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This is my ninth article in this series, highlighting key aspects from each chapter of my new book, While We Were Sleeping: A Wake-up Call For All Christians. (Check out my YouTube channel, where I am posting a reflection on each chapter, to complement this article).

Leonie Robson, a songwriter and pastor, and a regular contributor to The Daily Declaration, opens our examination of euthanasia with the story of her mother’s last days. Her testimony ends like this:

We found a high care facility that was much more sanitary than some we had seen. We thought, this is good, we can do this. They took us to see the palliative care unit. There was a lovely lady in charge. She said, this is where we bring our residents at ‘end of life.’ There is music available, and we even feed them ice cream if they would like it. We had a picture painted that it was going to be gentle for mum.

But nothing prepared us for the pointy end when she couldn’t eat any longer. She couldn’t pass urine either because of the size of the cancer. She was in distress. So, they rang me and said we are taking your mum down to the unit, they said she was very close to the end.

But when we saw her, she was still talking. She was still engaged. She kept saying ‘I don’t want to go to that room, I know what happens in that room!’

Within half an hour of being put into that bed, they came along with their needles. They said it was only to keep her calm. This was euthanasia. Mum died in there in 2016. There was nothing of palliative care about it at all.

Mum drifted off for a bit but then came round. She was agitated again, and I would sing to her and read Psalms, and we would be praying with her. Then she would drift off again. But the next time she would wake up with such a start that she would sit up in bed. She would be screaming out ‘No, no, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go.’ 

You can imagine how we felt. The nurse would come in again and give her more injections. It was Midazolam and Morphine. It was horrible, you could see the fight in mum’s face.

We got a phone call about three the next morning that she had gone. But it struck me so deeply that what we witnessed was ungodly. It was absolute evil. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t letting nature take its course. The nursing home business has someone waiting the next day to get into that room. 

When we went back the next day, the lady in charge of the facility was there. She said to me, ‘You know Leonie, did she put up a fight! We gave her enough to kill three people!’ I thought to myself, you don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what you’re admitting.

Leonie and her family have been marked for life by this experience with her mum’s death. Naturally this was one specific experience but notice two things. ‘No, no, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go.’ Leonie’s mum: and ‘You know Leonie, did she put up a fight! We gave her enough to kill three people!’ from the palliative care giver.

The Hippocratic Oath and Euthanasia

Hippocrates was born into a family of priest doctors in 460 BC in Kos, Greece. He established the basics of medicine as it is practised today, developing medical terms, definitions, protocols, and guidelines for the classification of diseases. He is most well-known for The Hippocratic Oath, which medical professionals have pledged at the outset of their practice for over 2000 years.

Notice this translation of the original version (extracts):

With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.

Nor shall any man’s entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.

The Oath was updated in 1964 by Dr Louis Lasagna. Here are two extracts:

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

This second paragraph instructs the medical practitioner ‘not to play at God’, while in the same breath they are urged to take seriously the responsibility of deciding of deciding between seeking to save a life and committing murder.

No wonder euthanasia is so firmly embedded in the medical business.

The Euthanising Process

Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) is lawful in all Australian states. VAD has also been passed in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). But VAD is still illegal in the Northern Territory. Health professionals can conscientiously object to participating in VAD, and medical practitioners, nurses and allied health professionals working in aged and home care can decide whether or not to participate in VAD. What does that say about those who don’t conscientiously object? I would argue that it is criminal that they are put in that situation.

Canada leads the world in euthanasia, closely followed by the Netherlands and then Belgium. The Canadians have MAiD (medical assistance in dying).

Apparently, the reason Canadians dying under MAiD seem peaceful is that they are given a paralytic injection first and they and they begin drowning and are unable to cry out for help. Veterans are being offered MAiD by their government so that it does not have to pay them compensation.

In 2021 alone, the Canadian government saved C$86.9 million from its palliative care budget because of the take up of MAiD. Follow the money!

How Might Christians Respond?

God said in the beginning:

“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

Consequently, to intentionally take a life is playing God. Many reference this scripture to describe the sanctity of life regardless of health or quality of life. God does not say that any other forms of life are created in his image (only humans). We need to tread carefully.

Both Jews and Christians take the Ten Commandments seriously. The sixth states: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) is a direct prohibition against the deliberate taking of innocent life.

But many look to our loving God and say, like God, we should have compassion and empathy for the suffering. Yes, we should.

However, I argue that withholding life-saving treatment from a dying individual is not euthanasia when there is no intent to cause death, even if that is the ultimate result. Rather it is a form of generosity or the preventing of harm, or further suffering to a person.

Examples include removing a ventilator from a grandmother with no hope of recovery or choosing to refrain from potentially fruitless chemotherapy. In this scenario, no lethal or potentially lethal drugs are administered, and through prayer we are bringing our loved one into the Lord’s hands from where:

The Lord kills and makes alive;

He brings down to the grave and brings up. (1 Samuel 2:6)

The practice of euthanasia confesses no faith in God. Effectively we are standing in the place of God.

Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4) (my emphasis)

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Image by Brian Doyle.