wfn.org | Is Suicide Inherently Wrong?

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3373 notes).

Note 3372 by UMNS on Jan. 13, 1997 at 16:21 Eastern (8657 characters).

SEARCH:   suicide, death, dying, Supreme Court, United Methodist
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Joretta Purdue                          18(10-71B){3372}
          Washington, D.C.  (202) 546-8722           Jan. 13, 1997

United Methodists open discussions
of physician-assisted suicide

                        by Joretta Purdue*
                        A UMNS News feature

     Death with dignity. A right to die. Supreme Court hearings on
physician-assisted suicide. Amid the slogans and headlines,
conversations about dying are springing up throughout the United
States.
     "I think the discussion is healthy," said Sally Brown Geis, a
sociologist recently retired from the faculty at Iliff School of
Theology, Denver, one of 13 United Methodist seminaries in the
country.
     The United Methodist laywoman commented that she does not
want to see a rush to closure on this issue. She expressed the
hope for more discussion and avoidance of a rigid rule.
     "We need the very best and most thoughtful minds -- and
hearts -- we can bring to this subject," Geis said. "The church
needs to speak, or it [the issue] is going to be settled by the
secular society,"
     Geis and the Rev. Donald E. Messer, Iliff president and
theology professor, are co-editors of How Shall We Die? Helping
Christians Debate Suicide, a collection of essays dealing with
specific cases. Geis said the book, to be published by Abingdon in
April, is an attempt to stimulate a gentle, rational dialogue
about suicide -- a topic both she and Messer feel could polarize
the Christian community.
     "It hits individual human families where they live," she
observed. 
     According to Geis, Christians need to understand several
facts:
     * People are being kept alive who do not want to be.
     * Public spending on medical care for the elderly is 15 times
greater than expenditures of public funds on medical care for
children, although a greater proportion of children in this
country are poor.
     * People with power are able to do more to control their
suffering and death than people who have less power.
     "Christians need to be concerned about those power issues,
and whom we let suffer and whom we don't, while we moralize about
the value of suffering," Geis said. Suffering, its meaning or lack
of meaning, is part of the debate, she added.
     While the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes talks about a
time to live and a time to die, Geis said she believes that
technology has changed society in ways that have made determining
the time to die more complex.
     After work on the current book and earlier work with a
hospice in a medical center, Geis remains somewhat ambivalent on
the question of suicide. She does not advocate it, but said she
can understand why some people take that route. Ideally, she said,
it is something that should be settled case by case.
     "Christianity has not always had a severe sanction against
suicide," Geis noted. It was a pronouncement by Augustine, who
lived more than three centuries after Christ that banned the
practice among Christians. A different understanding may be more
appropriate to the present time, she said.
     She clearly cautioned against "judging each other."
     "As Christians we have no right to blanket condemnation of
people who take their own lives," she warned.
     Her co-editor, Messer, believes "physician-assisted suicide
can be a tragic necessity at certain limited times."
     He mentioned relief of intractable pain as one example. "I
think people ought not to have to revert to the kind of crude
options that are available today for self-inflicted suicide" or
family-assisted suicide. He said there should to be some help for
people in terms of options in how life ends.
     According to Messer, people sometimes warn against "playing
God" in the discussion of suicide. "But in the medical field,
we're already playing God by extending life beyond what used to be
and by putting people on machines.
     "We have more intensive care today than we have intensive
caring, but we need more intensive caring and maybe less intensive
care."
     Messer said he believes Scripture indicates that God has
given humanity a good deal of autonomy and personal choice, that
God is caring and compassionate and that God has not specifically
forbidden suicide.
     Lay people are more open to suicide than clergy are, Messer
said, but he does not think the issue will be resolved by the U.S.
Supreme Court, regardless of what the nine justices decide. 
     As the Supreme Court heard two cases related to physician-
assisted suicide Jan. 8, the Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett, general
secretary of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society,
issued a statement acknowledging that the denomination continues
to wrestle with the issues of human suffering, free will,
stewardship of life and role of the caretaker.
     "As the court deliberates on the justice issues of 'choosing
death,' full protection of the right and faculty to 'choose life'
must not be compromised," said Fassett.
     Among the concerns Fassett voiced were that people with
disabilities might be pressured toward suicide or placed at risk
if caretakers are empowered to hasten death and whether the wishes
of poor will be honored equally with the wishes of the more
affluent.
     The dilemma of human suffering, the limits of free will and
the challenge of stewardship of life are theological concerns that
cannot be resolved in the courts, he maintained. He called United
Methodists "to seek the answers to these questions in their
relationship with God, nurtured by communities of faith."
     Harold W. Jordan, chairman of the department of psychiatry
and behavioral sciences at United Methodist-related Meharry
Medical College, Nashville, Tenn., expressed concern that
depressed people might seek suicide when, if treated for
depression, they would want to live longer in spite of their
illness.
     "As a psychiatrist, I consider physician-assisted suicide to
be immoral, illegal and otherwise unacceptable in society" for
that reason, said Jordan, a long-time member of Clark Memorial
United Methodist Church in Nashville.
     He said a matter as important as suicide, even with a
terminally ill patient, needs a large number of people working
together to determine its appropriateness. This group should
include the patient, family, minister or counselor as well as
physicians and psychiatric evaluators beyond the primary
physician. Jordan was adamant that physician-assisted suicide
should never be based on an agreement between the patient and an
individual physician.
     Even in the case of removing life-support from a brain-dead
patient, Jordan said, the decision should be made in consultation
with the family and others -- never by just one or two people.
     The Rev. John Corry, a practicing attorney who is assistant
general counsel at Meharry and pastor of Patterson Memorial United
Methodist Church, stated two reservations he has about physician-
assisted suicide. 
     "My own theological perspective is suicide is not in keeping
with my understanding of the Christian doctrine," Corry stated. He
also said he is concerned about the potential for families or
society to want termination of treatment for economic reasons.
     As for physician-assisted suicide, Corry commented, "I think
it's more an ethical issue than a criminal issue. I don't think it
should be a criminal offense" when doctors assist terminally ill
patients.
     At United Methodist-related Duke University, Harmon Smith, an
Anglican priest who has appointments in both the divinity and
medical schools, asked if the question of physician-assisted
suicide can be resolved when "we have almost no shared vision
about the common good."
     He bases his exploration of the issue on the belief that
Christians give their lives to God at the time of baptism.
     "Precisely because our life belongs to God, we may be
forbidden to will its continuation at all costs. We may, in fact
be bidden to expose our lives to various kinds of risk and danger,
as Jesus surely did in going up to Jerusalem and his eventual
death," Smith observed.
     "In the exceptional case there may be moral warrants for an
appropriate self-sacrifice of one's own life," he concluded, "but
it also means that these moral warrants do not extend to the
permissibility, much less the duty, to sacrifice the life of
another."
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