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From Sander to Schiavo: Morality, Partisan Politics, and America’s Culture War over Euthanasia, 1950–2010

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2012

Ian Dowbiggin
Ian Dowbiggin*
Affiliation:
University of Prince Edward Island
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 12 - 41
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

Notes

1. “The Law of God,” Time, 16 January 1950; “Not Since Scopes?” Time, 13 March 1950; “The Obsessed,” Time, 13 March 1950. The coverage of the Sander Trial came close to matching that of the 1935 trial of Bruno Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper of the Lindberg baby.

2. See Hunter, James Davison, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York, 1991)Google Scholar. Hunter defines the belief system of “orthodoxy” as “the commitment on the part of adherents to an external, definable, and transcendent authority,” whereas “progressivism” is “the tendency to re-symbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life.” Moral truth to progressives, Hunter argues, derives from a belief in “rationalism,” “subjectivism,” and science (44–45). While Hunter devotes considerable attention to abortion, same-sex marriage, school prayer, and public funding for the arts, he does not include euthanasia as a topic of the culture wars.

3. For the differences between Republicans and Democrats over physician-assisted suicide, see “Public Divided over Moral Acceptability of Doctor-Assisted Suicide,” Gallup, 31 May 2007, http://www.gallu com/poll/27727/public-divided-over-moral-acceptability-doctorassisted-suicide.aspx.

4. Filene, Peter G., In the Arms of Others: A Cultural History of the Right-to-Die in America (Chicago, 1998), 180.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 120.

6. Saletan, William, Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003), 253.Google Scholar

7. For the history of the ESA and its various successor organizations, see Dowbiggin, Ian, A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America (New York, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. For more on the moral standpoints of Unitarianism, Humanism, and Ethical Culture, and their impact on the ESA, see, Dowbiggin, A Merciful End, 12–14, 41–44.

9. Dowbiggin, A Merciful End, 128–29.

10. Dowbiggin, Ian, “‘A Rational Coalition’: Euthanasia, Eugenics, and Birth Control in America, 1940–1970,” Journal of Policy History 14 (2002): 223–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Boston Daily Globe, 9 January 1950. Potter predicted that the Sander trial would be the “Scopes Trial” for the euthanasia movement, in other words, a major turning point after which traditional religious beliefs would be banished from the debate over euthanasia. Cited in Valery Garrett, “The Last Civil Right? Euthanasia Policy and Politics in the United States, 1938–1991” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1998), 68. Potter was Clarence Darrow’s spiritual adviser at the Scopes trial. See Larson, Edward J., Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York, 1997), 117.Google Scholar

12. Stephen Louis Kuepper, “Euthanasia in America, 1890–1960: The Controversy, the Movement, and the Law” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1980), 300–303.

13. See The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, 2 vols. (New York, 1972), 1:46, 151, 656; 2:887–88.

14. The quote is from law professor Alan Dershowitz (1988). Garrett, “The Last Civil Right?” 209.

15. See Burleigh, Michael, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar; Friedlander, Henry, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, 1995).Google Scholar

16. Hunter, Culture Wars, 71.

17. One New York City Orthodox rabbi declared as late as 1991 that “autonomy does not extend to one’s own life. Man’s body and life is the property of the Creator.” Peter Steinfels, “At Crossroads, U.S. Ponders Ethics of Helping Others Die,” New York Times, 28 October 1991. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/28/us/at-crossroads-us-ponders-ethics-of-helping-others-die.html?scp=32&sq=washington+state+assisted+suicide+1991&st=nyt.

18. Kuepper, “Euthanasia in America,” 231–32.

19. McGreevy, John T., Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York, 2003), 220–21Google Scholar, 225–26.

20. Kuepper, Euthanasia in America,” 251–52.

21. Indeed, Roman Catholic theologians had tended to dominate the field of medical ethics before the 1960s. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 220.

22. In 1912, U.S. physician Abraham Jacobi asked rhetorically: “Would a doctor who would consent to satisfying the suggestions of the people who clamor for ‘Euthanasia’ ever again deserve the confidence of the public?” Dowbiggin, A Merciful End, 7.

23. Reed, James, “Doctors, Birth Control, and Social Values, 1830–1970,” in The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine, ed. Vogel, Morris J. and Rosenberg, Charles E. (Philadelphia, 1979), 109–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Boston Daily Globe, 9 January 1950. Cited in Kuepper, “Euthanasia in America,” 231.

25. Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York, 1997), 700–701Google Scholar. In 1982, historian Paul Starr wrote that “In its commitment to the preservation of life, medical care ironically has come to symbolize a prototypically modern form of torture, combining benevolence, indifference, and technical wizardry. Rather than engendering trust, technological medicine often raises anxieties about the ability of individuals to make choices for themselves.”Starr, Paul, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York, 1982), 390.Google Scholar

26. Pope Pius XII, “The Prolongation of Life,” The Pope Speaks 4, no. 4 (1958). Cited in Marjorie B. Zucker, ed., The Right to Die Debate: A Documentary History (Westport, Conn., 1999), 62–63.

27. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 68.

28. In 1973, the American Hospital Association approved a Patient’s Bill of Rights, and the same year the American Medical Association stated that patients needed to agree with treatment options proposed by their physicians, and that their “wishes should be respected, insofar as possible.” Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 379.

29. Rothman, David J., Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making (New York, 1981), 238.Google Scholar

30. Benzenhofer, Udo and Hack-Molitor, Gisela, Luis Kutner and the Development of the Advance Directive (Living Will) (Wetzlar, Germany, 2009), 29.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 28–29.

32. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 73, 94.

33. C. Everett Koop, “Baby Doe . . . and the ‘No-Answer Syndrome,’” 9 August 1984, presented at the Milwaukee Children’s Hospital of the Medical College of Wisconsin, C. Everett Koop Papers, National Library of Medicine (hereafter CEKP), http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/QQBBFC.pdf.

34. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 108.

35. Duff, Raymond S. and Campbell, A. G. M., “Moral and Ethical Dilemmas in the Special-Care Nursery,” New England Journal of Medicine 289 (1973): 890–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

36. Critchlow, Donald T., The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge: Mass., 2007), 175.Google Scholar

37. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops invoked the “seamless garment” approach to abortion and euthanasia. Cassidy, Keith, “The Right to Life Movement: Sources, Development, and Strategies,” in Critchlow, Donald T., ed., The Politics of Abortion and Birth Control in Historical Perspective (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 133.Google Scholar

38. Heineman, Kenneth J., God Is a Conservative: Religion, Politics, and Morality in Contemporary America (New York, 2005), 109–10.Google Scholar

39. Dowbiggin, A Merciful End, 148.

40. Henry J. Hyde, Jesse Helms, Orrin G. Hatch, and Mark O. Hatfield to Richard S. Schweiker, 20 April 1982, CEKP, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/QQBCJD.pdf.

41. “Hospitals Warned on Handicapped Babies,” Washington Post, 19 May 1982. CEKP, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/QQBCJF.pdf.

42. George J. Annas, “Checkmating the Baby Doe Regulations,” Hastings Center Report, August 1986, 29–31, 30. See also Filene, In the Arms of Others, 115.

43. Courtwright describes this as the “20 percent theme,” which he traces to the comments of then-president Richard Nixon, who told his speechwriter Pat Buchanan that “you have to give the [conservative] nuts 20 percent of what they want.” To Courtwright, “four decades of Culture War politics” come down to the fact that Republican presidents since Nixon have taken the party’s moral conservatives for granted. Courtwright, David T., No Right Turn: Conservative Politics in a Liberal America (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Koop described himself as an “in-house expert on the language and the regulations” having to do with the legislation. C. Everett Koop to R. B. Zachary, 12 December 1984. CEKP, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/QQBCQZ.pdf. These events were not the first time in U.S. history that the issue of whether or not to operate on infants with congenital disabilities generated controversy. For the 1915 scandal over the Chicago surgeon Harry Haiselden and his refusal to perform life-saving surgery on a newborn, see Pernick, Martin S., The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of “Defective” Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (New York, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 120.

46. For the reference to Koop as a “pro-life zealot,” see Carlton Sherwood, “HHS Beats Retreat on Newborn Rights,” Washington Times, 12 July 1984. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/QQBCKH.pdf. See also C. Everett Koop, “Baby Doe . . . and the ‘No Answer Syndrome.’”

47. For Koop and the Reagan presidency, see Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 176, 199–200, and 183–84. See also CEKP, “Congenital Birth Defects and the Medical Rights of Children: The ‘Baby Doe’ Controversy,” http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/QQ/p-nid/86

48. To the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, the state in the form of “Uncle Sam” was pitted against the interests of handicapped children. Angell, Marcia, “Handicapped Children: Baby Doe and Uncle Sam,” New England Journal of Medicine, 309, 1983: 659–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

49. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 120–22, 148–49.

50. Garrett, “The Last Civil Right?” 145–46.

51. In 1983, over 80 percent of Hemlock members claimed to be in good or excellent health. Rarely did they reside in old folks’ homes. Monica Shurber et al., “Who Believes in Voluntary Euthanasia? A Survey of the Hemlock Society Membership,” Hemlock Quarterly 12 (July 1983): 4–8. Dowbiggin, A Merciful End, 161. One journalist wrote how “affluent white women with gray hair” dominated the subscriber rolls of the Hemlock Quarterly, the Hemlock Society’s publication, “the sort of community-minded grandmothers who never littered, never stole anyone’s parking place, and always returned their library books on time.” Anne Fadiman, “Death News: Requiem for the Hemlock Quarterly,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1994, 74–82.

52. “Changing the Rules of Dying,” U.S. News and World Report, 9 July 9 1990, 22.

53. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 187–88. See also Steve Friess, “Uneasy Alliance,” The Advocate, 5 March 1996, 46–48; David France, “This Doctor Wants to Help You Die,” New York Magazine, 13 January 1997, 25–29.

54. “The Family vs. the State,” Newsweek, 9 July 1990, 22.

55. “A Right to Let Die,” The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star, Norfolk, Virginia, 1 July 1990; “For Family, a Cruel Decision; for the Rest of Us, a Warning,” Press-Telegram, Long Beach, California, 26 June 1990, in Zucker, ed., The Right to Die Debate, 196–98.

56. Jane Gross, “Voters Turn Down Mercy Killing Idea,” New York Times, 7 November 1991. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/07/us/the-1991-election-euthanasia-voters-turn-down-mercy-killing-idea.html.

57. “Ethics: Doctor Death’s Suicide,” Time, 18 June 1990. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970389,00.html.

58. Humphry, Derek and Clement, Mary, Freedom to Die: People, Politics, and the Right-to-Die Movement (New York, 1998).Google Scholar

59. According to Richard J. Ellis, California and Oregon “are heavy users (and abusers) of the initiative process.” Ellis, Richard J., Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America (Lawrence, Kans., 2002), 2.Google Scholar

60. Peter Steinfels, “At Cross-Roads, U.S. Ponders Ethics of Helping Others Die,” New York Times, 28 October 1991.

61. Filene, In the Arms of Others, 196.

62. Garrett, “The Last Civil Right?’ 242.

63. Gross, “Voters Turn Down Mercy Killing Idea.”

64. Campbell, Courtney S., “Ten Years of ‘Death with Dignity,’” The New Atlantis 22 (2008): 33–46Google Scholar. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/ten-years-of-death-with-dignity.

65. Dowbiggin, A Merciful End, 171–72.

66. Ibid., 174.

67. Chapman, Roger, Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices (Armonk, N.Y., 2009), 407.Google Scholar

68. “Euthanasia: Guilty of Murder,” The Economist, 1 April 1999. http://www.economist.com/node/195298. See also “CBS Poll: Punish Kevorkian?” 13 December 1999. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/11/25/opinion/main23597.shtml.

69. “Jail Time for Dr. Kevorkian,” New York Times, 15 April 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/15/opinion/jail-time-for-dr-kevorkian.html?ref=thomasyouk.

70. Richard E. Vatz and Lee S. Weinberg, “Dr. Kevorkian on the Air: CBS and ‘60 Minutes’ Dropped the Ball,” USA Today Magazine, May 1999. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2648_127/ai_54680905/?tag=mantle_skin;content

71. Charatan, Fred, “Dr. Kevorkian Found Guilty of Second Degree Murder,” British Medical Journal 318 (1999): 962.Google Scholar

72. “Public Divided over Moral Acceptability of Doctor-Assisted Suicide,” Gallup, 31 May 2007.

73. Oralandar Brand-Williams, “Assisted Suicide Advocate Jack Kevorkian Dies at Age 83,” Detroit News, 3 June 2011. http://www.detnews.com/article/20110603/METRO02/106030405/Assisted-suicide-advocate-Jack-Kevorkian-dies.

74. ACLU Oregon, “State of Oregon v. Gonzales,” http://www.aclu-or.org/content/state-oregon-v-gonzales.

75. “Supreme Court Removes Obstacle to Assisted Suicide Laws,” New York Times, January 17, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/politicsspecial1/18scotuscnd.html?pagewanted=2.

76. Not Dead Yet also filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of Terri Schiavo’s parents, and testified before a U.S. Senate committee backing federal legal attempts to overturn Oregon’s DWD law. See “Testimony of Diane Coleman,” U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 25 May 2006, http://www.dredf.org/assisted_suicide/Senate-Judiciary-testimony-5-25-06.pdf.

77. Daniel Eisenberg, “Lessons of the Schiavo Battle,” Time, 27 March 2005. http://www.time.com/time/classroom/glenfall2005/pdfs/Ethics.pdf.

78. Quoted in Annas, George J., “‘Culture of Life’ Politics: The Case of Terri Schiavo,” New England Journal of Medicine 352 (2005): 1710–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

79. Cerminara, Kathy L., “Collateral Damage: The Aftermath of the Political Culture Wars in Schiavo,” Western New England Law Review 29 (2007): 279–308Google Scholar, 289, 294.

80. “Poll: No Role for Government in Schiavo Case,” ABC News, 21 March 2005. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=599622&page=1.

81. “Political Fall-Out over Schiavo,” CBS News, 23 March 2005. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/23/politics/main682619.shtml.

82. “Randall Terry and the Schiavo Case: ‘Pro-Life’”? http://www.accuracy.org/release/1013-randall-terry-and-the-schiavo-case-pro-life/.

83. For Terry as “media-circus ringmaster,” see Courtwright, No Right Turn, 194–95, 266.

84. “Montana Ruling Bolsters Doctor-Assisted Suicide,” New York Times, 31 December 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01suicide.html.

85. Hunter is likewise correct that the fundamental cleavages over moral issues are so deep that they cut across centuries-old fault lines, “making distinctions that long divided Americans—those between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—virtually irrelevant.” This striking “realignment of American political culture” (or “new ecumenism”) has been no more evident than within the right-to-life movement, where Evangelicals, Mormons, Catholics, and orthodox Jews find common cause, despite long-standing doctrinal differences. Hunter, Culture Wars, 97, 98.

86. http://www.cadem.org/resources/resolutions?id=0269.

87. “Public Divided over Moral Acceptability of Doctor-Assisted Suicide.” Gallup, 31 May 2007.

88. Hunter, Culture Wars, 42, 43, 77, 160.