Aborting the Elderly
Other than the unborn, no single age group suffers more from a diminished view of the value to human life than the elderly.
For 20 years I have represented elders who have been victims of abuse and neglect in long-term care institutions. Despite having seen many sad cases, I continue to be amazed at man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
I have represented clients with avoidable pressure sores as large as dinner plates — sores so putrid and infected that when you walked down the hallway of the nursing home you could smell the person's sores before you could see them.
I have seen residents, hollow-eyed and emaciated from hunger and thirst, who would eat and drink ravenously if only someone would take the time to assist them by putting a fork to their mouth and a cup to their lips.
I have seen residents who were victims of violent abuse tremble with fear at the approach of those who were supposed to be their caregivers.
Other than the unborn, no single age group in our country suffers more from a diminished view of the value to human life than the elderly. The utilitarian ethic that was established in law in Roe v. Wade has implications as negative and profound for the end of human life as it has had for the beginning.
Human life is an unbroken continuum that extends from conception to natural death. Devalue life at any point on that continuum, and life at every other point is put at risk.
Once the principle of the sanctity of life is compromised, the lives of those who cost more to maintain than they produce or whose quality of life has become diminished become difficult to defend.
Having stripped human life of its intrinsic worth from the moment of conception until the moment of birth, on what moral or ethical basis can we defend life in its closing stages? Roe set into motion a barbaric cost-benefit/quality-of-life calculus with consequences that are all but impossible to restrain. Once one's net worth is calculated in such terms, the door is opened to unspeakable abuses.
If being "wanted" is the operative ethic for the beginning of life, what is to prevent it from becoming the prevailing ethic towards the end of life? Already it is common to hear discussions concerning so-called "quality of life" issues with regard to the elderly. Stripped of their gloss, these discussions really boil down to little more than the question: "Who would want to live in that condition?"
Let's face it: The terminally ill, the chronically afflicted, the permanently bedridden have, in the eyes of many, lost any meaningful quality of life. Why not dispose of them for their own and society's good? Isn't this humane?
It is precisely this perverse logic that caused former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm ("Governor Gloom" as he was known to many) to declare that the elderly had a "duty to die" and get out of the way.
The key question here, of course, is who gets to define "quality of life?" Who decides whether someone else's life is worth living? Phrased differently, the question is who gets to decide if someone else is "wanted?"
How we treat our fellow human beings depends on certain basic moral attitudes and habits of thought. The attitude that life is basically a negotiable commodity leads easily to abuse and neglect and, in the end, to disposable people. Once we have consciously devalued life, it is but a short step to throwing it away like a worn-out old shoe.
It is doubtful that a generation nurtured on the <i>Roe</i> ethic will be willing to make the economic commitment — let alone sacrifice — needed to protect or sustain the lives of those elderly whose "quality of life" is suspect. Walk through any nursing home and you will find an ample number of candidates for inclusion in the class of "throwaway" people.
Many elderly individuals require round-the-clock care. Many require expensive medication and costly medical procedures. Those afflicted with dementia often have little or no consciousness of their surroundings, family, or even of life itself. Others live out long, lonely, solitary days, without surviving relatives, abandoned by family and friends. These people do not score well when a cost-benefit ratio or quality-of-life calculus is applied to them.
American society is increasingly treating certain classes of human beings at the beginning and at the end of life as though they were property, subject to use, abuse and disposal at the hands of other human beings. Such actions fly in the face of the sanctity of life ethic that arose from the Judeo-Christian view that life is inherently valuable, because it is the gift of God.
Roe undercut 4,000 years of Judeo-Christian teaching on the sanctity of life. More than 42 million unborn children have already paid the price for such arrogance. The elderly will be the next to pay.