On July 4, 1995, Myrna Lebov, age 52, committed suicide in her Manhattan apartment.  The case generated national headlines when her husband, George Delury, announced publicly that he had assisted Lebov's suicide at her request because she was suffering the debilitations of progressive multiple sclerosis. 

As has happened in similar cases in the United Kingdom, Delury became an instant celebrity. Far and wide, he was acclaimed as a dedicated husband willing to risk jail to help his beloved wife achieve her deeply desired end to suffering. The case stimulated calls for legalization, a cause Delury pushed in numerous television appearances.  He signed a book deal, later published under the title But What If She Wants to Die? Delury soon entered a plea bargain and served a mere few months in jail.

Had Delury acted in England or Wales today—rather than in New York in 1995—he almost surely would not have been prosecuted at all.  Even though assisted suicide remains a crime, newly published British Department of Public Prosecution guidelines effectively decriminalized some categories of assisted suicide. If assisted suicides are committed by people with a "terminal illness," a "severe and incurable disability," or "a severe degenerative physical condition"—whether occurring overseas or in country—the assister was a close friend or relative of the deceased and motivated by compassion, and the victim "had a clear, settled, and informed wish to commit suicide," among other criteria, prosecution is deemed not "in the public interest." 

What do these guidelines teach us about assisted suicide?  First, the agenda is not really about terminal illness: It is about fear and loathing of disability and the debilitation of advanced age.  What else explains why a husband assisting the suicide of his wife, who wanted to die because their son became a quadriplegic, would be prosecuted under the guidelines—but he wouldn't face charges for the assisting the suicide of the son? 

Second, the guidelines prove that assisted suicide is not a medical act.  Nothing in the guidelines requires a physician's review or participation.  

Third, the court ruling and following guidelines illustrate how the rule of law is crumbling. What matters most today is not principle, but emotion-driven personal narratives.

Perhaps most alarmingly, decriminalizing assisted suicide—but only when the victim had a terminal or disabling condition—sends the insidious societal message that the lives of such people are not as worthy of protecting as those of others. In this sense, the guidelines are a profound abandonment of society's most vulnerable citizens, exposing at least some to the acute danger of being coerced into death by relatives or friends. 

For proof, we need only turn again to George Delury, whose claims of compassion were eventually dashed on the rocks.  Perhaps because he was planning to write a book, he kept a computer diary of the events leading up to Lebov's death—and it proved that George Delury put Myrna Lebov out of his misery.

The diary showed that Lebov did not have an unwavering and long-stated desire to die, as Delury had claimed.  Rather, as often happens with people struggling with debilitating illnesses, her moods waxed and waned.  One day she would be suicidal—but the next day she was reengaged in life.  Moreover, Delury encouraged his wife to kill herself, or as he put it, "to decide to quit." 

That wasn't all.  Delury worked assiduously at destroying his wife's will to live by making her feel like a worthless burden. On March 28, 1995, Delury wrote in his diary that he planned to tell his wife:

I have work to do, people to see, places to travel.  But no one asks about my needs.  I have fallen prey to the tyranny of a victim.  You are sucking my life out of my [sic] like a vampire and nobody cares.  In fact, it would appear that I am about to be cast in the role of villain because I no longer believe in you."

Delury later admitted that he had shown his wife that very passage.

On June 10, Delury's diary entry described an argument with Lebov that started when she left a message to her niece that "things are looking splendid":

I blew up! … I told Myrna that she had hurt me very badly, not my feelings, but physically and emotionally…I put it to Myrna bluntly—‘If you won't take care of me, I won't take care of you.'"

Once the contents of his diary were publicly revealed, Delury's defense of "compassion" became inoperable, which was why he accepted the plea bargain. But that still wasn't the end of the story. In But What if She Wants to Die—published when after he became constitutionally immune from further prosecution—Delury wrote that he had not just assisted Lebov's suicide, but smothered her with a plastic bag because he was worried that the drugs she ingested might not be sufficient to kill her.  (Delury died at his own hand in 2003 at the age of 74.)

Thanks to the assisted suicide guidelines, potential Myrna Lebovs are at the mercy of future George Delurys. And these Delurys know full well, that so long as they don't keep inculpating diaries, they will have little trouble convincing prosecutors that their motive was compassion, a claim readily believed in a society so fearful and disdainful of disability.

And don't think the same think can't happen here. Recall that in the 1990s, juries repeatedly exonerated Jack Kevorkian for assisting the suicide of mostly despairing disabled people. Indeed, the Public Prosecutor of Oakland County, MI first ran for office on the plank of leaving Kevorkian alone, which, when he won, also effectively decriminalized assisted suicide.

All of this brings to mind the sad 1994 commentary by the Canadian newspaper columnist Andrew Coyne. Reacting to the widespread public support of Robert Latimer, who murdered his twelve-year-old daughter because she was disabled by cerebral palsy, Coyne concluded: "A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death.  A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured." Thankfully, this week 125 Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical leaders united to sign the Manhattan Declaration, a document that declares as one of its core beliefs the sanctity of all life. Chuck Colson called it "one of the most important documents produced by the American church, at least in my lifetime".

Alas, in the last 15 years, Coyne's observation has only gone from bad to worse.

Chuck Colson's Two-minute Warning (video link)

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/the-chuck-colson-center/two-minute-warning

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!"

Amen

Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of 1863

Chuck Colson was one of three Christian leaders who drafted the 4,700 Manhattan Declaration that was signed by 125 Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical leaders before its release last week at the National Press Club

The document is a call to conscience for the church and a statement of conviction to civil authorities indicating an intent to stand up for religious freedoms, support of the sanctity of human life and traditional marriage. Citing the bipartisan complicity that has given legal sanction to the "Culture of Death" and the belief that "lives that are imperfect, immature, or inconvenient are discardable," Colson said that the Manhattan Declaration calls Christians to the "gospel of costly grace" and the willingness to put aside our comfort and serve those whom the broader culture would deem outside the scope of its concern and legal protection.

http://www.breakpoint.org/commentaries/13534-the-manhattan-declaration

Founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Timothy George, Puts the Manhattan Declaration in Historical Context

We believe it is time for Christian believers to speak together clearly and boldly on behalf of the most vulnerable members of our society. The Manhattan Declaration represents an ecumenism of the trenches that has been going on for a number of years among many denominations and confessional traditions. While we recognize that many important differences of doctrine and discipline still divide us, we nonetheless earnestly seek that unity for which Jesus prayed when he asked that his disciples be one in their love for God, for one another, and for the world.

We have addressed our concerns to the society in which we live, but the issues are global. Policies of forced abortions, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, sexual trafficking of girls and young women, and failure to take necessary steps to halt the spread of preventable diseases such as AIDS are plagues that transcend national boundaries. We affirm that all persons have been endowed by the Creator with inherent and equal dignity and the inalienable right to life. It behooves Christians and all persons of conscience to speak and to act on behalf of the least, the last, and the lost.

As a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, I have frequently visited the jail cell from which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." King was an ordained Baptist minister and wrote from an explicitly Christian perspective drawing on the Holy Scriptures, the tradition of Christian faith through the centuries, and the use of the divinely bestowed gift of reason. In a time of great tension, he set forth an eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience. He declared that unjust laws had no power to bind the conscience and he called on his fellow citizens to join him in the struggle for civil rights.

King was willing to go to jail rather than to comply with legal injustices that violated human dignity itself. King's legacy lives on today in a new generation of Christian believers inspired by his passion and insight. Those who have embraced the Manhattan Declaration profess our commitment to Jesus Christ and his teachings. This commitment transcends all other loyalties. We have declared that we will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.

WashingtonPost.com

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/11/the_manhattan_declaration.html

The Manhattan Declaration Draws on Centruries of Christian Inspiried Cultural Formation

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Preamble of the Manhattan Declaration

http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/

Sandy's Corner - Holidays

The holidays are often times when your family is with relatives and you want your child to be on her best behavior. So, why then, does she sometimes act her worst?

Think about the whole situation from your child’s perspective. She walks into a room of people. Although they are relatives, she doesn’t know them well but is still expected to give hugs and kisses. She is reminded (often with a disapproving tone of voice) right in front of everyone to use manners such as putting her napkin in her lap although this is something seldom done at home. She is asked to sleep in an unfamiliar house and eat unfamiliar food. The stimulation is much higher and different from what she normally experiences.

It is like your being immersed for a week in a foreign country such as Zambia where all the customs, people and food are different. Then you are blamed for not following the proper social etiquette with which you are unfamiliar. Your senses are overwhelmed but there is no break from it.

What can You Do to Make the Transition Easier?

1) Before you go, show your child pictures of your relatives. Tell their names and stories about them.

2) Have a few manners nights at home before you go. Have the child practice making eye contact, shaking hands, or whatever is important to you. Make a game of following all the manners. If there is tension when you teach your child, then your child will have a negative association with manners.

3) Tell your child, in advance, how long the drive will be, where she will be staying, what the room might be like. Each morning review that day’s schedule with her.

4) Have some quiet time every day for a break from all the stimulation.

5) Watch the sugar intake. I wonder if two pieces of cake for a 30 pound child is roughly like 8 pieces of cake for a 120 pound person. How do you feel when you have had 8 pieces of cake?

After considering things from your child’s perspective, you will realize how hard it is for her and what you can do to make it easier.

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