By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that ever y human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.
—PETER SINGER, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR1
Meet Clinton McCurdy.
At age thirteen, Clinton doesn’t speak. He can’t play ball or ride bicycles with his friends. He can’t walk. He can’t go to school. He can’t dress or feed himself. For the last eleven years, Clinton has been confined to his bed or his wheelchair. You see, when Clinton was twenty-three months old, he fell into a swimming pool and drowned. He was underwater for approximately seven to ten minutes before being pulled out. CPR was performed on him immediately and his heart began to beat again. Being deprived of oxygen for several minutes caused Clinton to suffer severe brain damage, much like Terri Schiavo.
His parents, Tim and Betty McCurdy, brought Clinton with them to hear me speak in Hammond, Indiana. After I had finished my comments, they pushed him in his wheelchair to the lobby of the auditorium to meet me. As we visited, I learned about his injury and the details of his care. I was struck by the similarities to Terri: He was not hooked up to machines nor was he in a coma. All he needed was help with food and water, something that, even in Florida before the new end-of-life legislation was passed in the late 1990s, had always been considered ordinary care, not life support. His parents showed me how Clinton was fed through a small feeding tube inserted under his shirt.
There was one primary difference, however.
I could tell that young Clinton was far less responsive than Terri. For her part, Terri smiled, kissed her parents, cried, and could purposefully interact and respond to external stimuli. But as Tim and Betty shared their story, Clinton didn’t respond verbally, nor did he pay any attention at all to our conversation—at least not outwardly. Not wanting to be rude, I bent down to speak with him. As I started to engage him, Betty gently placed a hand on my arm and said, ‘‘David, don’t worry. He doesn’t even know who we are.’’
After allowing her comment to sink in, I told them that they were remarkable parents for loving their boy and for not giving up on him. I asked them, ‘‘Has it been tough?’’ Betty said, ‘‘Sure. He has to wear a diaper and we have to bathe and dress him. But Clinton still gives us joy. He may not communicate, but we’re still his parents and he’s still a part of our family.’’
His father, Tim, added, ‘‘Yes, it’s been very difficult, but we made a decision to love and care for Clinton and we will stick by that decision.’’ At that point Tim said something that shocked me. He said, ‘‘David, we made the same decision that Michael Schiavo made.’’ For a moment, I thought Tim was confused. I thought he meant to say that they had made the same decision as Bob and Mary Schindler. After all, it was the Schindlers who wanted to save Terri’s life while Michael was working to end it.
‘‘No,’’ Tim assured me, ‘‘we made the same decision Michael Schiavo did—at first.’’ When I asked what he meant by that, he said, ‘‘The night our son was rushed to the hospital as a twenty-three-month-old, we were told that Clinton had suffered a traumatic brain injury. The doctor informed us, ‘I think he’s going to be severely injured; I’m sorry, he’s too far gone. Do you want us to try to save him?’’’
I had a hunch where Tim was going with this.
Tim said, ‘‘Standing in that emergency room, my wife and I made the same decision that Michael Schiavo made the morning Terri was taken to the hospital. We told the doctors, ‘We realize Clinton might not be as healthy as he was. But please do everything you can to save our little boy’—just as Michael asked the doctors to do everything they could to save Terri in February of 1990. That’s a decision you have to live with. Once you make a decision to save a life, you’re committed.’’
As the McCurdys shared their story, I remembered reading how Michael stayed by his wife’s side for days on end after her brain injury occurred. Without question, he worked hard alongside Mary Schindler to care for Terri. This teamwork went on for the first couple of years. By all accounts Michael was a diligent husband and a faithful caretaker who made sure that Terri was given proper treatment. He even sought rehabilitation therapy in the early days.
Unfortunately, Michael’s model behavior ended. I don’t pretend to know Michael’s heart. What is clear is that he wasn’t happy with how his choice turned out; his actions demonstrated that he didn’t want to live with the consequences of his initial decision to save Terri’s life.
BUYER'S REMORSE
Initially, after learning of her prognosis, Michael could have said, ‘‘You know what? Terri’s too far gone. Let her go.’’ But he didn’t.
Michael did the right thing by giving a mandate to the doctors to try to save her. Frankly, I’d be the first in line to congratulate him. He saved Terri’s life. She would have died that day in 1990 if Michael, as her husband and guardian, hadn’t made the initial decision to do whatever was necessary to keep her alive.
However, I also believe that when you make the choice to save somebody’s life, you have a continuing duty to that person. That’s where Michael’s story deviates from the McCurdys’ journey. Michael changed his mind and reversed his decision when he decided he wasn’t happy with Terri’s ‘‘quality of life.’’ To this day, Michael is fond of saying, ‘‘I kept my promise’’ to Terri. In fact, he had that phrase etched on her cemetery headstone.
As for the notion that he kept his promise, I beg to differ. He promised the Schindlers and a jury in a court of law that he intended to care for Terri for the rest of his life. He also said that he had promised Terri on their wedding day before God and man to remain faithful to her ‘‘in sickness and in health.’’
Imagine if the McCurdys had, after five years of unproductive therapy, said, ‘‘Clinton is really much more handicapped than we expected. This is a lot harder than we ever anticipated. It’s costing us time and money that we can’t afford. Let’s just starve him to death.’’ Unthinkable, right?
What kind of society would permit such a thing?
After hearing me speak, however, the McCurdys began to wonder whether they were now living in an America that might someday decide to take Clinton away from them and deny them the privilege of caring for him. They were worried that a judge, a social worker, a doctor, or an insurance provider somewhere might decide that Clinton didn’t have a quality of life worth the time and resources to maintain. That’s a legitimate concern.
Not to be an alarmist, but America is already turning down the road where human life is disposable. It happened openly for the first time in March 2005, when Terri died horrifically before the eyes of all the world, but it is estimated that several thousand Floridians died secretly in the same manner before Terri’s public court-ordered death.
This is a roadway that has been traveled before.
Remember what happened under the Third Reich?
LIFE ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE
A troubling doctrine is being advanced in the medical community today. It argues that because Terri, Clinton, and people like them are unable to work and unable to be productive, they’re a ‘‘burden to society,’’ rather like Hitler’s ‘‘useless eaters’’—a label he used to justify the deaths of the disabled as well as the Jews. The Associated Press cited a new report that found that more than two hundred thousand ‘‘physically-deficient’’ people were eliminated in Nazi Germany simply because of their disabilities.
2 You might be thinking, Whoa! Time-out, David. We’re nowhere near Hitler’s day. We’re a reasonable, freedom-loving people who care for everyone. Really? You might want to press your ear a little closer to the pavement. Many people are now making the decision for others to die, as Michael did. And there’s a growing trend in the halls of medicine to disconnect those whose lives appear to have no meaningful place in society.
Today, ‘‘progressive thinkers’’ are informing us that disabled persons ‘‘tax the medical system’’ by draining health insurance dollars for their constant care. We’re told these people have no ‘‘quality of life’’ worth preserving, that any medical care would be futile for them. As the seeds of these pro-death ideas take root, the elderly as well as those suffering from dementia, epilepsy, Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s disease are summarily lumped into the ‘‘useless eaters’’ pot.
Using the logic this school of thought produces, the most expedient solution is to ‘‘let nature take its course’’ (passive euthanasia) by withholding futile medical care and, as in Terri’s case, even food and water. The other option frequently advocated is to actively advance a person’s death (labeled benignly ‘‘terminal sedation’’ or ‘‘assisted suicide’’).
Is that difficult to believe?
Let’s learn from what happened to Terri.
The only ‘‘medical treatment’’ Terri required to stay alive was assistance at mealtime. Even newborn infants cannot feed themselves.
Which begs the question: If food and water are now considered ‘‘medical treatment,’’ what prevents a doctor from ‘‘terminating’’ a disabled or unwanted baby after birth by withholding nutrition? If doctors can purposely starve a woman in Tampa who can’t feed herself, why not a baby boy in Boston who is also dependent on someone else to bring him a bottle?
You might not know this, but a number of leading ‘‘ethics’’ professors at America’s leading universities are already teaching students that infanticide—the killing of an already born infant—is morally acceptable, especially when the infant is debilitated. Take, for example, professor, ethicist, and self-proclaimed atheist Peter Singer at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values.
Considered the grandfather of the animal rights protection movement, Singer gives his students some rather inhumane lectures about humanity. Why? Because Dr. Singer believes that there is nothing ethically wrong with ‘‘terminating’’ one-year-old physically or mentally disabled children. You might want to read that again. Mr. Singer is on record saying:
If you have a being that is not sentient, that is not even aware, then the killing of that being is not something that is wrong in and of itself. I think that a chimpanzee certainly has greater self-awareness than a newborn.3
Why stop with infanticide? Marvin Olasky of World magazine asked Singer about those who might elect to raise children just to harvest their organs. The exchange revealed something most disturbing about the direction of attitudes toward the preciousness of life. Here’s the key part of that interview:
| OLASKY: | What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children? |
| SINGER: | It’s difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they’re not doing something really wrong in itself. |
| OLASKY: | Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? |
| SINGER: | No.4 |
Peter Singer hasn’t just stepped onto the slippery slope of moral relativism—he’s grabbed his sled and pushed off with gusto. Human life, according to this Princeton professor, isn’t necessarily sacred. That’s a quaint notion held by ‘‘know-nothing religious fundamentalists.’’ In his view, it’s possible for animal life to be superior to human life. Writing in the July 1983 edition of Pediatrics, Singer said:
If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog, a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication, and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant. Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species homo sapiens, leads it to be treated differently from the dog or pig.5
But wait, there’s more.
In Singer’s book Practical Ethics he states, ‘‘The fact that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species homo sapiens, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it’’6 (emphasis added). How can he arrive at such a statement?
By doing what the courts did in the case of Terri Schiavo: They removed God and any moral considerations from their judgment. Singer makes his hostility toward the Judeo-Christian view of life perfectly clear. He writes: ‘‘We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul.’’7 Rather than being fired from Princeton, a school originally founded to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ, for advocating such an outrageous, irresponsible, and pro-infanticide dogma, Professor Singer is considered a visionary in the field of bioethics and throughout academia. Not everyone on the left side of the political spectrum is happy about Singer’s message, however. Some have awakened and realized the frightening reality that having a disability may be deadly.
Take Eleanor Smith.
This self-described ‘‘liberal agnostic’’ has been confined to a wheelchair due to childhood polio. In the wake of Terri Schiavo’s court- ordered death—a death sentence supported by the American Civil Liberties Union—Smith says, ‘‘At this point I would rather have a right-wing Christian decide my fate than an ACLU member.’’8 Why? Because she knows that most people of faith view all of life as worth living—not just the lives of those ones who are pretty, healthy, or productive. Maybe she also knows that the line between the ‘‘right to die’’ and the ‘‘duty to die’’ is razor thin.
A HIGHER PURPOSE
I could tell that the McCurdys’ commitment to their son Clinton didn’t come easy for them. As we were about to part company, Betty searched my eyes. She said, ‘‘You know, David, it’s really hard to have a child that is this disabled. As a mother, you want your child to recognize you, to appreciate you, and to communicate with you.’’
As a father of four children, I understood where she was coming from. What amazed me was where she was going with her insight.
‘‘Whenever I start to feel bad for myself,’’ she said, ‘‘I realize everything I’m upset about has to do with things I want for me. And in those moments, I have to turn my thinking around and say, ‘God, you’ve given me this child. When you gave him to me, he was a healthy boy. You’ve allowed this disability into his life. I’ve got to accept the fact that I’m not going to get what I want. He won’t recognize me or appreciate me—that’s what I want, but not what you’ve given to me. Help me to embrace what you’ve given me.’’’
The contrast between her unconditional love and the utilitarian worldview espoused by Peter Singer couldn’t be more striking.
Tim and Betty McCurdy’s silent sacrifice of love is an acknowledgment that life isn’t always about getting what we want. It’s about accepting what God brings our way. In that respect, Michael Schiavo didn’t get what he wanted; he got what God allowed into his life. Rather than accept Terri’s disability as a sovereign act of God, he chose to believe that Terri wanted what he wanted for her—namely, to die.
Sadly, Clinton passed away on February 4, 2006. He is survived by his loving parents, Tim and Betty, and his three brothers. His funeral was preached at the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, just three months after I met him there.
Clinton, you touched my life, and I thank you for that. And thank you, Betty and Tim, for putting Clinton’s needs above your own and showing us a wonderful example of unconditional love.
The question remains: How might you and I handle a life-and-death decision should God place a severely disabled spouse, daughter, son, or parent into our lives? Would we, like the McCurdys or the Schindlers, and at no benefit to ourselves, help care for, appreciate, and love someone who has little or nothing to give back? If so, to paraphrase Scripture, when you’ve done this for the least of these, you’ve done it for God himself.
Let me ask you a question. What if the key that unlocks the door to personal fulfillment in your life just happened to be in giving unconditional love to what the Bible calls ‘‘the least of these’’?
We have to be very careful when we say disabled people can’t contribute to society. Think about this: Terri touched the world because her parents were willing to fight for her life. If they hadn’t, if they had said, ‘‘Oh well, these bad things happen, we’ll just let her go,’’ we never would have heard of Terri. Because of their commitment, Terri Schiavo had a far greater impact than many people who can speak or walk.
She touched the nation and the world with her life.
I’d say that’s a life worth living.