Brandon Pres.

Aborting the rest of us!

BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #020124 - 01/24/2002
Aborting the Rest of Us: The Threat of Euthanasia

CHUCK COLSON: Abortion's primary victim is the very,
very young. But life issues go beyond abortion when
the victim is old or very sick. Stay tuned to
BreakPoint as my colleague, bioethicist Dr. Nigel
Cameron talks about abortion for the rest of us.

NIGEL CAMERON: One of my favorite cities is
Amsterdam: tulips, windmills, and a great Christian
heritage that includes Abraham Kuyper, the worldview
theologian of a hundred years ago who founded a
national newspaper and became Dutch prime minister.
But sadly in recent years, things have changed there.
The Dutch have legalized all kinds of vice, and
Amsterdam is as famous for its "red light" district
as it is for its canals. Yet the worst legalized vice
isn't drugs or prostitution. It's killing. Amsterdam
is the euthanasia capital of the world.

Although it was only last year that the Dutch
parliament made euthanasia legal, it has been widely
practiced and condoned by the courts for the past
twenty years. Who would have dreamt that the Dutch
medical profession, which gained worldwide fame for
its heroic stand against Nazi euthanasia during the
Second World War, should now be the leading
practitioner of euthanasia?

And I'm not talking about pulling out tubes or
switching off ventilators. I'm talking about the kind
of euthanasia that my family may need one day for our
beloved 15-year-old black Lab -- the veterinarian
kind: Elderly people, sick people, some not sick at
all, visiting their doctor and in the office being
put to death, thousands of them, and in a disturbing
number of cases doctors killing patients without
their consent.

Ten years ago I met a lady at a bioethics conference
here in D.C. who shared this harrowing story with me.
While living in Amsterdam, she gave birth to a little
girl. The baby was sick, very sick, and might not
live long. But her mom took her home from the
hospital and cared for her. She didn't trust her
doctors -- for good reason. When she had to bring her
in for special treatment, she sat by her bedside.

But one day, when the little girl was back in the
hospital, mom had to step out. She hurried back. And
when she returned, she discovered that her baby had
died. She knew because the physician met her with
these words: "I didn't do it."

I don't know if he did it or not. I don't think she
does either. But any society in which a physician
feels he must greet the relatives of the sick by
denying that he has killed his patient is in a sorry
state. Belgium has just decided to follow the Dutch
lead. And, of course, in Oregon we now have our own
euthanasia lab.

And so we applaud Attorney General John Ashcroft for
his use of federal law to seek to stop the misuse of
controlled drugs in Oregon for euthanasia. He has
taken a heroic stand for life.

And as we look back at Roe nearly thirty years ago,
we can see that one reason for legalized abortion was
that many, many Christians were asleep at the wheel.
Let's make sure in the current bioethics debates this
never happens again.

CHUCK COLSON: That's right, Nigel. Christians can't
sit idly by when the old and the ill -- that is, the
weak, the very people the Bible tells us to care for
-- are killed for no crime except their weakness.
Christians, this is our challenge. We must defend
human life.