In its face, there is nothing wrong with the government encouraging doctors to have end of life discussions. After all, doctors are notoriously bad at having those discussions and following through on the decisions reached. (In one major study, "only 47% of physicians knew when their patients preferred to avoid CPR; 46% of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders were written within 2 days of death.")

So, the provision in the health care bill currently in the House, called Section 1233, is not really a big deal. It asks doctors of Medicare patients to have end of life discussions every five years or sooner if they are diagnosed with a terminal illness. It asks doctors to report what was discussed and the decisions reached, which can be perceived as an intrusion into patient privacy but also makes sense if the government is interested in making sure the money is well spent.

However, as Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, points out in this NPR interview what may be an otherwise helpful suggestion from the government is, in the middle of a health care bill designed to cut costs, extremely dangerous. In the context of cutting costs, Section 1233 looks more like the government is asking doctors to do the dirty work of "bending the curve" of health care costs by convincing the elderly to forego medical care.

Sekulow is not the only one concerned. Charles Lane writes in the Washington Post, "Section 1233 dictates, at some length, the content of the consultation. The doctor 'shall' discuss 'advanced care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to'; 'an explanation of . . . living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses' (even though these are legal, not medical, instruments); and 'a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families.' The doctor 'shall' explain that Medicare pays for hospice care (hint, hint)."

Figures vary as to how much could be saved on health care costs by providing palliative treatment for end-of-life patients instead of aggressive care, though I've read studies that show hospice patients survive longer, on average, than patients with aggressive treatment.

Still, elderly patients--along with the obese--are a tempting group to try to wring costs from. If the culture moves toward more palliative care at the end of life, it will be interesting to see if Christians respond with an outbreak of vitalism--the extension of life at all costs--for which there is a strong tendency among evangelicals accustomed to pro-life arguments.

Or, possibly, Christians will take the opportunity to rediscover the art of dying--the Christian practice that did not teach the pursuit of extended life at any cost, but rather taught the willingness to die, exhortation to the living to receive the lessons taught by the dying, the expectation of bodily resurrection, and hope in the entrance into life with God.

* * * Editor's Note: This blog post originally carried a headline that referenced euthanasia, a topic not covered in the body of the post. That headline was changed for the sake of clarity and the comments that hinged on references to euthanasia were unpublished, also for the sake of clarity.

Posted by Rob Moll at August 11, 2009 | Comments (41)

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed the Option of Adoption Act on May 5, making Georgia the first state with an embryo adoption law.

As the new law recognizes the potential of embryos, it is a celebration for pro-life supporters.

Embryo adoptions have existed at least since the 1980s.

When couples undergo in vitro fertilization, multiple embryos are typically created. People who decide not to use all the embryos are given choices:

Keep the embryos frozen until a future time.
Destroy them.
Donate them for medical purposes – such as stem cell research.
Release them for adoption.

In embryo adoptions, embryos are implanted in women so they are allowed to physically give birth to their own adopted child. The problem? This terminology is rather sensitive.

As Reginald Finger explains in Embryo Adoption – A Life-Affirming Parenthood Choice">his article:

"Some medical infertility specialists are uncomfortable saying 'adoption' in this context because children are adopted, and if the embryo comes to be viewed as a child in the eyes of the law, couples might lose the choice of discarding the embryos or donating them to research.

Infertility practices might also come under stricter regulation. Pro-choice activists dislike the term for similar reasons. Legal scholars point out that at least in the U.S., statutes define adoption as the placement of a child after birth. Thus, they reason, use of the term might mislead couples as to what has actually occurred in the eyes of the law when an embryo is transferred."

Or, as University of Pennsylvania bioethics professor Arthur Caplan explains that use of the term adoption itself is "a deliberately political point."

Embryos have yet to be given human status, something that even Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption Program acknowledges.

As one of the oldest and most prominent embryo adoption agencies, Snowflakes through Nightlight Christian Adoptions in California started in 1997 and has overseen 200 plus embryo adoptions. Although embryo transfer to another party is handled as an adoption case through Snowflakes and other agencies, it is only considered property transfer by law.

The Option of Adoption Act changes that, and will most likely affect other state laws as well.

Posted by Tim Morgan at June 1, 2009 | Comments (6)

While voters were electing President Obama and passing Proposition 8 on Election Day, Washington voters quietly approved a measure that made it the second state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. A month later, a judge in Montana ruled that physician-assisted suicides are legal.

Washington's law will take effect Thursday. Here's my story about it and a podcast with Stan Guthrie.

Life ethics have also played out internationally in recent news. In late December, a Quebec man was found not guilty of helping his disabled uncle kill himself, opening the door to its legalization in the Canadian province.

A woman in Italy, who has been compared to Terri Schiavo, died last month after her father requested the clinic to stop feeding his comatose daughter. Eluana Englaro had been in a vegetative state for 17 years after a car accident.

The news of her death came as Italy's parliament began debating emergency legislation that would make it illegal for carers of people "unable to take care of themselves" to suspend artificial feeding, according to The Times.

A court in South Korea ruled that doctors could remove life-sustaining treatment for a 76-year-old woman who sustained brain damage and fell into a coma while undergoing a lung examination. Her children say she has no chance of recovery and her wish to die can be inferred. The case will go to the country's Supreme Court, according to AFP.

What makes it even more complicated is that 40 percent of coma patients in a ?vegetative state' may be misdiagnosed, according to a report in The Times in 2007.

This means that valuable rehabilitation strategies are routinely neglected, and misdiagnosed patients end up on unsuitable wards or in care homes where their needs are neither understood nor met.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at March 2, 2009 | Comments (0)

Nadya Suleman, the mother who gave birth to octuplets in California, continues to make headlines about her sex life, public aid, possible home foreclosure, and death threats.

Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life and AUL Action, is scheduled to appear on CNN's Larry King Live tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern to discuss the Octo-Mom case. AUL describes itself as the oldest pro-life organization in the country.

On Yoest's website this morning, this is how the show was promoted:

She will be doing another debate on the welfare mom with 14 children.

There is no husband.

There is no one to take care of the children.

Except the taxpayer.

Yoest also appeared on Mike Huckabee's Huckabee cable show on FOX this past Saturday and Sunday. In the YouTube clip below, she says the case raises issues about reproductive technology regulation.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at February 19, 2009 | Comments (4)

Claudia Castillo, whose lungs had been ravaged by tuberculosis, has a new trachea. She made it herself . . . sort of.

Doctors in Spain took stem-cells from Claudia Castillo's bone marrow and had them form a section of trachea based on the trachea of an organ donor. The scientists transplanted the 2.75-inch piece and published the results in The Lancet:

The graft immediately provided the recipient with a functional airway, improved her quality of life, and had a normal appearance and mechanical properties at 4 months. The patient had no anti-donor antibodies and was not on immunosuppressive drugs.

The results show that we can produce a cellular, tissue-engineered airway with mechanical properties that allow normal functioning, and which is free from the risks of rejection.

Castillo is the first person to have an engineered trachea transplant, The Guardian says. She has had her new windpipe for several months without immunosuppressants - a breakthrough in surgery.

Besides giving hope to those who need transplants, Castillo's case is also important to the debate over whether to allow stem-cell research which destroys embryos.

"Engineering new tissues and organs from stem cells has long been a goal of researchers, because it would help overcome a chronic shortage of donor organs." NPR says. "But controversies over the source of stem cells have slowed research in the United States."

However the transplant, rather than highlighting limitations, is another victory for ethical (and legal) stem-cell research. In its Q&A on stem-cells, CNN says "In the past, because adult stem cells were considered stuck in their ways, the focus had been on embryonic cells but now scientists and doctors will be wanting to see if adult cells can be used to treat a wider range of conditions."

Posted by Susan Wunderink at November 20, 2008 | Comments (1)

Fans of the classic "Star Trek" television series will be well aware of the Prime Directive, which prohibited Starfleet personnel from interfering in the alien cultures and societies they met. It was an immoral, unworkable rule, however, and Captain Kirk disobeyed it regularly, rarely losing sleep over his decision to do the right thing. Today anthropologists in South America seemingly have their own prime directive: no interfering in native cultures, even when those societies apparently practice infanticide. Christian missionaries, however, are playing the role of Captain Kirk.

Tonight "Nightline explores one such dispute. It involves Youth With A Mission workers who say "the Brazilian government is turning a blind eye to the killing of babies born with birth defects, many of which are treatable by Western medicine" and the Brazilian Department of Indian Affairs, which "is accusing the evangelicals of enslaving Indians and disguising their intent to evangelize." The story is centered on "a girl named Hakani, a member of the Suruwaha Indian tribe, who has been adopted by evangelical missionaries Marcia and Edson Suzuki."

Of course, missionaries have long stood not just for evangelism, but for defending the powerless from injustice. To cite just one example, William Carey, who has come to be known as the father of modern missions, led the fight against the ungodly practice of sati, or widow-burning, in India two centuries ago.

The program is scheduled for 10:35 Central Time on ABC.

Update: The program is scheduled for Wednesday night at 10:35 Central.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at September 23, 2008 | Comments (3)

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) today tackled one case on the death penalty and is on to the next.

The biggest news from SCOTUS was the 7 ? 2 ruling that Kentucky's method of lethal injection was a constitutional form of capital punishment and not cruel and unusual.

"The case before the court came from Kentucky, where two death row inmates wanted the court to order a switch to a single drug, a barbiturate, that causes no pain and can be given in a large enough dose to cause death," NPR reports.

In executions by lethal injection, a team of doctors administers a barbituate to numb, a paralytic, and then sodium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest, through an IV. One of the main objections to lethal injection is that any of the drugs is ineffectively administered, the execution would be painful, undignified, or drawn-out.

That risk, however, isn't enough to make the method illegal, said Chief Justice John Roberts.

American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) guidelines say use of the method to put down animals is unacceptable.

Our earlier report on the case discussed whether there was a significant shift toward disapproval of the death penalty in America.

A Pew Forum poll taken last August found that public support for capital punishment has dropped to 62 percent from a high of 80 percent in 1994. White evangelicals are still the death penalty's strongest supporters, with 74 percent approval, but that is down from 82 percent in 1996.

"There's been a pause in capital punishment since last September: a good opportunity to reflect on what life would be like without it and to take the public temperature on the death penalty in general." Slate says.

While that question may still trouble many a judge and many a Christian, yesterday's ruling has set the death penalty back in motion in many of the states.

* * *

In another significant case, the Supreme Court began hearings on whether child rape (i.e., the worst thing people can think of that isn't murder) merits the death penalty. Capital punishment for a crime that didn't result in the victim's death is uncertain ground.

"Nobody in this country has actually been executed for anything other than murder since 1964, although five states, including Louisiana, have laws permitting capital punishment for the rape of young children," Slate's Dahlia Lithwick explains in her analysis of the "inscrutable social consensus the death penalty for rapists."

For the high court, it's a monumental challenge: distilling all of these trends and counter-trends into some broad, workable constitutional rule, a rule that somehow reflects the emerging "national consensus" that we may like the idea of capital punishment far more than the reality of it.

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Posted by Susan Wunderink at April 16, 2008 | Comments (0)

Too much press coverage misunderstood what the Vatican was doing in issuing its recent list of serious sins. (See the excellent media criticism piece by Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion.)

But as you engage in serious self-examination this Holy Week, you might want to read a light-hearted op/ed posted today at the Indianapolis Star website (the piece originated with sister newspaper Noblesville Ledger).

Ledger columnist Jane Younce reflects on the new list of sins and finds them, well, not as personally challenging as the old Seven Deadlies: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Those were sins that everyone had to avoid. Whereas the new list seems to be dominated by sins of the rich and powerful: embryo-destroying stem cell research, environmental pollution, poverty, excessive wealth, etc.

It's not that we can do nothing about embryonic stem-cell research or environmental pollution. I recycle and use compact fluorescents, but I don't really think the Vatican is counting the occasional unrecycled paper cup among the mortal sins. That warning about environmental pollution is surely for the captains of industry.

The danger that Jane Younce's delightful column hints at is this: It is easy to feel righteous about recycling that urethane foam milkshake cup and to forget about the gluttony that I abetted by buying that milkshake.

But don't let me blather on. Just read Younce's op/ed.

Posted by David Neff at March 20, 2008 | Comments (4)

Lost in the media storm preceding and following Super Tuesday, and the actual storms that debilitated or devastated much of the US that same day, was media coverage of the start of Lent, arguably the most recognized of the exclusively Christian seasons on the Church's liturgical calendar. In reviewing English-speaking coverage of this turning of the seasons, I was struck by the difference between US media reports and those issuing from across the pond in the UK.

US stories were generally conventional - though sometimes oddly technical or whimsical - and documented an approach to the season that was consistently pious, yet often private in scope, focusing on interior spiritual attitudes or individual struggles of the will in forgoing chocolate, coffee, alcohol, or insert-your-weakness-of-the-flesh-here for the 40-day period. (Jane Hawes's article is notable in its attempt to balance both the private-public and negative-positive dimensions of the season.)

Stories from the UK, on the other hand, conveyed a theological posture toward Lent that emphasized the public dimension of Christian commitment. Most notable is the Tearfund carbon fast mentioned by Tim Morgan in an earlier blog, which was launched by the Anglican bishops of London and Liverpool, and backed by Archbishop Rowan Williams, as well as scientist Sir John Houghton, an evangelical who formerly chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific assessment. The proposal received considerable coverage in UK press (Daily Telegraph; The Guardian; BBC News; New Consumer), though its only mentions in the US were on one or two blogs, a university newspaper, and an ezine.

Also worth mentioning is the Lent Endurance Challenge issued by the UK organization Church Action on Poverty, and backed by several Anglican bishops, as well as Catholic, Methodist, and Baptist church leaders in the UK. The Challenge is to live the life of a refused asylum seeker for one week, which involves donating one's normal weekly food budget in exchange for ?3.50 and the typical food parcel supplied to the homeless by local charities. The hope is to give participants a glimpse into the life of these "living ghosts," who are "essentially airbrushed out of existence as ?failed' asylum seekers," but, lacking money to return home, remain in the UK, unnoticed or ignored by society at large.

These constructive and creative public applications of Christian theological commitments make my own internal ruminations about whether I should give up coffee or fried foods for Lent seem, if not entirely inconsequential, unimaginative and blatantly disengaged from my neighbor and the world. If Lent is about submitting to suffering for the sake of identification with our Lord, whose own suffering was always for the sake of carrying forward God's redemptive intent for the whole world, navel-gazing US Christians like me may want to look across the seas to spark our flickering theological imaginations.

Posted by Derek Keefe at February 8, 2008 | Comments (1)

New Jersey voters yesterday turned down a $450 million, 10-year plan to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Proponents, including Democratic governor John Corzine, argued that the measure would help lead to possible medical cures for a host of maladies. Opponents, including New Jersey Right to Life, said Public Question # 2 would finance "the creation, experimentation and then destruction of cloned human beings through the entire period of normal gestation." NJRL also criticized supporters for their "deceptive failure to disclose that the bonds will be paid through higher local property taxes if sales tax revenues are insufficient."

The outcome marks the first time since 1990 that New Jersey voters have rejected a statewide ballot initiative. The state has already committed $270 million in taxpayer money to pay for stem cell research facilities. New Jersey has the fourth highest debt of any state and the highest property taxes. Other states, however, are likely to pick up the financial slack for such research.

Several states are competing in the research. California previously approved spending $3 billion on stem cell research, Connecticut has a $100 million program, Illinois spent $10 million and Maryland awarded $15 million in grants.

It bears repeating: Embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of nascent human life. Adult stem cells have no such ethical issues. And just on a pragmatic basis, the choice should be clear by now. According to the website stemcellresearch.org, medical treatments derived from adult stem cells outnumber those derived from embryos 73-0.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at November 7, 2007 | Comments (3)

Tom Butler represented the Church of England at a House of Lords consultation on organ donation in the European Union yesterday. He presented the church's position that organ donation is a very Christian thing to sign up for, BBC news reports.
"Giving oneself and one's possessions voluntarily for the well being of others and without compulsion is a Christian duty of which organ donation is a striking example," the Church of England's statement says. It also says Christians have "a mandate to heal" - but they're not talking about miracle working.
The Church of England is supporting a switch from an opt-in (to organ donation) to an opt-out system, hoping to help Britain overcome a chronic organ shortage, which can be an ethically tricky problem to solve. Their statement addresses a few of the issues, such as selling organs for profit, making sure the donor is dead, and respect for the body and the bereaved.
"What is done with the body matters," the Church of England affirms. "The body at its burial or cremation should ideally be recognizably the body of the person who has died."

Posted by Susan Wunderink at October 9, 2007 | Comments (0)

Amid the debate over Amnesty International's policy on abortion, the "diplomatic editor" for the London Independent notes that the human rights organization was largely inspired to create its policy because of the mass rapes in Darfur, Sudan. But would Amnesty agree with the editor, Anne Penketh, in her jaw-dropping assertion that "To allow the victims of mass rape to give birth is arguably tantamount to complicity in genocide"?

Posted by Ted Olsen at August 14, 2007 | Comments (5)

The Reuters story referenced in my last post contained a wild misuse of a common word. Here's the citation:

While the prolific death chamber in the city of Huntsville, where 19 inmates have already been executed by lethal injection in 2007, makes Texas stand out, the state is also starting to follow national trends toward fewer death sentences.

"Prolific death chamber"? "Prolfiic" comes from a Latin word meaning "fruitful," which in turn is based on the Latin word for "offspring." The American Heritage Dictionary offers two definitions for the word:

1. Producing offspring or fruit in great abundance; fertile.
2. Producing abundant works or results: a prolific artist.

The Reuters writer has stood a pro-life word on its head, exchanging the idea of fruitfulness and fertility for sheer efficiency. Christian media critics have often criticized Reuters for uninformed handling of the religion factor in their reporting. But whatever they know or don't know about religion, Reuters editors should know their dictionaries.

Posted by David Neff at August 13, 2007 | Comments (3)

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a Reuters story about the number of executions in the state of Texas--now pushing a remarkable 400 since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976. Texas has carried out 398 executions and it has 5 more planned for August. The closest runner up to the Texas numbers is Virginia with 96 executions--only one quarter of the Lone Star State's record.

What was puzzling about the story was the way writer Ed Stoddard tried to link the numbers to religion. Here's how he led off the story:

Texas will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.

The Washington Post repeated the emphasis by headlining the story, "Religion, Culture Behind Texas Execution Tally."

Whoa there, Podner!

What does religion have to do with it? All Stoddard could come up with was this:

Like his predecessor, Governor Perry is a devout Christian, highlighting one key factor in Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling -- the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.

This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture.

"A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God. And they see sanction for that in the Old Testament especially," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

That's it. Unless you also count the fact the Governor Rick Perry is "a devout Christian." Yup, that explains a lot.

Let's take a look at the factors cited by Stoddard:

First, a belief in individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation. Well, of course we evangelical Protestants don't teach that individuals "take responsibility for their own salvation." We teach that the grace of God comes to individuals in their pervasively sinful state and enables them to respond to his love by faith. But, yes, we do emphasize that individuals can have a personal, saving relationship with Jesus (as opposed to salvation necessarily being mediated through clerics and church ritual).

But neither Stoddard's version of evangelical belief nor the correct one has much to do with capital punishment. If anything, belief in the individual dimension of salvation drives evangelicals to engage in more extensive and more intense prison ministry than other Christians.

Second, evangelicals find justification for capital punishment in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. Well, no and yes.

No, evangelicals who support capital punishment do not use the Old Testament as their primary source of justification. If you ask almost any evangelical in the pew if they think that Sabbath-breaking or homosexuality should be a capital crime, they would shudder in horror at the thought.

Yes, evangelicals do find support in Scripture--but as part of God's plan for the secular order. See Romans 13:1-7, where the Apostle Paul portrays "the sword" and taxes as legitimate functions of the state. But to consider this a legitimate function of the state is not to approve of the way any given state carries out its responsibility for retribution.

When studies show disproportionate application of the death penalty by race or economic status, Christians of any and every stripe should be challenging the system. And when DNA-testing and other death-row efforts repeatedly reveal the miscarriage of justice, Christians should be working to make sure justice is truly served.

Posted by David Neff at August 13, 2007 | Comments (14)

As the Deomocatic presidential pandering tour continues, the candidates held a forum last night for the party's gay and lesbian lobby (following a debate earlier in the week for leftwing bloggers). At least some of the party's homosexual supporters are, like many prolifers in the Republican Party, feeling used and taken for granted. According to coverage in today's Chicago Tribune:

Perhaps the most personal question of the evening was posed to Sen. Hillary Clinton by [lesbian rock singer Melissa] Etheridge, who told Clinton that she had felt personally hurt and abandoned by the Clintons after President Bill Clinton's inauguration.

"I remember when your husband was elected," Etheridge said, calling it a "hopeful time" for gays and lesbians. But "in the years that followed, our hearts were broken. We were pushed aside. All those great promises that were made to us were broken."

"What," she asked, "are you going to do to be different than that?"

Clinton said she remembered things differently, recalling the political appointments, public remarks and "the ongoing struggle against [conservative Republican House Speaker Newt] Gingrich and the Republican majority."

"We certainly didn't get as much done as I would have liked," Clinton said, "but there was a lot of honest effort."

While I disagree strongly with Etheridge on gay marriage, I feel her pain. As they say in the big city, you're graded not on effort, but on results.

Be that as it may, since the candidates are apparently meeting with every constituent group they can think of in their mad dash for the nomination, here's a modest suggestion: Why not meet with all those pro-life evangelicals who were promised that the Democrats would take their concerns seriously if only they would look beyond party labels and give them a chance?

For some reason, I'm not holding my breath. Here's what Heath Shuler, a new Democratic representative from North Carolina (and a self-professed pro-lifer), told CT recently:

I don't think it's as much about legal measures. Our communities have to do better. Our churches have to do better. I think that's part of growing up in a community like I did. It was a small, very [tightly] knit group, and you knew people in your community and your church whom you could lean on and [who] would help you make these difficult decisions. Everyone wants to talk to us about legislation.

Those are fine sentiments, but Rep. Shuler seems to think he was elected to be a pastor and not a legislator. We don't need more sentiments and promises, but more actions. It's time for some pro-life deeds to back up the pro-life words, Democrats. You received a good number of evangelical votes in the last election, which helped you to regain control of Congress. Don't presume those votes are now yours forever.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at August 10, 2007 | Comments (9)

By inserting genes into the skin cell of a mouse, scientists have been able to create embryonic stem cells. "The technique, if adaptable to human cells, is much easier to apply than nuclear transfer, would not involve the expensive and controversial use of human eggs, and should avoid all or almost all of the ethical criticism directed at the use of embryonic stem cells," reports The New York Times.

Scientists are elated by the new technique: "From the point of view of moving biomedicine and regenerative medicine faster, this is about as big a deal as you could imagine," said Irving Weissman, a leading stem cell biologist at Stanford University, who was not involved in the new research.

And so are pro-life Christians:

It "raises no serious moral problem, because it creates embryoniclike stem cells without creating, harming or destroying human lives at any stage," said Richard Doerflinger, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' spokesman on stem cell issues. In themselves, embryonic stem cells "have no moral status," and the bishops' objections to embryonic stem cell research rest solely on the fact that human embryos must be harmed or destroyed to obtain them, Mr. Doerflinger said.

Posted by Rob Moll at June 7, 2007 | Comments (3)

Jack Kevorkian was released from prison yesterday after spending eight years in jail for killing terminally ill patients. Because of his release, physician-assisted suicide is back in the news.

There are overwhelming arguments against killing people with terminally ill diseases: Doctors are notoriously bad at predicting death. Pain can almost always be treated. There are ways to maintain dignity in people who have lost functionality. Allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill is ripe for abuse by those who stand to gain financially by offering less medical care at the end of life.

But one of the most compelling arguments is the fact that life's end can hold so many possibilities. David Scholer, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, is a prime example. Read his story today in the Los Angeles Times.

At the beginning of each course, Scholer announces that he has incurable cancer, but he is so animated when he speaks, it's hard to remember that. The only give-away is that he lectures sitting down - and, when he walks, takes careful steps and uses a cane.

Scholer also has asthma, diabetes and arthritis but stills counts the "wonderful" blessings of his life: Jeannette, his wife of 46 years; two grown daughters, Emily and Abigail; extended family; friends; students; and his calling. He is excited about walking down the aisle with Abigail at her wedding in Pasadena on June 16, the day before Father's Day.

If we Christians intentionally practiced dying well, could we add that to our arguments against assisted-suicide? Write me with your thoughts.

Posted by Rob Moll at June 5, 2007 | Comments (5)

Our end-of-life rhetoric is typically limited, as Atul Gawande complains in The New York Times, to gaining more control over death. For some, this means passing legislation to allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs that would prematurely kill a terminally ill patient. For many Christian groups, it means opposing physician-assisted-suicide or the withdrawl of life support from people who can't speak for themselves. For some people it means signing statements that ask doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive.

But, as Gawande points out, there is a lot of life to live between our active years and our dying days. "We don't like thinking about it, but after retirement age, about half of us eventually move into a nursing home, usually around age 80. ... But we don't much talk about getting more control over our lives in such places. "

The priority of a nursing home is to keep residents safe, Gawande says. Describing one woman who recently entered a nursing home, he writes, "Basic matters, like when she goes to bed, wakes up, dresses, and eats were put under the rigid schedule of institutional life. Her main activities have become bingo, movies, and other forms of group entertainment."

This kind of living, he argues, takes the meaning out of life. "Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness, and lack of meaning - results not fundamentally different from prisoners, actually."

It doesn't have to be this way. Some nursing homes are rethinking institutional life for the disabled elderly, and they are doing it within the confines of what the government will help pay for--an achievement indeed. Life can have meaning an purpose even when many of the things that provided fulfilment are no longer possible for us to do.

Certainly, being in a nursing home does not prohibit a meaningful life. One geriatrician told me he always tells his patients upon retirement, "Wake up knowing what you will do that day, and go to bed knowing someone was helped by what you did." Such a thing is possible, he points out, in a nursing home.

Yet, there is also a place here for the church. How can we better care for our widows, our widowers, our frail elderly. How can we give their lives meaning and keep them integrated into a church community?

This is a question baby boomers, who have already changed so much of the American church, are just begining to face.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 24, 2007 | Comments (2)

A movement to pass legislation that would give birth certificates to women who deliver stillborn babies is provoking opposition from pro-choice groups.

The New York Times reports,

The birth-certificate laws, often referred to as "Missing Angels" bills, occupy uncertain territory, skirting the abortion debate while implicitly raising the question of fetal personhood.

Many antiabortion groups say the laws fill a need for parents. But some abortion rights supporters see the push for these laws as a barely disguised political move to undermine abortion rights.

In some states, local chapters of abortion rights groups have opposed the legislation. But at the national level, some abortion rights groups are comfortable with the laws, if they are drafted carefully to cover naturally occurring fetal death and not late-term abortion.

One woman recounted receiving a death certificate after her daughter was stillborn. "When I called and asked for my daughter's birth certificate, the woman asked how she died, and when I told her, she said I didn't have a baby, I had a fetus, and I couldn't get a birth certificate."

Posted by Rob Moll at May 22, 2007 | Comments (3)

According to LifeNews.com, Catholic politicians are deeply offended that Pope Benedict wants the church to be the church. Benedict recently said that Catholic politicians who vote for policies that support abortion automatically excommunicate themselves. In response, a group of these politicians said, the penalty of excommunication "offend(s) the very nature of the American experiment and do(es) a great disservice to the centuries of good work the church has done."

God forbid that the church would do anything to question the American experiment.

Posted by Mark Galli at May 21, 2007 | Comments (2)

Slate magazine reviews two books that deal with some of the untold truths about fertility treatment. "The fertility industry has been far better at inventing awe-inspiring technology - and selling it to the public - than it has been at counseling patients about the risks of procedures and how these technologies will shape families, sometimes in ways they didn't anticipate." Patients, or consumers, are not told of the problems that may result from a multiple birth; they are not told about an increased likelihood of birth defects or cancer. They are unaware of the other unasked questions about the differences between babies born with the help of fertility treatments and those born without that help.

"In this commercial business, it's often left to families to figure out where and when to draw the line on treatments. That's particularly tough given how achingly desperate many patients are to have a baby." These families are easily manipulated by clinics with services to offer. "You don't notice your motivation distorting," writes Peggy Orenstein, "how conception rather than parenthood become the goal, how invested you become in its 'achievement.' "

Slate's Maggie Jones writes,

IVF cycles typically cost about $12,000, and only a handful of states mandate insurance coverage. So, when a doctor asks a patient, 10 minutes before the embryo transfer, whether she wants to implant two or three or four embryos - and she's recently taken out a second mortgage to fund her pregnancy attempts - it's pretty tempting to choose the greatest number of embryos.

Like many too many treatments on the frontier of medicine, bioethical and moral considerations often come only after the treatments have been tried. Those treatments, often hyped by supporters hoping to overcome moral objections, prove not to be as effective as promised or to have undesirable outcomes or side effects.

Of course, sometimes the actual effects of a treatment may only be known once thousands of people have tried it. And the frontier of medicine often produces wonderful treatments.

Unfortunately, when moral and ethical objections are raised debates often devolve into hyped promises by research proponents and hyped brave-new-world objections by those with ethical opposition. Ethical objections raised could be dealt with by thoughtful discussion and creative thinking (as some scientists are trying to do with stem-cell research by finding ways to study embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos). But some scientists and those with financial stakes in selling new treatments aren't interested in hearing moralistic objections.

Now that the fertility treatments covered in these books are so widely used, It's too bad that we're just now talking in dispassionate ways about them.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 2, 2007 | Comments (1)