The Lord used to be the giver and taker of life, the guardian of our coming and going. Now it is an in vitro or potassium chloride syringe or a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. What audacious expropriation of such deeply personal and mystical moments!
It has been coming for some years now. Starting with Roe and Quinlan some 20 years ago, lawyers, legislators and courts set their faces toward Jerusalem and began to construe birth and death as legal and judicial matters. The sanctuary of one`s own body and family, of friends, priest and physician, even the sacred position of conscience was no longer trusted as the environment for these decisions. We set our lawyers in this direction. We fashioned an economic and technical culture that has also brought us to this point.
On Earth Day, the preacher cried, ”The Earth is the Lord`s and the fullness thereof.”
”Tell that to the Japanese businessman,” whispered my pew partner. ”He just paid $1 million for one square yard of real estate in downtown Tokyo.”
As a society, we have transposed both birth and death from hidden dark places of privacy to the public light of day shaped by economic and technical forces. Eighty percent of people are now born and die in hospitals; 50 years ago it was 40 percent. RU 486 and other abortifacients will soon displace the agonizing choice. Will the high court`s ordered parental permission now come from mom and dad, Ciba-Geigy or ”a judicial hearing”?
Now that the love-filled decisions of the Cruzan family and Nancy`s physicians have been overridden by the state, perhaps we are left only with Dr. Kevorkian`s contraption and crudely inflicted death in the back of a Volkswagen van.
I think the court`s decisions this week-in the Cruzan right-to-die case and two cases involving parental notification before an abortion-are all we can expect in a society where prowess has outstripped prudence. Indeed, several hints of salutary direction can be welcomed in the justices` decisions in the Missouri, Minnesota and Ohio cases. They have commended to us a provincial, philanthropic and preparatory approach to these awesome decisions. Turning to the states in the realm of abortion and euthanasia policy is certainly the fruit of bewilderment and lack of moral courage on the court`s part. Yet it may be a blessing in disguise. If state jurisdiction, as severely inept as federal jurisdiction especially in matters of health, can return authority to the appropriate province of the patient, her family, priest, pastor or rabbi and circle of friends and caregivers, a good moral advance will have been achieved.
Hidden in the dross ore of the AMA`s physician protectionism and the inordinate autonomy of patients` rights plea in these cases is the gold of decisions correctly placed in the province of an affected self; they are placed within that intimate community of concern where conscience is always validly formed. Here ethics is like good wine: Nature`s bitterness is muted into sweet communal draft on the lips as shame, forgiveness and hope are rendered convivial.
Decisions like these rightly belong in the sphere of filial and familial piety. All who have observed the drama of Nancy Cruzan trust the tear-filled sentiments of her family members, of neighbors, nurses and doctors back in Carterville, Mo. To require that this judgment be made before the anonymous bar in Kansas City or the high court in Washington is as patent a violation of dignity as forcing a pregnant high-schooler to confess her naked truth before a black-robed male at some judicial hearing.
Philanthropy, the love of the human being, best occurs locally unless incestuous or intimately destructive danger is present. In such cases of child or elder abuse, the courts rightly intervene. But we must wonder about the courts` rendition of the law of love and honor. In the Minnesota and Ohio abortion cases they commend family involvement. In Cruzan they disregarded the family.
The same is true of our society in general. We focus obsessive demand for life-sustenance in some few who are phasing in or out of full existence and ignore through unjust health care provision the masses of poor living among us.
The strongest affirmation in the Cruzan decision is the emphasis on preparation. Although it panders to the educated elite-those who enjoy the luxury of our latter-day household pastor, the family lawyer-we are all encouraged to make preparation for such decisions by advance directives, living wills and other before-the-fact expressions of value. This counsel we should heed in our families, congregations, schools and offices. Such preparation should be offered in the spirit of stewardship of progeny and posterity and of our own life and death.
Human death is a complex passage. We die by virtue of our own will, at the mercy of others and toward a holy purpose. To demand documentation of
”clear and convincing proof” that one wishes to forgo further life-prolonging treatment or maintenance is unrealistic and conducive to torture for those who-like most 25-year-old women, like Nancy, like the rest of us-never got around to advanced directives.
In the coming and going of life we face mystery and transcendence, that which is beyond. We and the court need to hear the humbling yet exalting counsel of Job 38:4: ”Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth.” This littleness which is our greatness will help us keep birth and death where it belongs and not yield it to any tyrant.
G.B. Shaw`s ironic wit, in ”The Doctor`s Dilemma,” offers the same wisdom:
Do not try to live forever;
You will not succeed.
Spend all you have before you die
And do not outlive yourself.
