In February, a group of Catholics, primarily academics, all with a knowledge of ethics and Catholic morality, issued a statement cautioning about organ donations but basically concerned about current “brain death” criteria.
Some misunderstood the statement, thinking that it questioned the morality of organ donations. Organ donation, medically possible since the 1950s, means that a person may declare that upon her or his death certain organs can be removed from his or her corpse and surgically inserted into the body of a living person.
For example, if a person suffers from a disease that drastically reduces kidney function, surgeons can remove the bad organ and replace it with the kidney taken from another person’s corpse.
A living person may also donate an organ to someone else.
The Church lauds organ donation. Pope St. John Paul II called organ donation a “genuine act of love.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes organ donation as “noble and meritorious”, to be “encouraged” (No. 2296). Catholic hospitals and physicians around the world, faithful to Catholic ethics, routinely provide for organ donations.
A problem is ascertaining death. Ascertaining death can be medically complex. It is easy to let secondary issues dominate the discussion or to choose the quickest way out. Respecting and preserving life, and certainly not hastening death, is the bottom line.
Deliberately causing death
Determining when death occurs and artificially controlling the process of death are increasingly issues of concern in Western Europe and Canada. So is the question of deliberately causing death. They will be issues in this country.
Genuine moral questions may well arise. For example, people experience chronic or terminal conditions, for which no cure so far has been found. “Quality of life” is a valid consideration, but what is the definition of “quality of life,” and who defines it? What are “extreme” measures? Or “ordinary” care?
Quality of life judgments may be affected by considerations — such as inconveniencing caregivers or relatives and the monetary cost of care — that distract from the central facts: the dignity of the individual and the individual’s fundamental right to live.
In Canada, now, people are talking about persons with permanent difficulties in cognition. Some suggest that it would be best for the patient — and for the public purse since health care in Canada is funded by taxes — if the lives of these persons were deliberately ended.
In Europe, some propose that decisions about terminating life should not rest with patients (or — if patients are unable to decide for themselves — with their families) but with outsiders, perhaps medical experts, social workers or the like. To go even farther, decisions of these outsiders would be imposed by law.
The example of Dr. Bernard Nathanson
The objective, bluntly stated, of getting the patient out of the way cannot reign supreme. Again, respecting and preserving life, and certainly not hastening death, is the bottom line.
Then, there is the debate about legalizing the enablement of suicide.
Look always for the bottom line. Fifty years ago, a New York physician, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, provided abortions. He estimated that through the years he performed 60,000 abortions.
Ultrasound, or sonography, was being more frequently used in medicine. One day, he watched an abortion with ultrasound. He said that on the screen he saw a fully formed, though tiny, individual human being. It was alive. It moved even if its mother did not. When touched by instruments used in the abortion procedure, it reacted. He realized that whatever other factors pertained, abortion kills — to call a spade a spade — an innocent human being. That was the bottom line.
That ultrasound image changed his entire outlook on abortion. He never performed another abortion and was, until his death, an outspoken opponent of abortion.
Arguments about death will come to America, maybe sooner than later. Amid many diversions, perplexities and distractions, go to the bottom line. Life is precious, every person’s right.
