The first gas chamber was designed by professors of psychiatry from 12 major German universities. They selected the patients and watched them die. Then they slowly reduced the "price tag" until the mental hospitals were almost empty.

When you take the giant step of placing a price tag on human life, judging that it has only relative value, then you have made a fatal move, for price tags can be marked down. The Nazis marked them down. Holland marked them down. Abortion demonstrated the same thing. Make no mistake, the slippery slope is a startling reality. Recall William L. Shirer who interviewed a Nazi judge condemned to death at Nuremberg. The judge wept saying, "How could it have come to this?" Mr. Shirer responded, "Herr Judge, it came to this the first time you authorized the killing of an innocent life."

No, Hitler, taking his cue from these physicians, after this eugenic killing of "defective" Aryan Germans, then used their gas chambers and proceeded to eliminate "defective" races. He destroyed an entire race of Gypsies, six million Jews, and perhaps almost as many captured Poles, Russians, and central Europeans.

That’s true. The first and fundamental law change was the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, promulgated by Hitler on July 25, 1933. It was aimed at Aryan Germans, and its purpose was to purify the race by eliminating those with supposed heredity diseases. In six years, the law was responsible for the involuntary sterilization of an estimated 375,000 Germans.

This law also legalized abortion for women who were to be sterilized. Later, the "right" to legal abortion was extended to Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and other racial minorities.

Wrong! Hitler only opposed abortion for "pure blood" Aryan women. He allowed and even encouraged it for others.

In an order to the SS, SD, and police on June 9, 1943, Reichskommisar Kaltenbrunner directed: "In the case of eastern female workers, pregnancy may be interrupted if desired." First, a racial exam was to be done and then, "If a racially valuable result is to be expected, the abortion is to be denied . . . if not valuable, the abortion is to be granted."

After the war, the War Crimes Tribunal indicted ten Nazi leaders for "encouraging and compelling abortion," which it considered a "crime against humanity."

Yes, Holland was the first modern nation to legalize euthanasia. What began as a few extraordinary cases, has now become routine. One hundred and thirty thousand people die each year in Holland, and over 20,000 are killed, directly or indirectly, by doctors. As many as half did not ask to be killed.

These now include newborn infants judged to have too poor a quality of life. A judge has okayed direct euthanasia for a depressed person who was physically well. Killing has also been allowed for depressed teenagers.

Judges have set up qualifications that must be honored before a doctor can kill a patient. These include repeated requests to die, uncontrollable pain, "Force majeure" (doctor has no other choice), witnesses and two doctors who agree.

In practice few of these criteria are even considered. The big one . . . a voluntary request by a rational person repeatedly made . . . has been routinely ignored.

"Documented cases of involuntary active euthanasia have been reported by C. I. Dessaur and C.J.C. Rutenfrans, by myself, and others. K. F. Gunning published his experience with the specialists who, when asked to admit an elderly patient to the hospital, advised the general practitioners to administer lethal injections instead. H. W. Hilhorst, in his extensive study (sponsored by Utrecht University and the Royal Dutch Academy of Science), found that involuntary active euthanasia was being practiced in eight hospitals.

"Anxiety is growing among threatened groups. Warnings have been published that elderly patients, out of fear of euthanasia, refuse hospitalization and even refuse to consult doctors. An inquiry among hospital patients showed that many fear their own families may ask for euthanasia without consulting them. The Dutch Patients’Association placed a warning in the press that, in many hospitals, patients are being killed without their will or knowledge, or the knowledge of their families, and advised the patients and their families to carefully inquire on every step in the treatment, and when in doubt, to consult a reliable expert outside the hospital."

The Northern Territory in Australia in 1995 became the second nation in the late 20th century to pass legislation to legalize euthanasia. Legalization in most nations will be through the courts, probably not through legislation.

Yes, just as abortion was legalized in the U.S. by its Supreme Court, so euthanasia can also become legal.

Remember how abortion started—only for the most rare and tragic cases? And now 99% of abortions are for social and economic reasons. Plan on euthanasia following the same pattern. It did in Germany. It did in Holland. It’ll do the same in Australia, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Proponents of euthanasia are quick to accuse doctors of not letting a patient die in peace. The typical picture drawn is of an old man strapped in bed, in constant pain, clearly dying. He has tubes in every natural body orifice and in several artificial ones. The doctor is keeping him alive, perhaps to obtain a larger fee, perhaps because the doctor does not want to admit that he has lost the battle for this man’s life.

A common observation in a retirement community is, "I don’t want to be kept alive with all those tubes and painful and expensive treatments."

Years ago, truly life-saving treatments were limited. Only too often, the physician’ s role was to comfort and eliminate pain as the patient progressed to an inevitable death. Then, with the advent of antibiotics, better surgery, intensive and coronary care units and new drugs, it became possible to prevent death from occurring. For physicians, there was a learning process, from excesses in keeping dying people alive "too long" to learning how to "let go" and allowing natural death to occur. Today, almost all doctors handle dying patients well. Except in rare cases, the caricature of the old man above is no longer valid.

Pro-euthanasia literature constantly emphasizes pain, uncontrollable pain, constant, intractable pain, unrelieved, agonizing pain. Physical pain, with rare exceptions, can be controlled. Sound advice, when confronted by a story of a person’s loved one being in constant pain, is "Get another doctor." If your doctor doesn’t know how to control pain, get one who does.

"The claim that serious physical pain is a valid reason to kill a patient does not hold up."

The second type of pain which is the main reason why people ask to be killed, is emotional pain, loneliness, despair, hopelessness, being unloved, anguish, isolation, loss of dignity, meaninglessness and weariness with life. Remedies for this are less apparent.

Recent drug advances have given doctors long-lasting oral (and dermal patch) forms of morphine which now is the drug of choice for severe cancer pain.

"Contrary to popular belief, patients in severe pain are less likely than other cancer patients to approve of assisted suicide." ...what they "are really interested in is getting rid of their pain, not in dying." This study found that most people did not find depression to be a reason to seek death, but that most who do seek death are depressed, concluding, "There is a conflict between the avowed purpose and the probable practice of euthanasia."

Is the intensive care unit such a frightening, painful place, that people do not want to return to it? A major study sheds light on this.

Senior patients, previously treated in an intensive care unit, were asked if they would be willing to again undergo treatment in an I.C.U. "if it prolonged your life as perfectly as it could be?" For 10 years? 96% said yes. The percent remained at a very high level when re-asked for 5, 2 and 1 year each, for 6 months and 3 months. 74% still said yes for just one month.

M.Sanis et al., "Patients & Family’s Preferences for Medical Intensive
Care," JAMA, vol. 260, no. 6, Aug. 12, ’88, p. 797

One look at this was a study (in the American Journal of Medicine, January ’96) that asked critically ill patients how many would want CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) if their hearts stopped. In this survey of 1,664 such patients in five states, 72% wanted to be brought back. 27% said even a coma was preferable to death, and 42% were willing to stay on respirators indefinitely. These patients were in the advanced stages of acute respiratory failure, congestive heart failure, cirrhosis, lung cancer, etc.

This entails the use of drugs, surgery, etc., directed toward curing a disease, repairing an injury, removing a tumor, etc. Such therapy can be divided into usual and customary, such as administering an antibiotic, splinting a broken bone and removing an appendix; and extraordinary care, such as heart surgery, organ transplants, etc. The care giver has always been seen as grossly negligent if comfort care is not provided. It is a duty. Extraordinary treatment has never been mandatory and has been judged in the light of many factors.

Some have now moved food and water from "comfort care" into "treatment." If then, a decision is made to withhold further "treatment," food and water can be removed. If the doctor removes therapy, the patient may sometimes die. If the doctor removes food and water, the patient will always die, and painfully. Removing food and water isn’t "letting him die," it’s "making him die."

When a patient is unable to swallow, there are alternate means of giving food and water. Post-operative intravenous fluids and nutrition are, at best, a temporary measure. For a period of weeks, food and water can be given through a naso-gastric tube.

If swallowing is permanently impossible, a gastrotomy tube can be inserted through the abdominal wall into the stomach. This provides a permanent, convenient, painless way of feeding the patient. Euthanasia advocates label the above three methods "artificial feedings." Rather, these are "artificially administered" feedings. Such tube feedings are clean, inexpensive, efficient and use simple nutritive milkshakes. There are no soiled sheets or clothing to clean up, and the care giver knows exactly how much was given.

Patients who are dying do go on to die. While the proponents of euthanasia constantly speak about such cases, these are not their target at all. They are rather concerned about those who somebody thinks ought to die, but who won’t . . . the biologically tenacious. Commonly, such people are not in pain, are not on life support systems, but are, by some judgments, a burden to society. These are people with strokes, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, head injuries, quadriplegia, etc.

With rare exceptions, those who commit suicide are clinically depressed. Clinical depression is usually a biochemical disfunction that can be helped with drug therapy.

In fact, that is what is happening. In a study of 1,150 critically ill patients who died during the study, in only 14% was there an attempt to resuscitate. Twenty years ago most would have been. If all life-prolonging care would be forbidden, it would only save one out of eight dollars spent on health care. Moreover, most of this saving would come from withholding care for relatively young, critically ill patients.

Yes.

These are misnamed, for they have nothing to do with living and everything to do with dying. Nor are they wills; they are, rather, "death wishes" or "death directives." Right to Life agrees that anyone who wants to can sign one, but totally opposes making them binding by law.

Yes. The Euthanasia Society and its Foundation have since changed their names to The Society for the Right to Die, which then changed its name to The Society for Concern for Dying. They all have been head-quartered at 250 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019. On the Euthanasia Society’s advisory council as a founding member is Abigail Van Buren, the "Dear Abby" newspaper columnist, who constantly pushes these misnamed "living wills."

Before his death, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, head of Planned Parenthood World Population, was also a prominent member of the Board of the Euthanasia Society of America.

What a person says at the church social, or even in a doctor’s office, is not necessarily what that same patient will say when actually confronted with the possibility of dying. Life, however limited it may become, is a good that most people cling to as long as they can. If you do honor their request, be sure to honor the most recent one, not one casually uttered years earlier.

Yes, they both kill living humans. They both are done for the same reasons.

The real alternative to euthanasia is to provide loving, competent care for the dying. A new concept for the dying arose in England, where institutions called Hospices specialize in compassionate, skilled care of the dying. This concept has spread throughout the Western world.

"Once a patient feels welcome and not a burden to others, once his pain is controlled and other symptoms have been at least reduced to manageable proportions, then the cry for euthanasia disappears. It is not that the question of euthanasia is right or wrong, desirable or repugnant, practical or unworkable. It is just that it is irrelevant. Proper care is the alternative to it and can be made universally available as soon as there is adequate instruction of medical students in a teaching hospital. If we fail in this duty to care, let us not turn to the politicians asking them to extricate us from this mess."

If this is true, these doctors are violating the law. Let’s for the minute assume legalization with real safe-guards. What makes you think these same doctors will now obey the new laws and respect these safeguards when they ignored and violated the laws before? Dutch doctors routinely ignore such limits. Do remember the earlier arguments for "safe, legal" abortions. Abortions are legal, but they are not always safe.

No. In Britain, the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics examined this in detail. That committee, going in, was solidly prepared to accept euthanasia. They went to Holland and investigated it actually happening. They reversed their thinking completely saying that they "do not think it is possible to set secure limits." They found "evidence indicating that non-voluntary euthanasia was commonly performed. Vulnerable people — the elderly, the lonely, sick and distressed — feel pressured to request early death.".."under this, the interest of the individual cannot be separated from the interest of society.."..

R. Twycross, Journal Royal Society of Medicine,
Vol, 89, 1996, pg. 61-63

Not unless you want to kill some people who are going to get better, if given enough time. Dr. Kay Andrews, Director of the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability, stated, "Over a two-year period, 15 out of 18 patients, thought to be in p.b.s., came around."