersonian language of human rights But are these rights really anchored as they were for our Founders in the laws of Nature and of Nature's God Or do they resemble the more modern self subsisting rights that are there because we human beings want them or think we need them Much of the disabled rights talk stresses self actualizing 8 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW concepts like self fulfillment and expanding choice By fastening on these concepts it seems the disabled are main streaming themselves right onto the self help shelves of the bookstore chains It is not that we don't all seek fulfillment independence and feelings of usefulness and accomplishment But these cannot be the basis for our human rights and human worth since what we can accomplish and how much independence we can achieve vary greatly from person to person and at different stages of life regardless of disabilities Most of us seek to be productive and useful members of society and society will be the better for it if we manage to achieve productivity and usefulness But our worth and our claims to equality cannot be based on even prospective productivity or we are handing society an instrument for outlawing us disfranchising us if we prove too costly or too great an irritant to the social machine Look for instance at some of the arguments made on behalf of the disabled in articles and op ed pieces directed towards the numbers crunchers in big business In these advocates for the disabled stress the numbers of good workers unavailable to businesses that don't better accommodate the disabled in the workplace or else show a reluctance to hire them Altering workplaces and workdays for all sorts of disabilities comes with a hefty price tag we are not just talking about adding a ramp here or wider doorways there but planning and purchasing a variety of specially designed computer systems phone systems and the like These costs have made businesses leery of backing expanded forms or liberal interpretations of disabled rights legislation Their money based reluctance causes disabled rights activists to counter with economic analyses of the benefits of tapping into the disabled as a pool of employees The prospect of loyal and productive handicapped employees becomes the carrot meant to reconcile business to the stick of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its accumulating case law But the numbers crunchers also brood over the strain that significant numbers of disabled and chronically ill employees would place on health insurance costs And these concerns are shared by some of the more fortunate abled employees who not requiring special accommodations and not drawing upon insurance extras like physical or mental therapy emergency equipment experimental treatments and the like can resent the extra workplace demands and higher insurance premiums precipitated by greater numbers of disabled personnel If help for the disabled is obstinately argued only in terms of rights or cost benefit analyses you can expect to see eroding support for this help whenever the rights of the handicapped appear to collide with those of the un handicapped or whenever costs seem to outweigh benefits FALL 200119

ELLEN WILSON FIELDING For we all know that in common everyday behavior people constantly barge into one another in the course of exercising their rights People clog highways utter profanities in public crank up the volume on stereos paint homes peculiar colors indulge in public displays of affection off putting to some spectators erect ugly billboards display vulgar or inane bumper stickers dress in sloppy immodest or unbecoming clothes throw loud parties conduct street clogging political demonstrations vote knaves or fools into office talk in concerts or movie theaters In more private venues they insult family members neglect thank you letters freeload and fail to call or visit aged parents The list can be extended indefinitely Many of these actions though they are bound to affront some people do not seem to be either good or bad in themselves Others belong to the category we used to call a sin and a shame All are legal at least some of the time in some places or within some limits All have been defended as rights often in that obstinately irritating American way we learned as children It's a free country isn't itT Hundreds of times a day we all bump into each other creating major or minor annoyances by exercising our rights and living out our choices But rights do not just collide with other people they collide with other people's rights The rap music lover's right to consult his Muse collides with the night watchman's right to get some sleep during the day The high school student's right to express himself profanely collides with the mother of a preschooler's right to insulate her child from bad language the demonstrators right to attempt to influence public opinion collides with the commuters right to use the public streets to travel to and from work Whether all of these and so many others truly qualify as rights in a classical liberal sense is not quite the point this far down along the road to modernity All of them are argued using rights talk just as both discriminatory and anti discriminatory behavior and legislation are couched in rights talk Thus civil rights activists successfully argued that members of minorities have a right to be free from discrimination in jobs and housing Those on the other side of the issue argued their right to choose their employees neighbors and tenants Religious people defend their right to publicly address God even at official school functions unbelievers and some non Christians protest this assault on their right not to be exposed to religious activities or events What is revealing about this habit of referring to rights is that we are as accustomed to seeing rights trumped or denied as we are to seeing them triumphant This is unavoidable because the kinds of behaviors and expectations we have been considering routinely come into conflict They cannot 10IFALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW peacefully coexist although the people in conflict can sometimes peacefully coexist if one or both choose to sacrifice a claimed right or if both choose to rotate the exercise of their rights The seeker after sleep and the loud stereo player can come to an accommodation by adjusting the hours in which they exercise their rights or by resorting to ear phones or earplugs but the rights themselves conflict when two such people are put into close proximity to one another One danger of using rights talk to defend the disabled then is that we are accustomed to thinking of the exercise of things we call rights as conditional Other things being equal but how often are they whatever accommodations are necessary for handicapped people to succeed in the workplace should be made and whatever augmentation of health coverage such employees need should be provided and whatever commuting assistance required should be offered by employers or municipalities and But as we noted other things are rarely equal at least to all parties involved We live with daily compromises of our rights and most peopleparticularly if they themselves are not directly harmed are willing to tolerate such compromises even when more consequential rights than the examples given above are in question A corporation that in times of expansive prosperity proudly trumpets its expensive provision for the needs of disabled employees and its elaborate mechanisms for protecting them from discrimination in hiring or promotions may suffer no pangs of conscience in curtailing whatever expenses it is not legally bound to offer if it is fighting for its survival Under these straitened economic circumstances it is likely to lobby against the legal expansion of expensive rights or push to limit the interpretation of some already in place without compunction because other rights those of the other employees and the stockholders are being jeopardized Employees fearing job layoffs salary cutbacks or curtailed benefits may feel the same way When these kinds of rights are rooted only in notions of a common humanity that suggests the logic or appropriateness of equal treatment they are not inviolable even in principle let alone in practice So what unanswerable response can be made to the disabled population's argument from necessity In the case of the aborted cloned embryos there is a tell tale sign that these mere bundles of aggregated human cells are regarded even by the scientists working on them as human beings who all other things being equal but they're not would normally deserve protection or at least respectful treatment That sign is the double argument The Worcester lab makes two arguments for going forward with cloning embryos 1 They aren't FALL 2001 11

ELLEN WILSON FIELDING human beings just human cells and 2 We're doing it to help people In an extra credit show of defensiveness the Worcester lab also tacks on the palliative Anyway we aren't going to bring a cloned embryo to term Why stress the gain to other human beings if the cloned embryo has no human rights claims of its own We do not defensively pile on justifications for blood tests or skin grafts or ear piercing or liposuction or the scraping off of human cells for Pap smears and throat cultures We have reasons for all these but we don't feel the need to make any of them rise in rhetoric or significance to the level of defenses In cases such as these we do not consider ourselves duty bound to justify the sacrifice of an acknowledged or suspected good by elaborating on the higher importance of the benefits This double and duplicitous method of arguing is the same as that used to justify abortion Abortion proponents first argue that the unborn is not yet a human being or perhaps not yet a human person This is easier to slide past people when talking about early abortions but some proponents are willing to push the argument up to the fetus's emergence from the birth canal see the frustrating failure to pass a veto proof partial birth abortion ban in the past few years or to pass a state ban that the courts will accept After the argument from ontology pro abortionists stress the hard cases rape incest life and health of the mother imperfect babies poverty or the possibility of abuse directed at an unwanted baby and finally the woman's right to choose But why bother with the horror stories and the odes to freedom if the entity aborted is nothing as ontologically substantial as a human being The answer is that it is a human being or is suspected of being so which in Ronald Reagan's famously common sense argument obliges us to give it the benefit of the doubt or the pro abortionists wouldn't push the cost benefit angle Implicitly pro abortionists are making an argument from necessity a tip off that some people's rights are being sacrificed to other people's Back to our disabled constituents and their families and friends and those who fear being stricken with degenerative or disabling conditions Those pushing fetal experimentation and harvesting of cloned human embryonic tissue may voice their disbelief that human life at this early stage is worthy of any more consideration than fingernail or hair clippings But they tack on the tell tale second argument that sacrificing those living cells may be necessary to treat or cure afflicted adults And a few like some pro abortionists venture even further conceding that the embryo like the fetus is identifiably human life but just isn't as important as the quality of their own lives This is a dangerous argument for the disabled or degenerating to make 12 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW How sure are they that they lie far enough up the slope of human worthiness and usefulness to be safe from flunking the same utilitarian test they've imposed on the unborn What if the projected medical means can ameliorate but not cure their condition What if the medical means remain costly very costly and the proposed subject of the treatment is old or not particularly brilliant or productive Where is the argument from necessity or the costbenefit analysis likely to fall then We know the answer don't we from the Dutch experience with euthanasia and from some of the National Health Service horror stories in England where relatively routine medical interventions were denied to spina bifida babies or other imperfect subjects We know the answer even from mercy killing cases closer to home here in the United States We know how many dubious deaths occurred before Dr Kevorkian was tried and convicted Yes those deaths were supposedly voluntary suicides but at least some of his patients were suffering from depression experiencing family pressures or otherwise operating in an abnormal psychological state At least we see some people willing to publicly oppose such goings on The controversy surrounding Australian ethicist and animal rights activist Peter Singer's appointment to a chair at Princeton was better than no controversy at all although even better would have been Princeton's refusal to offer the chair to him or willingness to take back their offer when confronted with good reasons for doing so Worldwide the disabled are Singer's bitterest opponents since he espouses quality of life tests and even argues that some intelligent animal life should receive higher standing than say that accorded profoundly handicapped human life or human life at an undeveloped stage Undeveloped can include older fetuses and young infants as well as earlier embryonic life Yet the frustration experienced by some of his opponents carries a special desperation arising from how difficult it proves to disentangle their own standard modes of thinking from his more consistent but appalling conclusions There are lifelong liberals who grope for a way of switching the tracks of their own ethical arguments in favor of abortion or fetal tissue research somewhere before the train reaches Peter Singer's disturbing terminus Like the poor cloned embryo Singer is a signpost alerting potentially threatened classes of people to the unsteady ground on which they stand when they rest human rights arguments on egalitarianism species solidarity and mere secular understandings ofhuman nature Why help out this weaker specimen of homo sapiens Most people do not bother to step back that far in their questioning relying instead on vague recollections of schoolyard FALL 2001113

ELLEN WILSON FIELDING ethics about fair play and treating people alike So initially they are easily moved by appeals to compassion and fairness and leveling the playing field But when compassion comes with too large a price tag or when leveling the playing field threatens someone else's prosperity or success this comfortable magnanimity no longer appears affordable People passed over for jobs or promotions because of affirmative action or watching their teenagers compete for limited college slots and financial aid feel the natural desire to shove someone else back down so that they may rise or at least not sink And unless we discern that a way of sorting out required versus voluntary sacrifices has been set out for us by a higher Being we end up with merely the familiar battle of one man's right pitted against another's The disabled like other often ill treated classes of people such as racial and ethnic minorities dislike the appeal to compassion or other soft and shifting emotional motives because compassion seems like an extra a luxury affordable in prosperity but easily jettisoned when times turn bad Rights sound firmer more defined more reliable and more democratic without the distasteful overtones of pity and Victorian philanthropy And rights have had a promising track record in America from the time of the Declaration of Independence one civic right has apparently built upon another though not without some enormous upheavals like the Civil War in an ever rising edifice of legislated liberty However our focus should lie not on the 200 plus year continuity of this process but on the discontinuity of the reasoning used to defend our more modern liberties The key is Roe v Wade hailed by its proponents especially feminists as a natural American expansion of women's freedoms in line with the vote liberalized property and divorce laws and equal pay for equal work Is not this the American way to establish a beachhead for freedom in the Declaration and the Constitution and then push past these initial openings to liberate greater and greater tracts of the human condition from constraint But the pro choicers do not sufficiently reckon the enormous and disproportionate cost of extending women's rights to include abortion Yes the emancipation of the slaves that resulted from the Civil War was accompanied by the defeat and temporary disfranchisement and impoverishment of the white South Except for the war however this might not have been the case Before Fort Sumter many schemes circulated among anti slavery groups for ransoming or paying off part or all of the tIue of the human property Southern slave holders would lose through emancipation But aside from some of the Indian wars never before in our history had Americans systematically 14 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW undertaken to legitimize so serious a step as the taking of innocent human life for motives that could be as trivial as preventing embarrassment or assisting in career growth Many abortions are motivated by more serious considerations many women are powered by sheer desperation through those doors to the local Planned Parenthood clinic but abortion proponents adamantly refuse any notion of even restricting this mortal act to serious cases Court legalized abortion in America is abortion on demand and by locating the right in a generalized privacy right a kind of 1960s do your own thing right the Court clearly avoided the whole issue of which abortions were right abortions All of them from the Roe Court's perspective were right because all were permissible choices made by women and young girls We cannot use hard cases to justify America's abortion decisions because those decisions do not base the abortion right on hard cases They posit legalized abortion as an expansion of American women's sphere of action an enlargement consistent with other enlargements of freedom in American history of our understanding ofbasic human rights That this enlargement thrust out the boundaries of women's rights so far that they broke through the right of unborn human beings for protection from dismemberment and death did not concern the Roe majority They interpreted the 19th century legislatures desire to safeguard unborn life as a desire to protect women's health you know OurBodies Ourselves and expressed agnosticism about the ontological status of the human unborn Dred Scott for all that it was morally obtuse and lousy law to boot at least did not mark an attempt to change the status quo but instead cast about for legal rationales for maintaining the system of slavery already in place Roe was a revolution in the legalization ofhuman self centeredness camouflaged in the red white and blue rhetoric of the land of the free As such the decision highlights the fatal flaw of unanchored rights talk It appears to help women and irresponsible fathers but in fact endangers everyone For human rights can safely inhabit only a moral realm The Fathers of our country recognized that democracy and capitalism both require a predominantly moral populace schooled in such habits as self discipline industry honesty selfsacrifice and civic responsibility Similarly the safe articulation and enfleshing ofhuman rights requires a populace and a government that traces those rights to a Creator who presides over our destiny Otherwise rights talk degenerates into competitive claims to supremacy Aren't racial ethnic and religious minorities as well as the disabled right to distrust something soft and squishy like compassion as a replacement for the stress on rights Yes and no Certainly we have certain rights as human FALL 2001 15

ELLEN WILSON FIELDING beings and are meant to defend them from tyranny but that is because our Creator has given them to us They are a means to the fulfillment of our purpose in life which is something distinct from the notion of self fulfillment propagated by the self help books And on the flip side of these rights are duties or responsibilities The right to vote bears on its reverse face the responsibility to vote after first informing oneself on the issues and thinking carefully about the choices The right to free speech comes attached to a moral duty to use speech wisely to avoid lying or demagoguery or fomenting needless dissensions or stirring up hatreds but also to avoid keeping quiet when good people or ideas are under attack The right to life entails a duty to live life well and to protect the lives of others insofar as we are able Of course for the most part it is the rights that are enshrined in law and not the responsibilities But both are aspects of the same thing If the purpose of the right is ignored or violated or betrayed that right will over time tend to atrophy or be overrun Without the reason for the right other people's reasons for denying its exercise are more likely to seem compelling especially to those other people And the reasons can be formulated in two parts The lower rationale explains so to speak the utility and reasonableness of the right for us The right to free speech for example permits citizens to fully discuss different viewpoints and altematives before committing their country to a certain course of action Freedom from discrimination in employment assists us in using our energy training and talents for the good of ourselves our families and society The second higher order rationale however brings us deep into the realm of the sanctity of human life It focuses our attention not so much on the reason for the right its practical implications for the individual and for society but on the source of the right who is God We are reasoning thinking beings but we do not create ourselves and therefore we need to be very careful not to judge this or that person's usefulness or decide that he or she has none Like soldiers on patrol we can see only a small part of the whole campaign and sometimes that leads us to imagine we know enough to push past the bounds of our orders We can forget that we lack the height that commands a view of the action on all fronts Should we ourselves decide the conditions under which unwanted fetuses or quadriplegics or elderly Alzheimer's patients retain rights deriving from their innate human dignity All polities sometimes and some most of the time have violated the sanctity of human life when motivated by fear hatred self protection greed and ambition Some people today cite the example of the death penalty as a routine institutionalized violation of the sanctity of human life They point especially to the arguments that focus on 16 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW the deterrent effect of capital punishment Reliance on deterrence appears to legitimize the killing of a human person as a means to a worthy but utilitarian end the forestalling of future murders But from a religious and natural law point of view the chief justification for the death penalty has always been neither deterrence nor even revenge but justice If the deterrent effect were the only time tested justification for inflicting death as a punishment or perhaps even the primary one opponents of the death penalty would win this argument on these grounds alone just as opponents of using torture to extract from the guilty useful and possibly life saving information can denounce this desecration of human dignity and the inevitable entanglement of the torturer in this debasement For if human life is indeed sacred because it has been bestowed on us by our Creator then treating individual human lives as first exploitable and then disposable desecrates the human abuser of life as well as the abused People have long recognized the moral temptation of the executioner to hold lifeor certain lives cheap since the condemned fall within the executioner's delegated power to kill Legalized abortion does not confine its infliction of the death penalty to relatively few people in restricted settings but casts out its net to many millions of victims and implicates millions more as accomplices in their deaths thus disseminating the moral dangers of the executioner through wide sectors of society Recall that in his denunciation of slavery Lincoln stressed the corrupting effects on the slave holder of claiming ownership of another human being As I would not be a slave so I would not be a slave owner To treat someone inhumanely to command or take to oneself the power of doing so can be even more debasing than to be treated inhumanely It is possible although difficult for the slave to carry within himself a proper estimation of his own worth as an individually created child of God It is hard to see how the slaveholder who genuinely believes in and accepts his right to wield such powers over another human being can similarly believe in each person's divinely endowed worth So too with euthanasia The reluctance of even some of those inclined to permit euthanasia to involve doctors in the actual doing of the deed derives from sound instinct Doctors should not routinely experience this power over life and death Their business is to prolong life and to ease suffering and whatever grandiosity they are tempted to feel because of their life saving abilities should be offset by their many inevitable failures and by the ultimately inexorable fact of death Death should not be embraced by the medical profession as another medical accomplishment another measure of success It is at worst a failure and at best a profound mystery FALL 2001117

ELLEN WILSON FIELDING The temptation of disabled and afflicted human beings and those tormented by the sight of their suffering to sacrifice other fragile forms of human life in hopes of alleviating or curing their condition threatens the disabled as much as it does unborn human life It debases the value of each of us and accustoms us to cannibalizing one another's flesh and blood In life or in death we all deserve to be treated with greater dignity than that The disabled and those who wish to help them must not seek to advance their welfare and acknowledge their human dignity by denying these goods to others George please not your humanitarian award 18 FALL 2001

GRIEF AND GRACE AT GROUND ZERO

Grief and Grace at Ground Zero Brian Caulfield Grief at Ground Zero draws you in Twisted steel shafts of the World Trade Center fa ade a once proud part of the New York skyline are like magnets pulling gazes their way eliciting from viewers solemn awe and deep interior tears The heaped ruins cover death upon death a story that can only be told one life at a time All around town pictures with brief biographies of the thousands lost are posted on boards on lampposts on fences These are faces that any of us could have passed a hundred times on the way to work Now they are unique sacred images of ones who were among us and are gone whose individual stories may be told in minute detail to a universal audience He was learning to play rhythm guitar She volunteered one night a week at a soup kitchen The ordinary facts convey great meaning because they relate to this one person who finally is seen in a true light one who is larger than the parts of his own life and infinitely precious Downtown residents workers and tourists seeking a sense of the tragedy read the brief stories carefully shaking their heads over the senseless loss the promise ended the emptiness of those who are left behind They look at the pictures most of them taken at happy times such as weddings birthdays or graduations and see no hint that these victims of a new war foresaw their sudden and horrible end Each curbside viewer sees his reflection in the faces thinking How would I have reacted when the suicide planes hit Would I have panicked pushed slower people out of the way Or would I have let others down the stairs first checked for anyone trapped by the smoke Would I have been ready to meet my Maker Pictures that in the first weeks after September 11 had been posted with a Missing headline have been emended with handwritten farewell notes We will miss you I have read many of the bios of those who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald which had offices on the upper floors of Tower One and lost some 700 employees Amid the grief in my heart comes relief My wife had worked for the company on the 104th floor till she became pregnant with our first child Stephen James's life saved my wife's She watched the twin towers burn from our apartment balcony only five blocks from the scene When the first tower fell she felt a whoosh and saw black plumes of smoke arcing her way She took our baby and fled to my Brian Caulfield writes from New York FALL 2001 19

BRIAN CAULFIELD parents apartment in the next building huddling with her in laws around the television till the power went out War had been brought to our shores to the once comfortable place we call home As a family a city and a country we were unprepared Yet we were more than ready with a response that sustains us We will suffer and recover we will endure more than we thought possible We will rise and win against the forces that oppose us the embodiment of evil We have faced foreign threats before but never on our own land The world view of Americans was set early in the last century by the stilTing words Over there Now it's here and there is no hiding The enemy is within our borders exploiting our tolerance and fairness turning once routine duties traveling opening mail going to work into anxious exercises It is time to band together and do what Americans do best fight a common enemy Yet some among us don't seem to get the message In a typical mix of twisted morality and self serving publicity Planned Parenthood announced shortly after the terrorist attacks that it would offer NewYork women free services including abortions One could only wonder how deep the ethic of death can go when the answer to thousands dead at Ground Zero is the killing of more innocent victims in the womb It is hard to imagine how the cause of the terrorists could be helped more They killed many of the city's best and brightest the people of Planned Parenthood offer to wipe out the next generation ofNewYorkers If nothing else the abortionists in our midst remind us that there was evil within our borders long before terror struck evil we should continue to fight along with the terror The events of September 11 are perhaps the most widely witnessed in history Everyone who has a television saw them those with only radios heard them For me a lifelong New Yorker who has lived from his teen years in the shadow of the towers the terrorist attacks are more than distant images They are personal Those men on a death mission endangered my family made the air noxious for my one year old son and covered every inch of my neighborhood with soot After living with relatives in New Jersey for the two weeks following the attack my wife and I returned at the end of September to check on our apartment As I wiped our 17th floor balcony with wet towels and scraped lavalike stuff from the windows my wife recalled reading that air quality tests had found traces of human tissue I could be holding cremated remains from a blaze estimated at 2,000 degrees she said I sighed deeply through my face mask How can the mourning period end when the dust beneath your feet may need a proper burial No matter what is built on the acres where the World Trade Center stood for many the site will remain an open aching wound 20 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Father Emil Frische still searches for words to describe the scene A Mill Hill Missionary who works for the New York Archdiocese he has been at Ground Zero many times to bless body parts before they are tagged and sent for DNA testing He has counseled families of the deceased and talked with scores of the firemen and police officers who labor at the spot Their spirit has been an education in the corporal works of mercy They come from their shift Father Frische told me dragging their shovels their bodies covered with the soot and ash and I see God in their eyes They are amazing Father Frische was called at 1 a m one night in late October six weeks after the buildings collapsed to bless part of the body of a fireman that had just been dug out He stood in the dark amidst the debris shielding his eyes from the swirling soot waiting for the flag draped makeshift casket to be brought to him The height of the horror began to hit him then This part of one person who had been dead six weeks was being treated with infinitely more respect than the terrorists had accorded the thousands of living persons whom they targeted that day Asked how it feels to be amid such suffering Father Frische stated I haven't found a feeling for that yet But he added In all my years of ministry my time down there has been the most powerful outside of celebrating Mass Each morning until September 11 I would look from our balcony at a dichotomy old and new New York visible in the masts of schooners rising above the South Street Seaport to my left and in the sleek twin towers to my right Who would have thought that the modem towers would fall first Now looking out our balcony window for experts tell us to keep windows closed while insisting that the air is safe I stare at blue sky where the towers stood For the thousandth time I try to stop myself from unkind thoughts What could have been the motives and the mindset of the terrorists Whom did they think they were attacking What did they hope to accomplish Why did they think this was the best way Who are they I want not just names and the time and place when they took up bin Ladenism I want to know whom these terrorists saw when they looked in the mirror and how they ate slept and connected their thoughts to the world around them knowing what they intended to do One thing is sure though Whatever distortions of Islam and the Koran these suicide bombers entertained they were not true martyrs Martyrs such as graced the Colosseum went alone into the lion's jaws praying for their persecutors and taking with them no unwitting innocents More recently the Franciscan priest St Maximilian Kolbe offered himself at Auschwitz in the place of a Jewish family man The economy of martyrdom requires that I FALL 2001121

BRIAN CAULFIELD give my life into the hands of the persecutor however unjust he may be to defend the faith or to save others It excludes killing myself and others for some higher cause however just Even in the heat of battle when every man is a legitimate target willful suicide is seen as a violation of the logic of war A soldier may jump on a live grenade to save his buddies and be hailed a hero But there are no medals for one who carries a grenade into the enemy's camp and explodes himself with others To act as a human bomb an instrument of war rather than as a warrior is to sacrifice more than your life It is to surrender your dignity as a person and to throwaway the precious thing that war in the ideal is waged to protect human safety and freedom The suicide terrorists engaged not in heroism but in hedonism an unusual form of hedonism but hedonism nonetheless Surely these terrorists took particular pleasure in living unnoticed in suburban comfort going about what appeared to be normal lives all the while holding the secret they would unleash on America No doubt they enjoyed the way they used the freedom of our system to turn the instruments of commerce against us They had to know that they would be agents in an act that would be written about and remembered for generations to come More even than that were they not expecting the blissful afterlife promised to faithful Muslims who have done their duty well The perfect definition of a hedonist is one who seeks his own selfish ends regardless of the effect on others The ends in this case happen to be incomprehensible to most of us so the pleasure or gain for the terrorists can be obscure But they acted for what they saw as a good and made many people suffer for it To find true bravery we need to look not at the men who aimed those planes at the Towers but at many of their victims and at the rescuers Edward Cardinal Egan was right in changing the name ofGround Zero to Ground Hero The many sacrifices that have been reported in the media are a small sampling of the countless deeds that will be written only in heaven I knew Father Mychal Judge the Fire Department's Franciscan chaplain who was one of the first killed at the site when he was hit by falling debris while giving last rites to a victim Tall and burly walking New York's streets in his brown habit Father Judge had approached poor and rich alike with a warm handshake and an open heart I last saw him a few months before the tragedy at a charity breakfast at the Waldorf Astoria for which Cardinal Egan was the guest speaker After the festivities Father Judge wearing his habit among all the business suits stopped me outside the men's room and asked me for a dollar He had no cash on him he explained and he knew the restroom 22 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW attendants relied heavily on tips I happily obliged A few days later I received a note with three dollar bills enclosed a small advance Father Judge wrote on the reward I will receive in heaven Two years ago I did a story about firefighter Tom Foley who was to perish in the Trade Center blaze He had earned front page notice in August 1999 for a daring rescue of a worker who had fallen off a scaffold and hung by a safety line from a Harlem building Foley 30 at the time belonged to an elite rescue unit in the South Bronx and he lived and breathed his job He was of that rare breed who rejoiced in rushing into burning buildings to save strangers pets and property knowing well that each fire run could be his last Every day I go to work it's different Every day I have no idea what's going to happen he told me It's my calling I think God cut me out to be a fireman Talking about an older colleague who had been killed in a blaze Foley stated He died with honor He did everything to the best of his ability I shaped my career to that The Franciscan and the fireman were among the first foot soldiers to fall in our new war Their lives are more than an answer to the terror They embraced the ultimate Gospel value Greater love hath no man than to give up his life for his friends and were witnesses to the presence of God at Ground Zero where evil seemed to reign At a prayer vigil two weeks after the attack Father Bob Lombardo said that he had been asked many times in both pleading and accusing tones where God was on September 11 His answer has been to tell a story about that day Soon after the planes struck their mortal blows a fireman came to the South Bronx men's shelter headed by Father Lombardo and asked the priest to come with him In the firehouse next door he saw hundreds of rescue workers from all parts of the Bronx waiting to go downtown to the inferno They wanted a blessing the fireman said explaining We don't know if we'll see our families again Father Lombardo thought They don't need a blessing they need a miracle and did his best to provide one He told them that the Catholic Church allows a priest to give general absolution of sins in times of war and dire emergency when a large number of people seek confession and there is no time to hear them individually After asking them to call to mind their sins and make a firm act of contrition before God he gave general absolution for the first time in his 13 years as a priest Father Lombardo will tell anyone who asks God was present in the request for a blessing in his decision to offer absolution in the forgiveness of sins and in the willingness of each rescue worker to lay down his or her life for the sake of another FALL 2001123

BRIAN CAULFIELD Individually and as a society either we will embrace the spirit engendered on September 11 or we will not survive Either we become the better persons we were forced to be on that day and love our neighbors as ourselves or we will surrender to the evil that attacked us That day of destruction has reawakened in many a new respect for life and a deeper search for meaning Thousands used to flock downtown each day to gaze from the skyscraper's Windows on the World now they come to find a window to the new world we have entered Where steel still smolders and breezes bring an ever changing stench the ultimate questions may be asked without apology What is the meaning ofmy life AmI prepared to meet a sudden end or to risk my life to save another Is death the end or may we hope and live for more Where do I find an answer Many have turned to religion The large assemblies in Yankee Stadium and elsewhere are public signs of the need in each of us for a sense of connection with others and with God They are a way of showing that faith family and friendship transcend the evil of even the most destructive moment 24 FALL 2001

FREEDOM IN SURRENDER: THE SILVER LININGS OF FEAR AND UNCERTAINTY

Freedom in Surrender The Silver Linings of Fear and Uncertainty Mark Pickup The telephone rang scaring me out of a sound sleep I answered with a groggy Hello My daughter's panic stricken voice was on the other end of the line Tum on the TV Dad Planes are crashing into buildings in New York Huh Planes plural Buildings plural My initial thought was that she had either misunderstood a news story or was embellishing one After all my daughter has the most exquisite sense of theatre and drama What does this mean Dad she pleaded Still half asleep I said I'd call her back as soon as I could gather my bearings Mornings are slow for me because of multiple sclerosis MS My first task was to fight spasticity as I got into my wheelchair and made my way to the living room to tum on the T Y The images on CNN were unbelievable Smoke was billowing from the World Trade Center I could hear screams sirens chaotic scrambling People were frantically running from the disaster office workers were jumping from windows to certain deaths No I must be mistaken Surely it was glass or other debris I saw falling not people The CNN announcer grappled with these horrible images while new reports were handed to him as he spoke Dumbfounded he struggled to make sense of the rapidly developing events before an audience of millions of transfixed viewers with their jaws on their chests like me A plane he announced had also hit the Pentagon Still another had crashed into a Pennsylvania field This was no theatre I wasn't watching a movie I was watching a newscast Real people were dying at that very moment right before my eyes Quite simply my mind could not accept nor comprehend what was happening A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes Death and destruction hung thick like the cloud of smoke over NewYork's skyline Then a strange and wonderful thing happened Into the carnage ran a brigade of rescue workers to help the trapped and the doomed It was as though they were running into Hell itself to save others They did not shrink Mark Pickup is a Canadian writer His commentaries are widely published throughout North America He is incurably ill and disabled with multiple sclerosis FALL 2001125

MARK PICKUP back or hesitate Many ran into eternity If they were afraid they took their fears to premature graves along with their pledges to serve and protect And as they entered the ages their voices seemed to call back urging America to rise to her best at this dark and terrible hour in her history Like a phoenix rising from the ashes America did rise to the call transforming catastrophe into a renewed commitment to neighbor and country Through tears of sorrow grief and terror ordinary citizens gave flesh to America's greatness The terrorists thought the World Trade Center symbolized America They were wrong America's greatness does not lie in her enormous economic prowess or massive military might but in her people ordinary people living in ordinary communities One nation under God Make that remarkable people cleverly disguised as ordinary citizens soccer moms and dads grandparents friends neighbors and business associates On September 11th I witnessed an eruption of wickedness at the hands of terrorists resulting in a massive tragic loss of life But I also saw majesty personified in the heroism of firefighters police officers and emergency personnel I saw it in ordinary folks who lined up to give blood or who donated generously to victim relief efforts and in the New Yorkers who filled the streets to cheer and applaud rescue workers Though September 11th was a dark day indeed it was also a day when America's greatness shone bright like a beacon for all the world to see If there's anything positive to come from catastrophe perhaps it lies in this Disaster and loss give people an opportunity to rise to their best or sink to their worst America has chosen to be her best Wide eyed FearlWhite llJ ot Hatred Osama bin Laden and his rag tag al Qaeda network of murderers strategists and toadies targeted America's dearest possessions the freedom liberty and sense of security her citizens enjoy The country was pitched into deep national mourning only to be confronted next with the unleashing of bio terrorism Grief turned to waves of fear Of course terror is the point of terrorism Terrorists gauge their success by the degree of wide eyed fear they can instill in as many people as possible Bin Laden et al are motivated by an irrational white hot hatred for America They cannot successfully fight a military battle against the U S so they wage a war of stealth from the shadows wreaking havoc on the ordinary affairs of life opening a letter taking a plane going to work Al Qaeda aims to riddle Americans with fear so that they will be perpetually 26 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW looking over their shoulders during the day awaking in the middle of the night sweating and with fists clenched Bin Laden apparently believes that if he succeeds in crippling Americans with uncertainty and paranoia their cherished freedom and liberty will vanish Al Qaeda's candle will bum brighter he thinks if America's light goes out All that will remain he hopes will be hollow memories of a former glory which will fade with time Wrong again America holds a strategic advantage People can sustain an enduring belief in liberty and freedom even when they're under attack But how can the belief in terror be sustained Waiting for the Next Strike I know next to nothing about war or the netherworld of terrorism But I do know a thing or two about fear and waiting for the next strike As I mentioned I have multiple sclerosis MS There are clear parallels between national and personal grief There are similarities between being held hostage by the subterranean ideology of evil men and being held hostage by subcutaneous cruel disease Both victimize and inflict a deep sense of isolation Both cause uncertainty and dread as sleepless nights are spent wondering what the next day will bring I was diagnosed with MS in 1984 The first ten years of the disease known as relapsing remitting MS were like a wild savage roller coaster ride I would go to bed at night not knowing what function I would wake up with or without I remember thinking my life had become like Chopin's Revolution Etude Violent Turbulent Raucous I experienced a myriad of symptoms My vision was affected and threatened On a number of occasions I lost my ability to speak I looked like an imbecile mumbling incoherently I went incontinent and soiled myself I lost the use of my right arm and hand so I could barely hold a pencil This was devastating because I used to be an artist I'd lose sensation I'd become spastic and suffer crippling fatigue Most frightening of all there were times when my memory and ability to think became clouded Happily many of those symptoms have abated With the passage of time however I have become progressively less mobile so much so that osteoporosis has set into my spine and I have lost nearly half the bone mass in my left hip I am now at the point where I use canes for very short distances but most of my mobility comes from my electric wheelchair I know there is a chance I will eventually be bed ridden Multiple sclerosis paralyzes slowly with ebbs and flows attacking then retreating never returning all the physical function it robs It is unpredictable and volcanic Life with MS is a life of waiting for FALL 2001127

MARK PICKUP the next strike grieving when it does come then trying to adapt to a new level of disability For more than seventeen years I have mourned each stage of physical loss and grieved each new phase of disability At times I have grieved more than I thought was humanly possible Sometime between my second and third year with the disease my grief and sorrow were so deep and my heartache so sharp that my judgment became impaired In 1991 I was forced into retirement at the age of 38from my government career I sank into a clinical depression and my perspective became awfully skewed Yet I needed to be able to safely grieve Let me say that again People need to grieve loss And so it is with America in this war against terrorism Individual Americans fear tomorrow They must be able to grieve the world they lost But terror is not a way of life Human beings were not designed to live in a constant state of grief and fear Seventeen years of incurable illness tell me this People are designed to dream of how things could be and rejoice when their dreams come true Most important human beings are uniquely capable of hope despite seemingly hopeless circumstances Reaching a Watershed During my darkest times when I doubted my own worth people who loved me insisted on my innate value as an Image bearer of God They helped me rise to meet the next leg ofmy journey as a disabled person the surrender of my grief and fear of the future to God It was a watershed point that defined a stark choice I could continue wallowing and stagnating in my predicament Or I could cross over the watershed and take my chances with the next phase of life There was a reassuringly familiar figure standing on the far shore beckoning me to come across The far shore would present frightening challenges of its own no doubt But it also held the promise of a new life The journey across meant having to face the tumultous whitecapped waves of my fear And accepting that my own strength was likely to fail during the crossing Finally it meant surrendering my destiny to that figure on the far shore in the belief that He would calm the waves of fear washing over me The figure on the far shore came and met me in the watershed Christ took my hand and I found myself ready to begin the next phase of my journey Looking back I realize now that life consists of a series of watersheds America is at one of those points and so is each of her citizens National and personal griefs are cresting North America has enjoyed unprecedented comfort and stability for 28 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW close to sixty years This has been exceptional an aberration in the violent bulk of human history We have lived in the false security of a fool's paradise for more than half a century while life remained uncertain and perilous for most of the world's people As it was with previous generations we must now accept the fact that life isn't as certain or predictable as we thought it was Fear and uncertainty can be catalysts for surrender of self absorption and self sufficiency to a force greater than oneself the figure on the far shore We can begin to live by faith rather than by sight Surrendering our lives to the sovereignty of God frees us from believing the onerous myth that we are masters of our own destiny it can end the isolation of the lie of personal autonomy As our surrender to God permeates our lives we get to know more about His character and love It becomes easier to see the Image of God that resides in every human life Our sense of community expands to the point where Cain's ancient question Am I my brother's keeper is finally answered in the affirmative No longer does the notion of community and interdependence seem stifling rather it becomes reassuring to be included and belong to a human family and a nation under God Disability Has Its Own Illumination What about disabled people who do not share my Christian faith The concept of a sovereign God may be foreign but surely that of a deeply connected interdependent community is not People with disabilities are particularly susceptible to a sense of isolation and exclusion from society But as the poet said nobody is an island unto himself autonomy is a myth What did I say to my daughter that terrible morning of September II I reassured her that our family had faced previous crises of daunting proportions It was important to recommit to family and to the belief that ultimately good will prevail It is up to all of us to nurture the bonds offamily neighbor community nation My family has drawn closer in the months since September 11 tho There is great comfort to be found in the interconnected community of the heavy hearted who share the belief that evil doesn't have the final word After a personal journey of more than seventeen years with multiple sclerosis I have come to a simple conclusion only in surrender of self to God can victims become victors My legs may atrophy but not my heart nor my spirit Only in surrender and dare I say it submission to God do I stand a chance of being freed from fear and uncertainty My future is secure I have never been freer than I am today despite living most of my days in FALL 2001129

MARK PICKUP a wheelchair My paralysis is on the outside not the inside It comes from disease not fear Granted there is sorrow associated with each new phase of disability but I rest assured that whatever happens here I shall not be separated from that figure on the far shore who meets me at my point of need That figure is in our midst God bless America September 2001 We meet our griefs again when work is through and do with words what little words can do A stranger weeps beside us through the night Beneath our pleasant sun we never knew the dark that hates the sky for being bright We thought to build a garden without rue to climb and all beloved to reach the height Our sins were trifling the false called true a petty disbelief in wrong and right For every sin we pay but no sin drew these hates It is our virtue they requite Along the shore the squabbling seabirds mew at passing ships and wheel away in fright We meet our griefs again when work is through We do with words what little words can do J Bottum Reprinted with permission of First Things 30IFALL 2001

HITLER’S CHILDREN

Hitler's Children Nancy L Harvey This essay by Nancy L Harvey her last formal essay dated February 200I was read at her Funeral Mass at Holy Cross Church in Cuba Missouri July 26 It was sent to our office in August by her husband James who had scribbled in the upper right hand corner ofthe first page only this Nancy Harvey has contributed articles to journals such as First Things including Managed Care and Wishing People Dead We decided right away that it would be a fine piece for the Review so we wrote to Mr Harvey in Jefferson City asking ifthis had been published anywhere and ifnot could we have his permission to run it He replied that no it had not appeared elsewhere and Nancy would have been so pleased to appear in your publication she admired HLR so much We wrote back thanking him for the permission and asking him for some background on Nancy what was the nature ofher disability and how would he like us to introduce her to our readers in our briefbio lines There was no reply Then in late November we got a phone call from James Harvey's brother Gary who told us that James had also died suddenly That his sister in law Nancy had sufferedfrom Crohn's disease chronic inflamatory disease involving the lower portion ofthe small intestine since before she and James were married that in the early years they'd both been school teachers that Jimmy had become a prominent music critic that Nancy had been for years totally dependent on portable machine and wheelchair but they traveled a lot that they'd both died at age 49 As you'll see Nancy begins herfinal essay with Hitler's children a perfect title we thought May Nancy's and James good souls rest in peace Faith Abbott Hitler's children met me at the airport with hugs and kisses and pink andwhite orchids My husband and I were in Stuttgart to research the pianist Werner Haas whose flawless technique and exuberant interpretations have delighted us for years The visit continued as it began Hitler's children pushed my wheelchair helped me in and out of cars and up and down stairs As a gut cripple I need frequent rest stops my three hosts found restrooms for me escorted me to them carrying my IV bag and pump even opening the door and turning on the light Born in 1929 our hosts grew up during the glory days of the Third Reich Photographs of the time often show Hitler with children but he does not grin at the camera as our leaders do He stares intently into the eyes of the children laying hands on shoulder or head much as a pastor would do The children were the Master Race the chosen ones who were to continue the thousand year Reich Taught of their superiority by schoolteachers and Hitler Youth leaders they understood their task to carry on a strong proud FALL 2001 31

NANCY L HARVEY glorious society free from the contamination of mongrel races and the burden of disabled people When we visited the Cathedral at Strasbourg my IV tubing tangled in the wheelchair I ended my infusion in the nave and then watched as my host cheerfully turned the wheelchair upside down hauled out a pocketknife and cut the tubing out of the spokes Hitler would not have been amused It almost seems to be a cottage industry these days writing books about Hitler's willing executioners and the horrors of Nazi Germany Certainly we should remember the past in order to prevent such evil in the future But there seems to be some confusion as to the lesson Some of us believe that it is wrong to kill innocent people and this was the evil of Nazi Germany Others think that Hitler made a mistake in his categories It is wrong to kill Jews and Gypsies but acceptable to kill the unborn and severely disabled We read the descriptions of late term abortions the prostaglandin that squeezes the life out of a baby the saline solution slowly poisoning and burning him to death the scissors stabbing into the skull while the arms and legs convulse and we are not sickened We starve the severely disabled and dismiss the cruelty by saying it really doesn't hurt although my experiences with starvation and dehydration prove otherwise Unlike the Germans we care little for racial purity and glory but we care intensely for our right to have our own way to pursue happiness at any cost and if the unborn or disabled interfere we are as ruthless as the Nazis As a disabled person with visible IV tubing a pump and a wheelchair I have occasionally encountered revulsion here in America And while everyone in France sternly looked past me strangers in Germany were friendly Many people made eye contact smiled nodded and greeted me with a cautious guten morgen Yet I was aware that little over sixty years ago Hitler's killing program started with us Disabled people cause hardship for others Rationalizing their destruction is child's play I have read about the way it was done the disparaging phrases life unworthy of Life the carefully organized paperwork the legal sanctions and the use of doctors As it was then so it is now The killing is hedged round with laws and bureaucracy so that the entire fabric of society is involved men of peace and healing wield the curette and those of us who are not in vulnerable categories will feel safe And certainly all the nice people who assent all the willing executioners add another layer to the perplexity My former state governor was a devout Southern Baptist active in his 32 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW church a faithful husband a loving father and a champion of partial birth abortion twice vetoing a bill to outlaw it and posthumously receiving an award from the Missouri chapter of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice Just as the nationalistic German Christian movement proclaimed a God who understood their need for a society freed from the claims of the unfit so many of us worship a God who sympathizes with our need to live lives unhampered by children I have read diaries and biographies of Hitler's executioners Many were truly nice men kind to their wives loving and attentive to their children growing roses attending church Many wanted a better society working for health care employment education and housing As we continue to rehash the horrors of the Nazis we might add this lesson that very nice people consent to atrocities and that consenting to evil brings spiritual blindness But my three hosts Hitler's children taught to despise cripples like me were not spiritually blind They cared for me as if I were Christ Himselfoften touching my hand to see if I was cold bringing me spring water for my dry mouth continually replenishing the supply of toilet paper carrying my IV bag and pump into churches and restaurants setting up and taking down the wheelchair parking the car on the sidewalk kissing me every morning and evening reaching out to caress my cheek How could I be a life unworthy of Life when I could receive and return such love Our hosts lifted my spirits If Hitler's children could turn away from the evil teaching of the Third Reich and become such Christ like people surely there is hope even in abortion bloodied America for the rest of us FALL 2001 33

NO BIRTH AND NO CONTROL: THE IPPF FORMULA FOR A BRAVE NEW WORLD

No Birth and No Control The IPPF Formula for a Brave New World Lynette Burrows It is always a shock to have one's strongest suspicions confirmed Thus it was a shock back in the summer to be asked to comment on a leaked memo from the contraceptive giant International Planned Parenthood Federation lPPF This memo signed by IPPF worker Vicky Claeys calls upon the company's European allies to put pressure on their governments to ratify sexual rights for children and to further marginalise parents in their efforts to protect their children Of course this is precisely what most people who know and loathe this egregious organisation would have suspected would be their intention but to see it spelled out in an official memo was well chilling Organisations particularly bureaucratic ones have the unnerving ability to be much worse than any of the little drones who work for them would be capable of on their own A fact which must owe something as Lord Egremont said to not having a soul to be damned or a backside to be kicked Perhaps emboldened by this immunity to either heavenly or earthly retribution the memo spells out what must be done Under the heading Urgent Alert on Children's Rights it draws the attention to what it considers to be the alarming fact that the traditional under standing of family as based on a man and a woman united by marriage and their children is reasserting itself in the wake of the Bush victory in the USA and must be fought This view of the family is referred to throughout the document as rightwing and in a naIve double speak reminiscent of 1984 it solemnly holds up to horrified scrutiny the fact that Right wing governments and groups are attempting to insert language into the documents of the forthcoming UN Special Session on Children that would strengthen parental authority and control to the detriment of established children's rights It goes without saying that the established children's rights to which they are referring are not those established over time by the experience of countless millions of families and enshrined in the word tradition The only rights which they want are those they have managed to secure through Lynette Burrows is a well known English educator and journalist This article appeared in somewhat different form in the August 17 2001 issue of the London Catholic Herald 34 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW back door access to governments in recent years which have enabled them to acquire free access to children unencumbered by parents They were clearly upset that at a recent preparatory committee meeting in NewYork the US delegation emphasised the vital role the family plays in the upbringing of children IPPF objects to this view and also to the similar UN Declaration on Human Rights which refers to the family as the natural and fundamental group unit of society entitled to protection by society and the state They are equally horrified by the absurd suggestion made of course by right wing organisations that the child in the womb should be protected and recognition given to the fact that the foetus is a basic phase of child hood Such ideas it says could set a dangerous precedent for future agreements It is hard to imagine a more hilarious and grisly example of semi literate salesmanship than this attempt to describe one of the central tenets of Westem civilisation throughout time as a dangerous precedent Perhaps we can look forward to them describing the right to die naturally when one is old as a similar dangerous precedent when euthanasia has become established medical practice for thirty years Then again the memo is very agitated that yet more right wing organisations are aggressively promoting the idea that instead of teaching children how to protect themselves from HIV Aids we should teach them the culture of chastity and self control This outrageous suggestion may be shocking to those contemplating the inevitable loss of business that would result from a culture of chastity but it is clearly and unequivocally true The fact is that no one on earth can offer complete protection from HIVIAIDS because no device yet invented can do that The condom has a known failure rate of about 15 against pregnancymuch higher amongst the young and furthermore even properly made condoms can have naturally occurring channels which are at least 50 times larger than the AIDS virus No doubt this is why the American Centers for Disease Control concluded in the 1990s that studies of the risk of HIV infection for condom users are too dangerous to undertake for ethical reasons In other words you can't ask people to be guinea pigs in an experiment that could quite easily kill them when they aren't even ill However that doesn't stop the IPPF aggressively promoting condoms in Africa even though many thousands will most assuredly die because they thought they were safe One has to ask whether the principal providers of the condoms and sexual advice in these countries are likely to inform children FALL 2001 35

LYNETIE BURROWS of the stark fact that they cannot protect themselves effectively against the deadly disease except by chastity and self control The answer is as Eliza Doolittle said not bloody likely Who then is most likely to do so The answer is clearly those who love them their parents Hence Ms Claeys urgent appeal to prevent parental involvement in the counselling of children and their provision with contraceptive advice in every country where their policies hold sway which is unfortunately everywhere except possibly Afghanistan and the Antarctic As sexual disease levels are rising to unprecedented levels in our own country due in large part to the promiscuity that is encouraged by an industry that profits from untrammeled sexual activity her attempt to rally the salesmen of the easy lay is from their point of view as she says crucial Will we fall for it As the biggest abortion provider in the world IPPF is indeed a mighty exterminator of human life and a power in almost every land Together with its close associates the UN population fund UNICEF the World Health Organisation and the World Bank it is in a good position to exercise tremendous influence on governments everywhere Amidst this darkness it is good to see the little light represented by Ms Claeys chief bogeyman President Bush Here is an extract from his speech to a Cultural Centre's opening ceremony on March 22 of this year which went almost completely unreported in our media and goes a long way towards explaining the rabid detestation and mockery of him by liberals everywhere at least until the shattering events of 11th September changed the world The culture of life is a welcoming culture never excluding never dividing never despairing and always affirming the goodness of life in all its seasons In the culture of life we must make room for the stranger We must comfort the sick We must care for the aged We must welcome the immigrant We must teach our children to be gentle with one another We must defend in love the innocent child waiting to be born I love that last sentence As eloquent as it is short it sealed Mr Bush's fate with media opinion on both sides of the Atlantic in the world in which we all lived at that time It is strangely and wonderfully true that when things begin to go seriously wrong in a decadent society the most useless people of all from every point of view are those who are governed by the profit motive to the exclusion of everything else It takes virtue to fight the good fight and you wouldn't expect to find IPPF in there with the goodies True to this form their response to the calamity in New York was to blunder forward offering free reproductive health care including medical and surgical abortion One can only gape in astonishment at such a crass ill judged response 36 FALL 200I

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Yet it was almost perfectly characteristic Even when faced with the fact of so many cruel deaths their only response was to offer more of the same Such is the character of this monstrous organisation to whose tender mercies we have consigned the education of so many hapless children all over the world To defend children from harm at all stages of their development is simply unthinkable to the parasites who feed off the ills of decadent societies On social matters the media would have to have a collective brain transplant before it could convincingly use a vocabulary of restraint and morality again even if it could remember the words As for film makers they have shunned real virtue as opposed to virtual reality for so long that it is difficult to believe they could even act it with conviction if they were called upon to do so For organisations like IPPF and their thousands of related employees it would be the death knell of all their freebies their salaries and their bonuses And yet in truth we are going to have to confront and oppose the commercial ethic embodied in the IPPF agenda and deployed by a brain washed media if we are to rescue our own younger generation from calamity I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that today's generation which listened to the IPPF's anti parent message and followed its advice for the last 20 years or so must be the most diseased generation of young people in history With half a million cases of chlamydia just one serious sexually transmitted disease actually reported from clinics in Great Britain and not including those cases recorded by family doctors for which ten times that figure is realistically estimated we should hang our heads in shame at what we have allowed our young people to be led into So the real question is why have so many otherwise sensible people not grasped the elementary fact that the message of the contraceptive salesmen is essentially a salespitch that time and experience has shown to be completely wrong They promised that if they were allowed a free hand in schools they would reduce both the number of illegitimate babies born to young people and the abortion rate They also claimed that more sex education would reduce the number of young people who became promiscuously sexually active and consequently the amount of sexually transmitted disease amongst the age group None of these promises have been fulfilled and the situation has got inexorably out of hand To give the situation some sort of historic context the illegitimacy rate in 1952 when the present Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne was the same as it had been in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the late 1500s about 10 FALL 2001 37

LYNETTE BURROWS of births In other words it remained more or less stable for four hundred years Then someone with the authority decided to let the wolf in among the lambs The latest figures show the illegitimacy rate as being close to 40 and still climbing Though this figure is the highest in Europe it does not give a clear picture of anything except the fact that some other countries have handled the problem differently For instance the French have been giving the so called morning after pill to girls in school from the age of eleven for several years now and still have a higher abortion rate for the age group than Great Britain and the highest venereal disease rate in Europe So they at least have nothing to be proud of The Dutch situation much cited as a brilliant example of the effectiveness of sex education is also not what it seems Nobody knows what their conception rate is amongst the young since they specialise in menstrual extraction as a means of preventing pregnancy and this procedure which removes all evidence of premature sexual activity is not registered in official statistics Several other factors are also never mentioned in the Dutch context as for example the fact that sex education there is not obligatory in schools contraceptives are not handed out free by the school nurse and no financial support is offered to any girl who becomes pregnant when unmarried They are simply handed over to the care of their families In truth the only countries where you can be fairly certain that young people are protected from the dangers of premature sexual activity are those backward countries like Greece and Portugal where pornographic sex education of the type our young people are subjected to is unheard of They too have a low illegitimacy rate but they are never mentioned when this subject is discussed It was not the advent of contraception itself that set off the tidal wave of juvenile sexuality Contraceptive devices had been available to adults and married people for decades before then It was the introduction of these things directly to young people by methods that have become ever more graphic crude and provocative Under the auspices very often of the contraceptive industry itself any moral implications in human sexual behaviour have been simply written out of the agenda young people have been told that sexual behaviour has almost no moral dimension and few dangers if they use a condom This flagrant lie has seldom been seriously challenged in the media for reasons that are best described as cultural Those in the media who do not profit directly from the licentiousness of mass culture still uphold it through 38 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW fear of seeming old fashioned and reactionary They still continue to pontificate at the drop of a hat against smoking and its effects in later life but the health of young people before they have even embarked upon adult life is a widely ignored subject However to anyone with an interest in social history this collective blindness on the part of the educated public in general and professionals in particular is not new There have been fashions in the past that were quite as lethal in their effect as the puerile dream of sexual liberation that has predated the sorry mess we are in today Aparticular hero of mine Dr William Cadogan 1711 1797 wrote an open letter in 1748 to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital in London setting out the unwholesome and indeed lethal procedures of child care that were then favoured by the educated class and begging that the regime at the hospital not use them Of course out of deference to his profession he makes a small attempt to blame grandmothers for the kind of advice that was followed by the nurses employed by the middle classes but even he had to admit that these grandmothers were taught by the physicians of their unenlightened days when physicians as appears by late discoveries were mistaken in many things being led away by hypothetical reasonings to entertain very wild conceits in which they were greatly bewildered themselves and misled others to believe Now that sounds familiar doesn't it The central problem he was addressing in his open letter was the fact that amongst the educated classes he was addressing in London 50 of their children died before their fifth birthday This was quite unnecessary he said because it was far higher than amongst the rural poor and even the urban poor if they were lucky enough not to be able to afford the services of a doctor Health and posterity are the portion of the laborious poor he said the want of superfluity confines them within the limits of nature So what were these practices which killed 50 of children who were not poor or disadvantaged in any way except perhaps in their choice of parents It must surely have been something vastly unforeseen and sneaky so that even the people of good sense and easy circumstances that Cadogan describes his readers to be could not have been expected to understand or avoid it But no the truth is quite the opposite The nursing practices that he describes as being fashionable amongst the educated classes included constantly force feeding infants 10 or even 12 times a day and strapping them into corsets to give them a sugar loaf shape that savagely constricted all their organs then loading them with clothes so that they could scarcely FALL 2001139

LYNETIE BURROWS breathe Diapers were changed as infrequently as possible since the urine needed to be re absorbed into their skin Mothers played their part in this child care disaster by almost never feeding their infants themselves on the grounds that their own bodies needed their milk Experts of the type that we are familiar with today obviously played a part in this madness because as Cadogan points out doctors regularly made holes in the breasts of new mothers to let out the superfluity Whilst the mothers suffered the genuine damage of breast mutilation at the hands of their doctors the infant was farmed out to a poor woman to feed the child might contract tuberculosis from her as Samuel Johnson did it lasted all his life in the form of scrofula It is also obviously the medical profession that dreamed up the pseudoscientific nightmare diet prescribed for newborn infants The general practice is as soon as a child is born to cram a dab of butter and sugar down its throat a little oil boiled bread and sugar or a thin gruel mixed with wine or ale By this means he said perpetuated throughout their infancy countless thousands of healthy strong infants are brought to the grave killed by the ministrations of doctors under the complacent eyes of their parents Cadogan's letter was very influential in bringing about the demise of that particular fashion in child care and it went into at least ten editions before the end of the century However by the middle of the next century this barbaric treatment of children by educated people had been replaced with another permutation of foolishness that has a more modern ring about it Child labour in the mines and collieries of Britain was widespread with children as young as six years old being employed to work coal seams that were less than two feet high When the great Lord Salisbury made his impassioned plea to Parliament to end the degradation and exploitation of these children he was attacked by all sorts of interest groups always in the name of the children themselves and on their behalf It is their freedom the pious Lord wants to take away they said these children know what they want They want money and the liberty to sell their labour on the market They were not interested in the desperate state of health of these young workers the fatalities among them nor the state of their health in later life Nor was it only pit owners and other employers who supported the rights of children to be used as little more than slaves in someone else's moneymaking game Civil libertarians too found common cause with the silkhatted millionaires of the industrial revolution A Member of Parliament referred to Lord Salisbury's proposed legislation as an attempt to bring back the barbarism of the Middle Ages It was the spirit of the age they were 401FALL 200I

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW representing even those who were not directly enriched by the profitable exploitation of the children This much at least can be deduced by the fact that despite having abolished slavery some years before Parliament only raised to ten the age at which it was legal to employ boys down in the mines Women and girls on the other hand were forbidden to work underground and an inspection system was established to make sure that the new law was complied with These two examples give a good indication of how easy it is to overlook the welfare of children in the interests of articulate powerful exploitative bodies The media by their nature are influenced by the rich and powerful they want to associate with them they benefit from their approval and patronage Children on the other hand are largely voiceless The so called children's rights groups that have sprung up in the last few years are almost completely bogus in the sense that far from representing the needs of children they exist to give prominence to what certain adults think children should want and to crush all other adult particularly parental opposition to them Thus children's real rights are about as safe with them as they were with Lord Londonderry who in 1842 opposed Lord Salisbury's bill on the grounds that the education a six year old child received underground was superior to the reading education it would get in school One day soon we are going to have to face the waste of time and life involved in children not yet out of their teens having to visit genito urinary clinics as if they were seasoned soldiers or dirty old men And both young men and women discovering that they are infertile because of a silent disease they were never even told about when they were being encouraged to read The Good Grope Guide Or the loss and regret involved in aborting a child or the sudden onset of breast cancer years before it was ever known in the past as a result of that fatal choice Or even experiencing the magic of first motherhood in a rabbit hutch provided by the local council ten floors up in an inner city tower block and alone All these things are the price that has been paid to keep Ba'al in business There is so much that is blighted in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of young people who have been inveigled into a world of premature sexual activity principally by cynical commercial interests aided as always by the deeply foolish They didn't need it they could have done without it if they had been told about the real risks and urged to heed them by the pop idols they worship they might have been saved Their ongoing miseries should be branded on the conscience of the generation that raised them and failed them Again FALL 2001141

ASHCROFT TO OREGON: STOP BREAKING THE LAW

Ashcroft to Oregon Stop Breaking the Law Rita L Marker On November 6,2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum to Asa Hutchinson Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration DEA The memorandum titled Dispensing of Controlled Substances to Assist Suicide directly affects the practice of assisted suicide in Oregon To hear most assisted suicide activists one would think that Ashcroft had obliterated rights for Oregonians In fact he was merely affirming the fact that Oregon is one of the fifty states and as such federal laws apply there in the same way they apply elsewhere When Oregon voters passed the Death with Dignity Act I they gave doctors the right to prescribe drugs for the specific purpose of causing the death of a patient Barbiturates and most other drugs that are used for assisted suicide are federally controlled substances Before the Oregon law went into effect in 1997 Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Henry Hyde wrote to the DEA seeking clarification about the apparent conflict between the state law and the federal drug regulations found in the Controlled Substances Act CSA 2 In his November 5,1997 response then DEA chiefThomas A Constantine wrote As you are aware the Controlled Substances Act CSA authorizes the DEA to revoke the registration of physicians who dispense controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose Constantine declared that delivering dispensing or prescribing a controlled substance with the intent of assisting a suicide was not a legitimate medical purpose Constantine's letter made it clear that narcotics and other dangerous drugs controlled by federal law could not be dispensed to assist suicide anywhere in the United States Thus since federal law gives the attorney general the authority to revoke a doctor's registration to prescribe controlled substances physicians who prescribed them for assisted suicide would be at risk of losing their federally issued prescribing licenses On June 5 1998 Attorney General Janet Reno overruled Constantine's interpretation saying that passage of Oregon's law had made the use of controlled substances for assisted suicide a legitimate medical purpose in that state In effect Reno said each state holds the trump card when it comes to Rita L Marker is a practicing attorney and executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide 42 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW interpreting and applying federal laws regulating controlled substances This rationale would permit voters to bestow legitimacy on virtually any use of controlled substances as long as it was couched in terms of having a medical purpose Thus just as voters in Oregon deemed barbiturates for assisted suicide acceptable another state could legitimize marijuana by passing an initiative permitting its use for medical purposes But contrary to Reno's opinion that's not the way it works The U S Supreme Court made this abundantly clear in United States v Oakland Cannabis Buyers Coop 3 a case focusing on medical marijuana In 1996 California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 to ensure that seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes 4 In its wake several groups organized buyers clubs to provide marijuana to patients a practice that was permitted under the new California law However the federal government contended that while activities of the buyers clubs did not violate state law they violated the federal Controlled Substances Act On May 14 2001 the U S Supreme Court agreed In a unanimous decision the Court reaffirmed that federal law regulating controlled substances applies to all the states and cannot be erased by state action Attorney General Ashcroft cited this decision in his letter of November 6 overturning Reno's ruling and reinstating Constantine's determination As you are aware the Supreme Court reaffirmed last term that the application offederal law regulating controlled substances is uniform throughout the United States and may not be nullified by the legislative decisions ofindividual states See United States v Oakland Cannabis Buyers Coop 532 U S 483 2001 In light of this decision questions have been raised about the validity of an Attorney General letter dated June 5 1998 which overruled an earlier Drug Enforcement Administration DEA determination that narcotics and other dangerous drugs controlled by federal law may not be dispensed consistently with the Controlled Substances Act 21 U S C 801 971 1994 Supp II 1996 CSA to assist suicide in the United States Upon review of the Oakland Cannabis decision and other relevant authorities I have concluded that the DEA's original reading ofthe CSA that controlled substances may not be dispensed to assist suicidewas correct I therefore advise you that the original DEA determination is reinstated and should be implemented emphasis added 5 Under Ashcroft's ruling physicians who prescribed controlled substances for assisted suicide were engaging in conduct that may render their federal registrations inconsistent with the public interest therefore causing revocation of the registrations He made it clear however that revocation proceedings would be initiated only against physicians who violated the CSA after the issuance ofhis determination No action would be taken against doctors who had participated in assisted suicide prior to his ruling FALL 2001143

RITA L MARKER Ashcroft's adherence to federal law and its interpretation by the U S Supreme Court has brought howls of outrage from assisted suicide promoters They claim that his ruling would outlaw assisted suicide in Oregon that Oregon has the right to decide whether doctors prescribe controlled substances for assisted suicide that states rights are being denied and that the federal government is trying to tell doctors how to practice medicine They also claim that patients will be forced to suffer because doctors will be afraid to prescribe controlled substances to alleviate pain All of those claims are false Here are the facts about the Ashcroft ruling It does not overturn Oregon's assisted suicide law Ashcroft's ruling means that federally controlled substances cannot be used for assisted suicide Oregon's assisted suicide law is still on the books Other drugs and medications not covered by the CSA could be used for assisted suicide It does not interfere with states rights Under the Controlled Substances Act which has been in effect since 1970 it is the federal government not state government that has the authority to determine what is and what is not a proper medical use of federally controlled substances It does not interfere with doctors rights to practice medicine States license doctors to practice medicine and will continue to do so The federal government licenses doctors to prescribe controlled substances and will continue to do so Ashcroft's ruling merely tells Oregon that doctors in that state are no different from doctors in all other states when it comes to prescribing federally controlled substances It does not interfere with pain control but it also says that doctors don't have the right to kill patients with federally controlled substances Doctors in Oregon have been specifically told that prescribing federally controlled substances to alleviate pain and suffering is a legitimate medical practice On the same day that he issued his determination Ashcroft wrote to Hugh C Stelson President of the Oregon Medical Association reassuring Oregon physicians about pain control Members of the Oregon Medical Association OMA have varying views about physician assisted suicide On one point however there should be complete agreement no effort to prevent the use ofcontrolled substances to assist suicide should operate in any manner to deter physiciansfrom prescribing controlled substances to alleviate pain I want Oregon's doctors to know that under this decision they will have no reason to fear that prescriptions of controlled substances to control pain will lead to increased scrutiny by the DEA even when high doses of painkilling drugs are necessary and even when dosages needed to control pain may increase the risk of death emphasis added Nonetheless assisted suicide activists immediately went to court to block Ashcroft's decision 44 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW The same day that Ashcroft released his determination Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers issued a press release announcing his intention to take legal action in federal district court to protect Oregon's physician assisted suicide law 6 Myers said his department would present a strong case asserting that the U S Department of Justice position is unlawful In addition Oregon's Governor John Kitzhaber who is a physician also railed against Ashcroft's ruling using the theme that it represented heavyhanded federal interference in states rights Oregonians are satisfied that we can responsibly implement physician aid in dying and this is an unprecedented federal intrusion on Oregon's ability to regulate the practice of medicine 7 On November 8 2001 U S District Court Judge Robert Jones issued a temporary restraining order requested by the State of Oregon blocking implementation of Ashcroft's directive During oral arguments on November 20 attorneys for the state argued that since Janet Reno had previously considered the issue of federal versus state power the matter had been decided in favor of the state They further contended that no precedent exists for an attorney general to overturn a previous interpretation Gregory Katsas representing the U S Department of Justice argued that Ashcroft's ruling was well within his powers and that the case was not about regulating medicine in general but about what is meant by legitimate medical practice as it pertains to federal law We say that federal law controls the determination of what is legitimate within the meaning of federal regulations they say state law trumps federallaw 8 Katsas said Jones has extended the restraining order for five months In effect his ruling results in leap frogging over the preliminary injunction hearing process The case will now move directly to a trial based on the merits But this is only the beginning Court watchers expect that whatever the outcome of the trial there will be appeals And the controversy over assisted suicide in Oregon will continue for years as it wends it way through the courts NOTES 1 ORS 127.800 to 127.897 2 21 U S C 801 971 3 532 u s 483 2001 4 Cal Health Safety Code Ann 11362.5 5 John Ashcroft Memorandum for Asa Hutchinson Administrator the Drug Enforcement Administration Dispensing of Controlled Substances to Assist Suicide November 6 2001 6 Press Release State of Oregon Department of Justice Attorney General Hardy Myers to Take Legal Action to Protect Oregon's Physician Assisted Suicide Law November 6,2001 7 Ibid 8 Suicide Law in Oregon Wins Round in U S Court New York Times November 21 2001 FALL 2001145

DR. DEATH DOWN UNDER

Dr Death Down Under Kathryn Jean Lopez A recent survey ofAustralian doctors by the University of Newcastle found that more than one third of surgeons admit to having administered lethal doses of painkillers at the request of patients Dr Philip Nitschke thinks it's a crime that what they have confessed to is a crime Philip Nitschke is Australia's Dr Death Their answer to Jack Kevorkian Except he has no intention of limiting his crusade to the former British penal colony By now the whole world over is familiar with Rebecca Gomperts the abortion boat woman who may not have performed any abortions on international waters yet and frankly may never But Gomperts has succeeded in the one thing she really set out to do be seen and heard Now it is Philip Nitschke's turn Ala Gomperts he wants a boat With assisted suicide legal in the Netherlands Nitschke plans to take assisted suicide where it is not allowed Head of the Voluntary Euthanasia Research Foundation VERF Nitschke is a tireless crusader to make the world safe for death VERF refers to March 27 1997 as the day of shame On that day the Australian Senate passed the Andrews Bill which overturned the Northern Territory's law permitting the terminally ill to assistance in ending their suffering if they wish Nitschke wouldn't be considered too outside the mainstream here in the U S Jack Kevorkian may be behind bars in fact his latest appeal for release was rejected by ajudge this Thanksgiving but he is not without his supporters And far from his Michigan jail cell the culture of death has taken hold Oregon's Death with Dignity act took effect in 1997 Since then about 70 people have been legally murdered under it In early November U S Attorney General John Ashcroft moved to direct the Drug Enforcement Agency to prosecute doctors who prescribe lethal doses of federally controlled substances Assisted suicide euthanasia experts of course were livid So were states rights absolutists And the nation's op ed writers The Oregon attorney general immediately asked for a court injunction so that the Ashcroft memo to the DEA could not be enforced The O gon law lives on as does the debate Kathryn Jean Lopez is executive editor of National Review Online www nationaireview com and an associate editor of National Review 46 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Australia's Advocate Philip Nitschke has made a worldwide name for himself advocating death In Australia his militancy has led him to stints as a lecturer inventor and even a political candidate He says he has himself assisted in some 20 deaths I watched with dismay as the Australian Medical Association did all it could to wreck the world's first law legalizing voluntary euthanasia he told me in an interview referring to the Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally III Act which had been passed in 1996 Its rescission in 1997 Nitschke says is what truly launched his vocation as advocate for death He explains We have been once again plunged back into a jungle where people with powerful friends people with contacts and people with mates who are doctors have no trouble getting help to peacefully end their lives at the time of their choosing But for the rest many people who have never broken a law in their lives find themselves having to sneak around and expose those they care about to significant legal risk Without the existence of voluntary euthanasia legislation Nitschke says it is inequitable and unjust toward the losers on the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum He says the issue is not unlike abortion There is an uncanny parallel with the abortion issue of 25 years ago where women with contacts and money never had to take risks getting access to safe terminations It is the inequity and injustice of the current situation that upsets me and drives me Po View to a Km Nitschke's way of getting around national prohibitions against suicide is his boat The idea is that it would be a Dutch registered vessel engaging in international travel between countries Nitschke told me that There are people prepared to back such a proposal but only if it could be shown that there are no legal difficulties with the project The legal question is still being explored he said Meanwhile he has lots to keep him busy Outside of his boat talk Nitschke is perhaps most famous worldwide for his peddling of a suicide pill what he calls the peaceful pill In his interview with me Nitschke explained that the pill would be the ultimate answer to legal and political debates over assisted suicide and euthanasia The pill he says represents a solution to the voluntary euthanasia question that is not dependent on the political process Indeed if all people could obtain the means to allow them to die peacefully at any time the torturous process of developing legislation and safeguards that those wishing to use such a law FALL 2001 47

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ need satisfy is no longer relevant The pill he says would also bring peace in that it would end the medical debate over ethics because the doctors would not be involved He says The process would not involve the medical profession something doctors would generally welcome Doctors could still explain the options i e what medical and palliative interventions are pos sible but it then becomes the lucid individual's decision whether to proceed or not Indeed the doctor's rightful place might be in engaging in a sincere and honest attempt to provide the dying patient with information but as gatekeepers to the process they overstep their role Dying would once again become a private matter The pill represents a technical rather than political solution to the voluntary euthanasia issue Nitschke isn't completely utopian about his pill's prospects Along with the benefits of such a technical solution come new difficulties he told me Nitschke says The biggest concern is the issue of control over such a product How could one restrict its use to say the terminally ill I have argued that all people over a certain age adults who are not psychiatrically impaired should have access to the developed recipe Note this is not the same as advocating its use for troubled teens Others would impose different criteria perhaps restricting its use to the dying or those chronically suffering or as Els Borst the Dutch Minister for Health argued restricting it to those who are old but who are not necessarily sick There will always be arguments over who should get access and it is important that society engage in this debate now rather than after the product is developed All groups in society from the elderly terminally ill who stand to benefit directly from such a development to the teenagers who are old enough to understand these issues need to be involved in this debate Indeed if we are to move forward on this issue it needs to be done with our eyes wide open and aware of the potential risks and benefits of such a significant change in society Restricting access to such information after it is developed will be difficult I have surveyed the elderly dying people with whom I work and over 90 believe this project should continue Reactions from other groups in society vary greatly from outright condemnation through to guarded support All agree however that the reintroduction of voluntary euthanasia legislation would remove the major driving force behind such development Our organization has called for a broad public debate on this issue and has suspended research until we have better insight into these concerns Besides the pill he wants on supermarket shelves Nitschke has an invention the Deliverance Machine It's a computerized system that delivers a lethal injection after a series of questions are answered by the terminally ill patient A sample ofthe questions asked can be viewed on Nitschke's website www euthanasia net His original intention was to make the machine available back when euthanasia was legal in Australia He explains I could have given the 48 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW lethal injection but I did not want to I wanted others to see that this was not a moribund patient receiving a lethal injection from an unscrupulous doctor The machine made this possible the patient initiated the process after they had responded appropriately to the questions presented on the screen The machine however is now dead Without such a legal framework though the machine has no place Current laws push the whole process under the carpet behind closed doors where there are no checks or balances Who Shouhll lDie Nitschke is careful when talking about teenagers because much of the Australian outcry against Nitschke outside ofpro life groups has been from those who worry that he would advocate troubled teens killing themselves if they so desired He says he does not On the other hand he supports killing terminally ill children In one interview he said I think the Dutch government has taken a very courageous step and recognized the reality that children suffer very debilitating diseases And in his interview with me he spoke against cut offs In his mind suicide should be available Period And as easy as possible Restrictions for those under 18 for those who are depressed etc should not exist After all he says why should they have to wait till they're 18 So who exactly should die in the eyes of this Dr Death My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want Nitschke told me He compares it to how the right to freedom of religion has implicit the right to be an atheist and the right to freedom of speech involves the right to remain silent Very much an advocate of control Nitschke believes that man is only truly free if he has the practical knowledge necessary to choose to die I do not believe that telling people they have a right to life he says while denying them the means manner or information necessary for them to give this life away has any ethical consistency So all people qualify not just those with the training knowledge or resources to find out how to give away their life And someone needs to provide this knowledge training or recourse necessary to anyone who wants it including the depressed the elderly bereaved and the troubled teen If we are to remain consistent and we believe that the individual has the right to dispose of their life we should not erect artificial barriers in the way of sub groups who don't meet our criteria That's where he comes in of course providing people with a proper education in the art of the kill giving seminars throughout Australia and New Zealand as well as being a fixture at right to die seminars worldwide FALL 2001 49

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ Ultimately what Nitschke would prefer and what he presses on for is the widespread availability of his peaceful pill He says it should be available in the supermarket so that those old enough to understand death could obtain death peacefully at the time of their choosing Although very much an advocate of people exercising their will to kill themselves if that is their choice Nitschke contends that legalized easy death will actually make fewer people kill themselves It's hard to imagine how such a development would affect society but I believe the impact would not be as great as people fear One group to clearly benefit from such a development would be those terminally ill patients who would derive immense comfort from knowing that they now have such control in their hands We have a great deal of anecdotal evidence from the clinics I run in all Australian states that the acquisition of such substances or drugs takes away a great deal of uncertainty associated with the feeling of loss of control Perhaps it is a paradox but we see it time and time again that the acquisition of lethal substances that would guarantee a peaceful death enables those suffering to keep on going living longer and getting more out of the remaining part of their life So empowering the entire population in this way could result in a net increase in the integrated total of human life something I'm sure that many of the detractors of voluntary euthanasia would support Speaking of the right to life what does Dr Nitschke think of his opponents Pro lifers continue to ask me why I cannot see that the introduction of voluntary euthanasia is a breach of God's laws and breaks the sixth commandment he says I note that these same people see no difficulty in supporting state sanctioned wars Nitschke says he is much more concerned about inequity in choice of death than in God or consequences on earth or in heaven Says Nitschke I find it impossible to reassure those concerned about the slippery slope My answer is that such a potential risk should not restrict our attempts to resolve this issue in society Clearly new laws need to be monitored closely If there is evidence that such a slope is developing the legislation can be amended or removed To do nothing yet allow an unjust and inequitable system to flourish represents a greater crime He doesn't mind being called Dr Death or a Nazi because Nitschke says people only start calling you names when you become effective Likewise he admires fellow Dr Death Jack Kevorkian Kevorkian Nitschke says has paid a very steep price for his courage His incarceration shames us all He says Kevorkian's actions moved the work forward on 50IFALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW this issue and I agree totally with the editorialist from the British Medical Journal who referred to him as a rare example of a true medical hero He told me As Judge Cooper sentenced him she claimed that Jack had flouted the rule of law and that it was the rule of law that made the nation great but she seemed to overlook that years earlier it was the actions of heroes prepared to flout the rule of law that had won for her the vote much less the chance to sit on the judicial bench Justice Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's wife suffered from an acute allergy to penicillin that made her extremely debilitatingly sensitive to light She took her own life earlier this year unwilling to deal with her dark existence Parts of the world celebrated her exercise of free will including the oped pages of some European newspapers Nitschke says that her death is an example of the inequity he sees himself crusading against The death of Helmut Kohl's wife showed clearly just why legislation is necessary Currently the well connected the rich or people with medical friends have little trouble accessing the help they need He compares it to abortion Twenty five years ago in Australia the rich never had difficulty obtaining a safe medically performed termination of pregnancy It was the poor who had to seek out and risk the back yard abortionists He continues With voluntary euthanasia the dynamic remains the same Members of an elite group get help and often care little whether laws change or not The rest struggle to get reliable information and assistance In desperation they do desperate things Many take drugs they don't understand in an attempt to obtain a peaceful death and fail It is not surprising that the commonest method by far used in Australia by those over 75 to take their own life is by hanging This requires no equipment and little knowledge and works Legislation though removes the inequity and injustice With such laws in place access to help to obtain a peaceful death at the time of one's choosing is no longer a matter of class Very few doctors wives or husbands come to my voluntary euthanasia clinics and I doubt whether Hannelore Kohl would have found the need to attend And what about ethics What about the medical profession and the Hippocratic Oath's directive for doctors to do no harm to their patients Irrelevant Nitschke says After all Over time the Hippocratic Oath has been modified on a number of occasions as some of its tenets became less and less acceptable References to women not studying medicine and doctors not breaking the skin have been deleted Do no harm itself he says is in need of explanation Does not doing harm mean that we should prolong a life that the patient sees as a painful FALL 2001151

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ burden Surely the harm in this instance is done when we prolong the life and doing no harm means that we should help the patient die Killing the patient technically yes Is it a good thing sometimes yes Is it consistent with good medical end of life care absolutely yes Killing the Kill What are Nitschke's prospects So far officials in the Netherlands the nation in which Nitschke has been planning to license his death cruisehave raised legal questions about his boat ideas And his recent attempt to block the reelection of a parliament minister who was key in overturning the Northern Territory's short lived pro euthanasia law was a failure The events of September 11th evil as they were have had an almost universal if at times short term effect of making us look inward as individuals and as a culture rethinking priorities remembering first principles The horrifying murder of so many innocent lives has forced us anew to consider how we have been treating human life and what our attitudes toward it are Philip Nitschke though influential is only one man But his ideas are not uniquely his Perhaps it is not hyperbolic to suggest that this is terrorism too to have the lives of the elderly so easily disposed of what's keeping a daughter or son who doesn't have the patience or the money from slipping mom or the in law a pill Doesn't it sound like terrorism to put the lives of innocents vulnerable because of age or illness in the hands of selfimagined supermen who have the will and the means to act like gods The so called slippery slope may never materialize But as Wesley Smith said while himself touring Australia this summer people who seek help in committing suicide desperately need other kinds of help If someone wants to end his or her life you don't say hey let me hold your coat while they do it All euthanasia does is confirm people's worst fears that they are alone or unwanted After what we've all been through what kind of message is that to send 52 FALL 2001

TOO BIG FOR THEIR WOODEN SHOES

Too Big for Their Wooden Shoes F P Tros In the Netherlands a remarkable development appears to be taking place At the exact moment that the new law on euthanasia and assisted suicide is due to come into effect andjust as our Belgian neighbors are getting ready to enact a similar law many Dutch physicians are recoiling from the success of their struggles to bring this about Secularized as the Dutch may have become their missionary zeal has never left them But it now seems that in running with this ideal of preventing end of life suffering they have become too big for their wooden shoes It all began some two decades ago when the judiciary decided to take a lenient view of what were from the sentimental point of view mercy killings and so the thin end ofthe wedge was deftly inserted Gradually the authorities became uncomfortable with an unofficial policy in which the Ministry ofJustice decided not to prosecute euthanasia if committed under certain conditions They sought to regularize the situation and legal euthanasia is now about to become the law of the land If ever hard cases have proved to make bad law it is here The law now regulating what has so far been a practice that existed on sufferance is a product ofmodem secular Holland turning a blindeye to felonies The permissiveness ofthe sixties has become official policy in this nation of formerly staid and sober people The principled opposition in Parliament which came mostly from the Christian Democrats and the smaller orthodox Protestant parties was met by charges of intolerance and an undemocratic attempt to bend the majority to the will of a stiffnecked minority beset by outmoded prejudices A fundamental ethical discourse is practically impossible in a country where the media are the preserve of the liberal elite and where the limits ofthe philosophical range of the pro euthanasia party are best exemplified by the Minister of Health's stock reply to whether euthanasia is morally acceptable she emphasizes the great care with which the decisions to euthanize are reached and executed she addresses the moral question not at all One wonders what her reaction would be to the argument of a proponent of the death penalty that after all the executions are carried out with the best technical means available In the November 10th Saturday supplement of the liberal newspaper NRC Handelsbad there appeared an interview with four members of the team for Euthanasia Consultation and Support in Amsterdam This group and similar F P Tros is a former Master of English in Dutch secondary and higher education He is married the father of three grown sons and twice a grandfather FALL 2001 53

F P TROS ones around the country frequently provide the second opinion required for euthanasia to be exempted from prosecution up till now or to be lawful as soon as the new law comes into effect Consequently the four family doctors on the Amsterdam team have a long and varied experience of euthanasia in practice The average general practitioner may engage in euthanasia once or twice a year these physicians are in addition to their own cases intimately involved in some fifteen to twenty of their colleagues cases each year The members ofthis team felt the need to convene regularly to discuss their cases and as they say banteringly to have a good cry over things The Handelsbad reporter had some difficulty in gaining admittance to one of their quarterly meetings it was unprecedented to have an outsider present and she was warned that the discussions tended to get rather emotional She had expected to find that the avant garde of Dutch euthanasia would again be extending the frontiers ofphysician assisted self destruction But she was wrong One member had decided to give up her work on the team on the grounds that she could no longer in conscience accept responsibility for euthanasia as it was being practiced The law requires us to explore all avenues before we carry out euthanasia But I see now that this happens only too infrequently A general feeling among the team members was that they had initially approached euthanasia from the wrong side why hadn't they concentrated on palliation first and euthanasia second instead of the other way around It is illustrative of this new awareness that peer groups for palliative care have recently been established within the teams for Euthanasia Consultation and Support These groups are now studying other methods for relieving the suffering of terminal patients Ignorance and lack of awareness have caused people to be flushed into the euthanasia procedure to whom a whole lot of life quality could have been offered one of the group members said And most telling with regard to what happens once a culture of death has become accepted When one has been so intently focused on euthanasia one develops a blind spot for other possibilities Further There are some of my own patients who died through euthanasia that now make me realize that with my present knowledge of things we would have gone a very different way And one can imagine a bitter I told you so from opponents to euthanasia one member mentioned that We have been reproached abroad with following the reverse road in having a tiptop regulation for euthanasia and letting other ways of relieving pain go by the board This remark called forth from a colleague It is of course a matter ofwhat is the thing at a given moment too We are followers of fashion like anybody else A wholly unforeseen consequence of the euthanasia policy is that it evolved 54 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW from a physician's last resort to a patient's right death on demand You can now get landed one physician said in a situation of parleying with your patient We can do this now can't we This does make me think now and then My god yes you are dying but why should I deliver death two weeks in advance Another doctor calls the whole set up a vending machine Slip in your money out pops your hot dog make your request out pops your euthanasia One of the due care requirements is that the physician together with the patient must be convinced that there is no other reasonable solution But here is the rub says one of the participants One cannot judge of the patient's facing interminable and unendurable suffering without sufficient knowledge of the means to relieve suffering It seems doubtful to me whether general practitioners are in a position to make that judgment Another doctor related how she used to feel it her duty to mention euthanasia to an incurable patient who was beyond the help of traditional medication for fear they wouldn't dare to bring up the subject Since her immersion in the subject ofpalliation she has deliberately avoided the E word and what does she see Nobody ever asks for it now A physician and a patient must never decide for euthanasia when the physician is insufficiently informed about the possibilities offered by palliative care the Minister of Health Dr E Borst said as early as 1996 But how can doctors improve their knowledge beyond the point that prescribing a sufficient number of Vesperax sleeping tablets will help patients kick the bucket as a matter of course Palliative care was hardly part of the family doctor's training until a year ago Only last September was a motion introduced in Parliament to promote palliative care training An earlier Christian Democratic motion had been defeated Even as some of the erstwhile enthusiasts for euthanasia now lament the consequences others have gone beyond seeking release from terrible pain and are focusing now on aid for people who are simply tired of living The Minister of Health gave it as her opinion the day after the new euthanasia bill was passed by the First Chamber that a next step should be the provision of what is called after the auctor intellectualis Drion's Pill This future so far fictitious pill would be distributed to those who might need it naturally with great wisdom and great care and under strict safeguards A first category of recipients would be the old and ailing who could thus at their own convenience and at a self determined and freely chosen moment decide to get out Also on the list would be the very old who are not really ill or suffering but who have simply become bored with life FALL 2001 55

F P TROS This culture of death that has grown so enormously over the past twenty years evidently found a fertile soil in the secularized minds ofthe Dutch people It is perhaps indicative ofthe estrangement from the nation's Christian heritage that the Minister ofHealth could triumphantly greet unwittingly no doubt and no offense meant the new law's passing on April 20th a week after Good Friday with Christ's words from the Cross It isfinished What then against this backdrop of shallow humanism sloppy thinking and cheap triumphalism among the lawgiving classes can be expected to result from the apparent change of heart among the vanguard of those who have the widest experience in this field We should not be over optimistic about the chances for an immediate change in the moral attitude of the nation as a whole and the progressist elite in particular The Minister ofHealth lost no time after the publication of the disturbing Handelsbad interview in emphasizing that however good the care given in the terminal phase euthanasia remains a worthy way of coping Letters to the editor betrayed shocked concern lest one of the chief attainments of our days should be lost and tried to belittle the new position of the interviewees by saying it results from their over involvement with euthanasia a kind ofoversensitiveness that one never hears of in the case of gynecologists who have delivered their hundredth or thousandth human child or ofsurgeons who have performed their umpteenth appendectomy Although Handelsbad published the interview its lead article summed up with But the crucial concern also of this new law remains the right of individual self determination of the suffering person No we should be grateful that in a great and growing number of physicians humaneness is winning over a frigid intellectualism that reduces a supreme human act the act of dying to a medical procedure to be got over with as painlessly and as quickly as possible What we may hope for and pray for is that not humanism but humaneness will win the day No man is an land intire of it selfe every man is a peece ofthe Continent a part ofthe maine if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea Europe is the lesse as well as if a Promontorie were as well as ifaMannorofthyfriends orofthineowne were any mans death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankinde 56 FALL 2001

THE BIRTH OF HOSPICE

The Birth of Hospice Wesley J Smith Until not so kmg ago in this country and throughout the West religious voices were deemed an essential element in the public square Indeed as difficult as it may be for those born after 1960 to believe the opinions of people motivated by religious values were once at the forefront of public policy formation What the churches thought often made the difference between failure and success for those seeking to get a particular idea enacted into law Today while most religious organizations still offer their opinions on a wide range of issues they generally have limited impact The primary reason for this is the widespread acceptance of the attitude succinctly summarized by the prominent philosopher Dan Brock in the Hastings Center Report In a pluralistic society like our own with a strong commitment to freedom of religion public policy should not be grounded in religious beliefs which many in that society reject At the very least this attitude is undemocratic for it silences the many to protect the sensitivities of the few transforming the public square into a virtual private enclave As James W Walters professor of Ethical Studies at Lorna Linda University puts it Society's most fundamental moral views are rooted in religion Ninety percent of the population identifies with the Judeo Christian tradition More significantly however religious values have been an essential part of the motivation behind the most important social movements in our country's history abolition the civil rights movement and the effort to end child labor to mention just a few To remove religious values from the recipe of public policy is akin to leaving most of the ingredients out of what should be a thick hearty soup Not only does it ruin the taste but it strips the broth of much of its nutrition One case in point in which an instance ofreligious beliefinfluenced secular ethics and public policy in a way that few people could object to is the development of the modern hospice movement Hospice care is now recognized as valid by Medicare Medicaid and most health insurance providers It is a tale rarely told but the hospice movement owes its existence to the deeply held religious values of its British founder Dame Cicely Saunders Dame Cicely was a medical social worker in a London hospital in the years immediately following World War II She was also a devout Anglican Wesley J Smith is the author of Culture of Death The Assault on Medical Ethics in America Encounter Books in which some of this material originally appeared FALL 2001 57

WESLEY 1 SMITH In the course of her duties Saunders met a Jewish emigre named David Tasma who had escaped the Warsaw ghetto only to lie dying at the age of 40 in a London hospital Believing she had a religious duty to visit the sick and knowing that Tasma was alone in the world Saunders made a special point to spend time with him every day Their friendship changed our world Saunders was already well aware that a nearly universal problem in care for the dying was uneven pain control causing much unnecessary misery As she spoke with Tasma about his impending death she had an epiphany As she told me when I met her fifty years later I realized that we needed not only better pain control but better overall care People needed the space to be themselves I coined the term total pain from my understanding that dying people have physical spiritual psychological and social pain that must be treated I have been working on that ever since Tasma left Saunders 500 to begin her work telling her I will be a window in your home Saunders told me her eyes filling with tears It took me 19 years to build the home around that window Saunders's epiphany was not rational or secular but spiritual Her work was a personal calling underpinned by a powerful religious commitment wrote David Clark an English medical school professor of palliative care and Saunders's biographer to whom she has entrusted the organization of her archives So strong was Saunders's faith in what she perceived as her divine call that she began volunteering after work as a nurse at homes for the dying Urged on by her experiences at these homes she went to medical schoolthis at the ripe old age of 33 and at a time when there were few women doctors After becoming a doctor Saunders continued to focus on alleviating the pain of people who were dying She obtained a fellowship for research in palliative care and began to work in a hospice run by nuns Her first initiative was to put patients on a regular pain control schedule which in her words was like waving a wand over the situation Before long she was impelled to found her own hospice St Christopher's I have thought for a number of years she wrote to a correspondent at the time that God was calling me to try to found a home for patients dying of cancer Clark has written that Saunders's certainty that the St Christopher's project was divinely guided and inspired led her to become an activist energetically raising money for the new project and in the process raising the consciousness of the medical establishment about end of life care Saunders's initial idea was for St Christopher's hospice to be a sequestered religious community solely concerned with caring for the dying But the 58 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW idea soon expanded from a strictly religious vision into in Clark's works a full blown medical project acting in the world Saunders succeeded beyond even her own wildest hopes Today St Christopher's is a four story glass and brick structure located in a beautiful tree lined London suburb There the Dame as the St Christopher's staff affectionately calls her continues to work energetically and devotedly Although physically slowed by her 80 plus years and no longer actively practicing medicine she turned that aspect of her work over to others several years ago she meets daily with people from all over the world who make pilgrimages to St Christopher's to learn how care for the dying can be improved and to be inspired by her indomitable spirit Indeed as I entered Dame Cicely's second floor office a large group of smiling Japanese physicians reluctant to leave were warmly repeating their appreciative goodbyes As the Japanese physicians left Saunders a dignified gray haired woman with a truly English face turned her full attention upon me As we were introduced by her assistant the awe I felt at being in the presence of greatness must have shown for Dame Cicely smiled broadly her eyes twinkling and began to put me at ease by asking me about myself and my work As we talked she moved with some difficulty back to her large desk covered with papers and books Behind her was a large bookcase filled with books on death dying and palliative care She is clearly as devoted to the dying today as she was when she almost singlehandedly started the hospice movement Finally Dame Cicely allowed the conversation to be directed toward herself and her work We opened our doors in 1967 she told me and we started in home care in 1969 The majority of our work is out in the community In 1971 we sent one of our team doctors to New Haven Connecticut to help found the first modem hospice in the United States From there the hospice movement gradually spread throughout our country As I spoke with Dame Cicely I reflected upon the death of my father in 1984 Dad had been fighting colon cancer for about two years Then one day he was sitting on his hospital bed contemplating a bile drainage tube the doctors had inserted to prevent the tumor from blocking his bile duct Dad looked at the drainage bag taped to his inner thigh He sighed deeply his shoulders sagged and he looked up at me with an expression I had never seen before Dad had made a momentous decision His fight to stay alive was over As a society we too often mistake dying for dead we transform the end of life into a shameful thing something to be hidden away in a dark comer Mom and I were determined not to let that happen to Dad just because he was no longer seeking to prolong his life that did not mean his life was over FALL 2001159

WESLEY 1 SMITH We shifted emphasis from cure to comfort dignity and peace That meant hospice care which at that time was still a relatively novel concept here in the United States Thanks to that decision Dad's last several months were peacefully pain free He was richly nurtured by my mother and by dedicated hospice professionals He would spend hours sitting on a bench in the back yard overlooking his beloved cactus garden contemplating his life and the ultimate issues raised by human mortality As an only child I bore a heavy burden caring not only for my father but also for my mother who was devastated by her impending loss The hospice professionals provided me with grief counseling even before Dad died an invaluable aid in helping me help him and Mom Dad died ina Veterans Hospital hospice unit in Los Angeles and in his passing he taught me how to die with dignity grace and fortitude I also reflected upon Frank's death Frank was my childhood best friend's father and my second dad He died in 1997 also of colon cancer Unfortunately unlike my father's doctor Frank's doctor did not readily agree to hospice care causing him much unnecessary suffering But once admitted to a hospice program Frank left behind the intense pain and suffering he had been enduring and entered a world of peace Hospice was so wonderful his wife Jean recalls I will never forget the depth of care showed by the doctor and the nurses particular y Jill who came every day to visit They showed Frank such tremendous compassion It is hard to believe that there are people in the world who are so deep down compassionate to strangers But there ate They are sincere and wonderful about it Frank's last words to me were spoken quietly and with great dignity just three days before his passing I am ready to die None of this would have happened without the religious values which entered the secular milieu of medicine through Dame Cicely Saunders specifically the belief that no matter what our state of health no matter what our age no matter how much help we need no matter how we look or smellour lives are sanctified we are all worthy of compassion and care I noted to Saunders the direct line of succor and love that led from David Tasma in 1948 to my father in 1984 to Frank in 1997 to the millions of others who have benefited from hospice care since 1967 She smiled and agreed This is not theocracy This is not dividing a pluralistic society by imposing religion on an unwilling public There is nothing narrow or sectarian about Dame Cicely's recognition that being classified as terminal does not cancel a person's claim on us A secularism that is not enriched by values such as these will be stunted and incapable of fully reflecting the potential of the human condition 601FALL 2001

SEX REDISCOVERED

Sex Rediscovered William Murchison It was not precisely out of the blue that people decided there was nothing wrong with as we say in these allegedly enlightened times terminating a pregnancy Pregnancy one could note with some scientific justification is a central element in sex For attitudes on abortion to change there needed to be a revolution in the way men and women looked at their meeting ground a new way of considering rights and obligation under a regime as old as Adam and Eve And of course exactly that has been the case What is curious is to see these profound changes consummated as it were in a period of little more than 30 years I remember it all So likely do you gentle reader And I mean the age allusion ever so gently believe me Three decades is no big deal at all There had been a moral revolution during the 1920s building as always happens with revolutions on the not inconsiderable spade work performed by advanced spirits in previous decades and afterwards there was Rosie the Riveter and the bikini and rock n roll and other signs of or opportunities for assertive freedom and sexuality on the part of American women But who was ready I certainly wasn't despite living generationally speaking at Ground Zero for the mind boggling collapse of the carefully laid structure of attitudes and behaviors relating to and governing relationships between men and women In 1963 the year I graduated from college the old order seemed more or less in confident place By the mid 1970s it was gone all changed changed utterly as Yeats wrote after the Easter rebellion There is some resemblance to the demise of the World Trade Center if you think about it We went from girls who went to college for their MRS degree to Women who were headed for law school orWest Point from lingering kisses at the dorm door to group sex on the first date from mononucleosis to AIDS and VD from marriage for life to divorce as a way of life from Margaret Chase Smith to Hillary Clinton from abortion as a scandal besides a crime to abortion as a human right and proud badge of selfuood and liberation from abortion if you please to choice It took the world by surprise it caught civilization off guard Only in a WjJJiam Murchison our senior editor is a nationally syndicated columnist Creators Syndicate and a popular speaker on a wide range of current religious and cultural issues His latest book is There's More to Life than Politics 1998 Spence Publishing Company Dallas FALL 2001161

WILLIAM MURCHISON culture where the creation of life had taken an official backseat to the cultivation of pleasure could the Roe v Wade regime be enforced sex as a right and the consequences of sex rendered optional at best Understanding over the short run why we changed so much in so short a time could occupy us for years to come understanding the consequences of the change is simpler altogether We use our eyes that is all Of the sexual revolution and its fruits Theodore Dalrymple the noted English writer physician observes I think of the words commemorating architect Sir Christopher Wren in the floor of St Paul's Cathedral Si monumentum requiris circumspice if you seek his monument look about you A just tribute to a great artist a bitter reproach to a society that came to think of liberation as fulfillment Dalrymple is one ofsix writers whose essays from the Manhattan Institute's fine publication City Journal are bound in hardback as Modern Sex Liberation and Its Discontents with the 0 in modem rendered as the top of an open condom Myron Magnet is editor of the collection and some collection it is The L Word Love as Taboo All Sex All the Time Bring Back Stigma and so on All the contributors including Dalrymple are noted commentators on the topic at hand Roger Scruton Barbara Dafoe Whitehead Kay S Hymowitz Wendy Shalit Harry Stein The diagnosis is bleak America's obsession with sexual liberation has brought disaster W hat you see after all the coupling writes Magnet in the introduction is a profound sadness In the world of low commitment sex cohabitation has replaced marriage for many and relationships are temporary leaving the partners mistrustful resentful even vengeful once the breakup occurs Americans are lonelier as well as sadder men wary of women and women of men Sex without feelings was the original aim and it seemed so comfort making so easy and agreeable No exposure of vulnerabilities no hurts no hurts no anger no fights no withdrawals no ruptures There was just this one little bitty problem Human existence is not set up in this comfort making easy and altogether agreeable way Emotions drive human relationships emotions that humans never can bury deep enough to prevent their rising from the coffin like Christopher Lee in a Dracula movie and biting those who encounter each other expecting to give and to get so little beyond the sexual thrill So too in our day and age are children sexualized earlier and earlier a consequence also of the advertising d entertainment fantasy world that surrounds them and to whose allurements their still fragile egos are particularly susceptible The loss of stigma for sexual misbehavior has left 62 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW individuals much more exposed to violation Of commitments and enduring love we see less and less And then the book really begins All to this point was prelude We get down soon to brass tacks single mothers neglected children broken hearts sexual diseases emotional turmoil Abortion That too However just in passing in an essay How We Mate by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead who became a mini celebrity some years back with her Atlantic article affirming how right Vice President Dan Quayle had been in 1992 to criticize single motherhood as a lifestyle Increasingly writes Whitehead women believe that a woman has a right to have a baby on her own This idea is historically recent originating with the sexual revolution and the contraception revolution Ofthe two events the sexual revolution was the more central in creating the notion of sex for recreation rather than for bringing life into the world According to proponents of the new sex ideology with a strange combination of feminists and Playboy magazine taking the lead women should be free to enjoy their bodies and their sexuality without any of the procreative consequences of sex That is to say without babies to burp and diaper and accompany eventually to soccer practice Whitehead does not remark on the strangeness of this expectation though she certainly would acknowledge it It is the weirdest of all the weird implications of the sex without commitment revolution It makes no sense when you think about it What would be the purpose ofsex after all I mean the purpose not merely the sweaty palpitating byproducts though this is neither to dis nor to dismiss those byproducts to which I will return in due course and which meantime have an unmistakably large place in human relationships The purpose of sex would be of course the creation of life That's how you do it That's how things are set up whether you believe or disbelieve that allegedly outdated Adam knew Eve his wife business Is Sex Necessary James Thurber slyly inquired in a famous book title Well you could certainly say so on the basis of experience Even the artificial inseminators acknowledge the centrality of sex They employ in their line of work real live sperm from real live people the sort of thing that cannot be manufactured pressed into shape packaged prescribed ingested at bedtime with a glass of Merlot Thus abortion which supposedly liberates sexuality and the sexual impulse in fact reduces and attenuates the possibilities of the marriage bed squeezes those possibilities down to recreation Recreation for what For FALL 2001 63

WILLIAM MURCHISON recreation's sake so far as anyone can see How inspirational It is as if George W Bush offered himself for constable of McLennan County Texas or Jack Welch assumed control of a chain of lemonade stands They could succeed all right at these shriveled pastimes Then they would ask inevitably is this all When you reduce sex to recreation the question surfaces once more Is this all Everything The whole shooting match So it would seem the central purpose of sex having been neatly discarded De gustibus one could say if that's the way you like things that's the way you like things and no one else should object But Myron Magnet's words worm their way into consciousness profound sadness The main thing left after sex for conception has gone away is sadness The City Journal essayists have not produced an anti abortion document It would be unreasonable to suggest they meant to or should have although their moral worldview is congruent with that say of Human Life Review's readers They have much to show us nonetheless concerning the fruits and consequences of sex unyoked from its purpose Sadness is not the first word that normally comes to mind in appraisals of the sexual revolution If ever a revolution was designed for pleasure this was the one Fun was its charter abandonment pleasure let the good times roll If one sexual partner was good why wouldn't nine or ten be better yet If nine or ten were as good as all that how about dozens maybe hundreds The church in specifying one as the limit was performing its usual killjoy function What did the clergy know about fun As for celibate Catholic priests pronouncing on something they'd never even experienced It turns out that the clergy among other so called bluenoses knew and understood quite a lot about sex One of the more interesting essays in Modem Sex is Wendy Shalit's Sex Sadness and the City She writes here of the popular HBO series Sex and the City She writes not to damn as some might suppose in a book of this character but to weep a little with the series characters and the plights they have cr ated for themselves While promoters offer the show as one more brave step in the sexual liberation of women leading to greater fulfillment in fact it is a lament for all things of inestimable value that the sexual revolution has wrecked If Candace Bushnell whose New York City newspaper columns inspired the series were a practicing Catholic she couldn't have produced a more effective proselytizing tool for continence and modesty Now there's a large claim What might Ms Shalit mean First that the females who of course are single and looking for love are unlikely to find it in the modem milieu Love read commitment is out this season What's 64 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW left are odd little rituals like sleeping around the art dealer Charlotte to entice the supposed beneficiaries into performing chores and tasks around the house As for the men she does care for she gives them presents they usually reject Whoa too fast one exclaims to Charlotte Next you move in and then you hate my music Consistently says Ms Shalit Sex and the City derides women who impulsively jump into bed and then complain about men's bad character The women in the show it is clear have given up the opportunity to get to know these men better Again and again the show shows forth what the sexual revolution expects of women and what the woman who looks for liberation through the bedroom can expect And yet concludes Theodore Dalrymple in another essay the ideas and sensibilities of the sexual revolutionaries have now so thoroughly permeated our society that we are scarcely aware any longer of the extent to which they have done so Happiness and the good life are conceived as prolonged sexual ecstasy and nothing more We wonder that the culture embraces abortion How could it not Sex is out sexual ecstasy is the thing now and how different are the two each powerful but in radically different ways Sex a word largely replaced now by gender except of course when the topic is ecstasy is about difference and complementarity Difference as regards reproductive mechanisms difference regarding perhaps a man may say it in a forum like this without expecting assault and battery on the way home temperament outlook ways of thinking ways of acting The differences are morally neutral That is not to deny their reality Decades ago I read maybe in Reader's Digest of a manhunt that led to an airplane waiting on the ground for takeoff The police were seeking a man There he was already in his seat or rather no the person in question was wearing women's clothes HmIl1IIlIil To test the original assumption an officer tossed his pocketknife at the suspect's lap The suspect grabbed the knife in mid air At that point it was all right buddy stand up hands over your head A seated woman in a skirt you see would instinctively have used the skirt as a net trapping the pocketknife without touching it I've no idea whether any of this makes sense I have remembered the incident because of the way it purported to illustrate a real if hardly significant difference between the only two sexes there are Yet the differences work together in concert like violin and cello There seems a fitness to it all The wife of a World Trade Center victim who was FALL 2001165

WILLIAM MURCHISON profiled by the New York Times analyzed the couple's relationship in simple terms yet also profound We completed each other What one was not the other was and vice versa That was sex in the classic sense sexual ecstasy whether they had it or not was another commodity Conception pregnancy and birth are eminently related in classic sex The differences make it all possible Indeed just to think about the differenceswhich hardly require description is to appreciate the symmetry Vaulting and buttresses hold up a cathedral The family is held up by similarly distinct yet complementary attributes emotional as well as physical Why not leave it at that rather than veer off the road into caricature and stereotype So it took as I said in the beginning a change in the way men and women come together and in the assumptions both make when they come togetherthat is what it took for old attitudes about abortion to die and new ones to take their place Or would it be truer to say for attitudes about birth and life and family itself to change in important ways We proceeded from sex to sexual ecstasy via among other routes agreement to pretend that pregnancy was no more than a medical encumbrance and you know what we do with encumbrances in a liberated society get rid of them as quickly as possible that's what Thus we really ought to have seen all this coming An acute social observer could have retired to the Caymans by betting on the U S Supreme Court to establish a constitutional right to abort a pregnancy whether in Roe v Wade or in some subsequent ruling In fact the court grabbed the first train out of Hicksville which to every appearance was how the court majority viewed the old America and its quaint cultural assumptions We were no longer into sex the justices seemed to understand ecstasy was the thing people wanted and no court should stand in its way No court since then really has done so But the sadness persists Indeed it seems to deepen That is the distinct contribution of this valuable collection of essays Modem Sex showing where the culture of ecstasy has led Straight to among other places The Teen Mommy Track as Kay S Hymowitz terms it To a culture created and ruled by children a never never land almost completely abandoned by fathers and in some sad cases by mothers as well a culture made possible by adult negligence and enabled by mixed messages coming from mainstream society itself If ecstasy is what we want why shouldn't teenagers have it If there is the temptation to rejoice that at least some budding mothers keep their babies a contrary temptation squashes it the temptation to mourn the burgeoning of unwed motherhood and its dismal effects such as poverty and physical abuse 66 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REvIEW Ms Hymowitz also profiles Tweens Ten Going on Sixteen The title says it all In addition as Dalrymple notes the culture ofecstasy has led to the thorough coarsening of feeling thought and behavior And to moral neutrality The only permissible judgment in polite society is that no judgment is permissible From a sexual standpoint we are in one heck of a mess you could reasonably conclude Roger Scruton the philosopher has some helpful things to say in the book He advises for example setting before our children an image of the good man and the good woman teaching them to imitate what can be loved and admired He is right as can be Still I want to note some ground for optimism in the long run if not the short The optimism is founded on the fact that when one talks about sex one talks about reality Sex is a thing you would think hardly requiring explanation or rationalization As we see all too well is ness viz reality is no guarantee of cultural acceptance This very day as I write numerous Muslims around the world and in this country fold their arms solemnly and sullenly They don't care what that videotape of Osama bin Laden shows him confessing to it's a put up job a forgery whatever you want it to be Exactly Whatever we want a thing to be that's what it becomes not merely in Muslim but also in post Christian or even Christian circles You want ecstasy as the first priority You got it as waiters superfluously assure us on taking our orders And with it sadness disillusion pain dislocation the list could go on and on Curiously our therapeutic culture often enjoins us to eschew the mental state called denial We are in denial when we refuse to acknowledge an addiction or a death or some other affliction in life or the family Is it not also the case that we are in denial when we posit ecstasy as the definitive replacement for the old understanding of sex an understanding that seems to entail inconvenience and occasionally hardship Heretics it has been often noted have a piece of the truth they turn as it pleases them into the whole truth Sexual ecstasy is a portion of truth one odd thing about ecstasy being that when it occurs it seems to proceed most surely and most lastingly from plain homely old fashioned love based sex Sex as invoking complementarity rather than division union as opposed to apartness and jealousy the art of giving as distinguished from the act of taking If one does not see that it all works as advertised then just possibly one has not been looking with due attention The 20th century may be seen in some sense as a concentrated flight from FALL 2001 67

WILLIAM MURCHISON reality away from the way things actually are and in the direction of things as we would like them How else explain communism the century's grandest project for the remaking of human nature a project that finally failed when human nature said exasperatedly Wait just a minute here Pleasure is a treasured and unmistakable part of the human experience if you except the experience of that much diminished band the true ascetics Nonetheless pleasure the opposite of that sadness to which Myron Magnet draws our attention is conditioned on our acknowledgement of its part time status and ofits fragility There are no guarantees though human experience indicates with some consistency that lives led in obedience to norms such as duty and responsibility have the best chance of keeping pleasure alive It is this paradox that our age resists with all its force Still as I say sex is And to argue that it isn't to plead for its pliability or friability doesn't render it less central to human existence Go on in this vein and we all may find it necessary to reestablish formally the connection between sex and the things sex accomplishes not least of which is the production of life and the replenishment of the human species Will wonders never cease But enough about me 68 FALL 2001

ROE’S DAYS ARE NUMBERED

Roe's Days Are Numbered Raymond J Adamek Roe v Wade became the law of the land 29 years ago this January Many who were teenagers in 1973 are now sending their own children off to college Today's young adults embarking on post college careers or making wedding plans or counting down nine months to the birth of their own first babies had yet to be conceived when Roe was handed down Since January 1973,14 congressional elections have been fought six presidents have taken the oath of office and eight of the original nine Roe Supreme Court justices have retired None of this activity has rolled back the decision's broad license to abort Since January 1973 over 42 million legal abortions have shrunk the numbers of post 73 generations Abortion on demand is a right seemingly so firmly entrenched in America that even its most grisly extension partial birth abortion remains legal And yet Roe v Wade's days are numbered or should be for a number of reasons A House Built on Sand Roe v Wade is a house built on sand It is characterized by poor logic poor history poor social science and poor jurisprudence So recklessly did the U S Supreme Court pursue the unwanted unborn that Justice White in a dissenting opinion stated I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and with scarcely any reason or authority for its action invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes l Both prolife and pro choice lawyers agree that Roe was poorly decided 2 Moreover both Roe v Wade and its companion case Doe v Bolton were based on self serving deceptions Roe Norma McCorvey was persuaded to believe that her participation in the case would win her an abortion for her current pregnancy something her lawyers knew was unlikely if not impossible given litigation's time frame She herself initially maintained she was the victim of a gang rape which was not true Doe Sandra Cano was not even seeking an abortion but that is not how her case was presented Raymond J Adamek is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Kent State University where he has taught courses in family statistics and research methods He has some eighteen publications in professionaljoumals and other outlets dealing with abortion This is his second contribution to the Review The first was It Has Happened Here which appeared in the Fall 1977 issue FALL 2001169

RAYMOND J ADAMEK to the courts As George McKenna recently pointed out the pro choice movement has also been caught in other lies 3 Sooner or later the public and perhaps even the pro choice media will begin to appreciate this and will regard Roe v Wade and its progeny as the illegitimate juridical offspring of lies Majority of Public Has Never Supported Roe's Policy A careful reading of public opinion polls reveals that a majority of the public has never endorsed the full license Roe gave to render abortion legal for any reason throughout the nine months of pregnancy by whatever method the abortionist chose including partial birth abortion 4 The National Opinion Research Center conducted a series of 17 annual and more recently biennial polls from 1977 through 2000 asking Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if Among the seven conditions offered respondents is one which reflects Roe's policy i e If the woman wants it for any reason The average number of respondents saying Yes to this response over the 17 years is 38.5 and it has never exceeded 45 These percentages decrease considerably if we add a time dimension and ask respondents if they think abortion should be permitted in the second and third trimesters as well Four polls from 1996 through 2000 reveal that while 61 65 agree that abortion should be permitted in the first trimester this drops to 15 26 in the second trimester and to only 7 13 in the third trimester Thirty state legislatures and an average of 61 of the public over 12 national polls favored a ban on partial birth abortion a practice upheld by the Supreme Court in Stenberg v Carhart 5 Thus while the public does not take a pro life position on the abortion issue neither does it support Roe v Wade's policy Reluctance to Change Roe Based on Pro Choice Myths Why then in 60 polls taken since 1976 has an average of only 32 of the public supported a Human Life Amendment to overturn Roe Clarke D Forsythe argues that the public though not really supporting Roe nevertheless accepts abortion as a necessary evil 6 The public has largely accepted several pro choice myths 1 legal abortion simply replaced one million annual illegal abortions 2 thousands of women died each year from illegal abortions and would do so again if abortion were outlawed 3 legal abortion means safe abortions which benefit women Thus However bad Americans feel about abortion they believe legal prohibitions would only make the problem worse 70IFALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Research Data Explodes Myths Each of these myths has been exploded by research and hard data some of which emerged only after many years experience of abortionon demand 1 In a detailed analysis Cynthia McKnight has shown that the oft cited one million illegal abortions is simply a guesstimate based on questionable extrapolations from a few small or unrepresentative sample studies going back to the early 1900s As sometimes happens the one million figure becomes truth through repetition McKnight also reviews a study based on government figures for the number of live births and maternal deaths due to pregnancy and abortion in the 32 years prior to Roe v Wade She concludes with the study's authors that the average number of illegal abortions occurring annually during this period was 98,000.8 Although tragic this number is less than one tenth of the one million illegal abortions claimed by pro choice advocates and less than one thirteenth of the 1.3 million annual legal abortions now occurring Thus legalizing abortion has caused 13 times as many unborn humans to die and exposed 13 times as many women to the hazards of abortion annually 2 According to the National Center for Health Statistics in 1966 the year before the pro abortion movement began to have legislative impact in some of the states 159 women died from illegal abortions not the thousands extravagantly claimed by pro choicers In 1972 the year before Roe legalized abortion on demand throughout the country 41 women died from illegal abortion 9 3 Hence thousands of women did not die from illegal abortions each year and neither are thousands likely to do so if most abortions are made illegal again Poland's experience may be instructive here Dr Jack Willke has reported that under Communist rule in Poland where abortion was not only legal but paid for by the government 168,600 abortions occurred in 1965 a peak year Sixty thousand abortions occurred in 1990 In 1993 after Communist rule ended the Polish parliament outlawed abortion except for rape incest or to save the mother's life What happened Did more women die from illegal abortions Did child health suffer as the result of increased botched abortions No maternal deaths decreased from 70 in 1990 to 21 in 1996 and miscarriages decreased by 25 between 1990 and 1997 Neonatal deaths decreased from 19 per 1000 births in 1990 to 9.6 per 1000 in 1998.10 Whatever the combination of causes for these improvements clearly neither women nor babies were worse off without abortion an demand 4 Accumulating evidence indicates that legal abortion harms women A FALL 2001171

RAYMOND J ADAMEK brief review of some of this evidence follows Maternal Deaths Pro choice advocates suggest that legal abortion is many times safer for the woman than childbirth The U S Centers for Disease Control report that the maternal death rate for legal abortions fell from 4.1 per 100,000 in 1973 to 0.8 per 100,000 in 1991 the last date for which figures are available The CDC also reports that 263 women died from legal abortions between 1973 and 1991 an average of 14 a year ll However some authors maintain that this is a vast undercount Kevin Sherlock an investigative reporter who examined newspaper articles and public records in county courthouses coroner's offices and morgues found 30 40 more abortionrelated maternal deaths across the country during 1980 1989 than reported by the CDC 12 Sherlock also reported that a memo to local abortion clinics from Dr Steven C Joseph the Health Commissioner for New York City identified 30 maternal deaths during 1981 1984 in that city alone at the same time that CDC reports were showing only 42 abortion related deaths for the entire nation Dr Joseph's memo also referred to unpublished data that revealed there were 176 maternal deaths nationwide during 1981 1984 a figure 419 higher than the CDC numbers The abortion debate has politicized medicine itself Mark Crutcher author of Lime 5 points out that although abortion is the most frequent operation in the United States relatively little data on abortion complications are gathered by the CDC and the data we have come in very slowly 13 Crutcher also reports that at the time he investigated the CDC 50 of their 68 upperlevel employees had ties to pro choice organizations including 17 CDC doctors who themselves performed abortions 14 Physical Health Both Sherlock and Crutcher catalog the tragic experiences some women face when they seek legal abortions Maternal Injuries and Complications In Chapter 1 of Lime 5 Crutcher documents 23 different injuries and complications perforated uterus bowell intestine extraction brain damage etc suffered by 233 women undergoing legal abortion Fifty three percent of these resulted in death and many caused permanent disability sterility colostomy persistent vegetative state etc These cases are not even the tip of the iceberg since abortionists often do not report complications women having abortions are reluctant to sue and the generally pro choice media are unlikely to investigate or report abortion malpractice Breast Cancer Twenty eight of 37 worldwide studies show a link between induced abortion and an increased incidence of breast cancer Fifteen studies 72 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW took place in this country among which thirteen also find a link I5 In a review and critique of some of these studies Joel Brind et al estimated that at current rates first abortions in the U S will result in 24,500 excess cases of breast cancer per year over the next several years 16 Ectopic Pregnancies From 1970 through 1989 the rate of ectopic pregnancies in the U S increased almost fourfold from 4.5 per 1000 to 16 per 1000 pregnancies This increase coincides with the eightfold increase in legal abortion during this period Ectopic pregnancies and their complications were associated with 13 of all pregnancy related maternal deaths during this period 17 Two French studies indicate that women who never had such a pregnancy were from 1.4 to 1.9 times more likely to have one after an induced abortion with the risk increasing with the number of abortions IS An earlier smaller U S study compared 85 multigravid women experiencing an ectopic pregnancy with 498 multigravid delivery patients Among these women the relative odds of an ectopic pregnancy were 2.0 when the prior reproductive outcome was an induced abortion 19 Future Pregnancies Studies in the medical literature also tum up evidence that induced abortions make women more subject to reproductive tract and intra amniotic infections These can result in infertility or problems with future pregnancies At least 16 studies indicate that induced abortion increases the risk of prematurity in subsequent births Prematurity is associated with increased neonatal deaths and a greater incidence ofchildhood diseases such as cerebral palsy 20 Mental Health Post Abortion Syndrome Post Abortion Syndrome PAS is a psychological condition characterized by frequent flashbacks to the abortion experience anxiety attacks on the abortion anniversary an inability to relate to children and depression Some reviews of studies examining the psychological impact of abortion on women conclude that the psychological risks associated with abortion are similar to those associated with childbirth 21 Most early studies of this type looked at short term psychological impact and generally found that a feeling of relief was the main psychological impact of abortion However longer term studies generally clinical in nature reveal the presence of PAS Speckhard and Rue summarize the findings of some 250 studies investigating the psychological impact of abortion as well as some of the socio political complexities of this research and conclude that PAS is indeed an emerging health concern 22 Suicide David C Reardon reports on a study conducted by the statistical FALL 2001173

RAYMOND 1 ADAMEK unit of the Finnish government 23 The researchers examined the death certificates of9,192 women aged 15 49 who died between 1987 and 1994 They then examined national health care data to identify any pregnancy related events for these women in the 12 months prior to their deaths The researchers found that of the 281 women who died within a year of their last pregnancy 27 had committed suicide Using women who had not had a pregnancy as the base of 1.0 the researchers found that the age adjusted odds ratio for suicide was 0.6 for those who gave birth 1.9 for those who had a miscarriage and 3.7 for those who aborted Reardon himself studied the MediCal records of over 173,000 California women who gave birth or had abortions in 1989 Women who had state funded abortions were 2.6 times more likely to die of suicide than women who carried to term The suicide rate for women who gave birth was 3 per 100,000 compared to a rate of 7.8 per 100,000 for aborting women The national suicide rate for women aged 15 44 is 5.2 per 100,000.24 Reardon also found that women who have had abortions are several times more likely than women who carry to term to undergo subsequent treatment for a wide variety of psychological problems and to be admitted to a hospital for subsequent psychiatric care especially for symptoms of depression Substance Abuse At least 15 studies have established a correlation between abortion and substance abuse In one of the most recent studies David C Reardon and Philip G Ney found that women who aborted a first pregnancy were five times more likely to report subsequent substance abuse than women who carried to term and were four times more likely to report such abuse compared to those who suffered a natural loss of their first pregnancy i e due to miscarriage ectopic pregnancy or stillbirth 25 In evaluating the above studies we should keep in mind the difference between establishing a correlation between variables and establishing a causal connection between variables Nevertheless these data strongly indicate that legal abortion is neither safe nor beneficial for women As the public begins to become aware of the extent to which it has been deceived by the prochoice movement it will be more favorably disposed to changing Roe v Wade's policy How Will Roe v Wade Be Changed Whether the abortion policy flowing from Roe changes as a result of a Federalism Amendment 26 a Human Life Amendment 27 or some other process remains to be seen It may not be necessary to pass either of these types of amendments Paradoxically the policies now resulting from Roe 74 FALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW may be changed by applying some of the dictates of that decision itself Recall that Roe v Wade based a woman's right to abortion on three main reasons 1 Although The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy its roots may be found in one or more of five Amendments and in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights This right of privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy 28 2 In contrast to the manner in which it discovered the unmentioned right of privacy the Court noted that The Constitution does not define person in so many words and in nearly all cases where that word is used it has application only postnatally 29 Hence it concluded the unborn are not protected as persons by the Constitution 3 Based on a now discredited analysis by Cyril Means the Court accepted the proposition that early laws prohibiting abortion were motivated solely to protect the woman and not by a concern for the lives of the unborn 30 It therefore concluded that at least in the first trimester since legal abortion was now allegedly as safe as or safer than normal childbirth any interest of the State in protecting the woman from an inherently hazardous procedure has largely disappeared 31 However in four places in the body of its decision the Court also noted that the State had a legitimate interest in protecting women's health this permitted the State to regulate abortion In 1973 relying on the medical evidence it accepted and focusing on abortion's immediate health impact the Court thought that this State interest became operative in the second trimester and beyond It further determined that the State's interests in safeguarding health in maintaining medical standards and in protecting potentiallife become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision The privacy right involved therefore cannot be said to be absolute 32 Moreover the Court noted that lower courts have agreed that the right of privacy is not absolute and is subject to some limitations and that at some point the state interests as to protection of health medical standards and prenatal life become dominant We agree with this approach 33 Up until now the Court's pro choice majorities have contradicted its own statements in Roe by treating the woman's right to privacy as absolute and by preventing any legislative or administrative attempts to protect prenatal life in any meaningful way However it is not inconceivable that future more pro life Courts could respond to the long term threats to women's life and health noted above by using these same passages in Roe to permit the State FALL 2001175

RAYMOND J ADAMEK to curtail or perhaps even outlaw abortion As Robert M Byrn noted in his analysis of the perversion of privacy Judges are not deaf to the voices of reason history and public outrage 34 Such outrage could well emanate once enough people realize that the Court's pro abortion decisions and activities of the pro choice movement have been grounded on deceptions that jeopardize women's lives and health Together with more effective communication of the pro life message 35 this public outrage could help initiate the culture change necessary to support pro life policies far into the future Conclusion Because Roe v Wade is a house built on sand because the pro choice movement has been deceptive because a majority of the public has never supported the policies flowing from Roe and because legal abortion has proven harmful to women both in the short term and the long term Roe v Wade's days are or should be numbered They should be but may not be Past experience has shown that in Justice White's words normal rules of law procedure and constitutional adjudication suddenly become irrelevant solely because a case touches on the subject of abortion 36 This pattern has continued through the latest Court decision on the abortion issue Stenberg v Carhart In their dissenting opinions four justices pointed out that the pro choice majority in Carhart 1 failed to follow accepted rules ofjurisprudence in examining Nebraska's law banning partial birth abortion 2 contradicted its earlier rulings in reaching this one 3 legislated from the bench substituting their judgments and values for those of the elected legislators of Nebraska and 29 other states and 4 implied that this ruling does not amount to abortion on demand by any method at any time when in fact it does 37 Thus only a pro life majority on the Court will overturn Roe v Wade and its progeny or even follow the rationale of Roe by allowing the State to prohibit abortion to protect women's health Such a majority depends on awakening the public to how we arrived at abortion on demand and how many unhappy consequences have accumulated in its 29 year wake NOTES 1 Roe v Wade United States Supreme Court Reports 35 L Ed 2d January 22 1973 195 196 2 The reader is invited to see the dissenting opinions associated with Roe v Wade and the following critiques Robert M Byrn An American Tragedy The Supreme Court on Abortion 76IFALL 2001

THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW Fordham Law Review 41 1973 807 862 Archibald Cox The Supreme Court and Abortion the Human Life Review 2 4 1976 15 19 Robert A Destro Abortion and the Constitution The Need for a Life Protective Amendment California Law Review 63 1975 1250 1351 John Hart Ely The Wages of Crying Wolf The Yale Law Journal 82 April 1973 920 947 Dennis 1 Horan et al Abortion and the Supreme Court Death Becomes a Way of Life in Thomas Hilgers and D Horan eds Abortion and SocialJustice N Y Sheed and Ward 1972 301 328 John T Noonan Jr Why a Constitutional Amendment The Human Life Review 1 1 1975 26 43 3 George McKenna Why They Help Them Lie The Human Life Review 27 2 2001 7 18 4 Raymond 1 Adamek Public Opinion and Roe v Wade Measurement Difficulties Public Opinion Quarterly 58 3 1994 409 418 See also Raymond 1 Adamek Thirty Plus Years of Abortion Polls What Have We Learned Unpublished manuscript January 2001 5 Stenberg v Carhart United States Supreme Court Reports 147 LEd 2d June 28 2000 743 814 6 Clarke D Forsythe A New Strategy The Human Life Review 25 4 1999 15 27 7 Ibid 18 8 Cynthia McKnight Life Without Roe Washington D C The Horatio R Storer Foundation 1992 The study mentioned is Barbara J Syska et al An Objective Model for Estimating Criminal Abortions and Its Implications for Public Policy in Thomas W Hilgers et al New Perspectives on Human Abortion Frederick MD University Publications of America 1981 9 Ibid 10 J C Willke Clear Evidence If Forbidden Abortion Will Not Return to the Back Alley Life Issues Connector April 2000 Cincinnati OH Life Issues Institute 11 Lisa M Koonin et al Abortion Surveillance United States 1993 and 1994 MMWR 46 SS 4 August 8 1997 Table 35 12 Kevin Sherlock Victims ofChoice Akron OH Brennyman Books 1996 116 118 13 Mark Crutcher Lime 5 Denton TX Life Dynamics 1996 14 See also Candace C Crandall's discussion of the adequacy of the CDC figures in her article Legal But Not Safe reprinted in The Human Life Review 22 4 1996 47 54 15 Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer www AbortionBreastCancer com Sept 10,2001 16 Joel Brind et al Abortion as an Independent Risk Factor for Breast Cancer A Comprehensive Review and Meta Analysis Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 50 5 1996 481 496 17 Tatiana E Goldner et al Surveillance for Ectopic Pregnancy United States 1970 1989 MMWR 42 SS 6 December 17 1993 18 Family Planning Perspectives 30 4 1998 199 19 A A Levin et al Ectopic Pregnancy and Prior Induced Abortion American Journal ofPublic Health 72 3 1982 253 20 Brent Rooney Is Cerebral Palsy Ever a Choice The Post Abortion Review 8 4 2000 4 6 Elliot Institute 21 Gregory H Wilmoth et al Prevalence of Psychological Risks Following Legal Abortions in the U S Limits of the Evidence Journal ofSocial Issues 48 3 1992 37 66 22 Anne C Speckhard and Vincent M Rue Postabortion Syndrome An Emerging Public Health Concern Journal ofSocial Issues 48 3 1992 95 119 23 David C Reardon Abortion Four Times Deadlier Than Childbirth The Post Abortion Review 8 2 2000 1 5 Elliot Institute 24 David C Reardon Suicide Rate Higher After Abortion Study Shows The Post Abortion Review 9 2 2001 6 Elliot Institute 25 David C Reardon and Philip G Ney Abortion and Subsequent Substance Abuse American Journal ofDrug and Alcohol Abuse 26 1 2000 61 75 26 Forsythe op cit 27 Richard F Collier Jr Reversing Roe Celebrate Life 23 4 2001 13 14 American Life League 28 Roe v Wade op cit 176 177 29 Roe v Wade op cit 179 180 30 See a critique of Means analysis in James C Mohr Abortion in America N Y Oxford University Press 1978 31 Roe v Wade op cit 175 32 Roe v Wade op cit 177 FALL 2001177

RAYMOND J ADAMEK 33 Roe v Wade op cit 178 34 Robert M Byrn The Perversion of Privacy The Human Life Review 19 1 1993 42 55 35 Paul Swope Abortion A Failure to Communicate First Things 82 April 1998 31 3S 36 Planned Parenthood of Missouri v Danforth United States Supreme Court Reports 49 L Ed 2d August 20 1976 821 37 Stenberg v Carhart op cit f r Forgive the spacesuit but I see from your chart you've got cooties 78 FALL 2001

APPENDICES

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