THREE INHUMANITIES

C. Everett Koop, M.D.
Surgeon General, U.S.A.

November 11, 1984

It is absolutely impossible, I believe, to separate one's religion from
those things he believes. Anyone in politics who says he is able to do
that just hasn't faced the situation squarely. When Cain and Able had
their altercation and Abel was killed, God was terribly upset. He said
that if there was any retaliation he would repay seven-fold. Not leng
after that, iblically speaking, and following the flood, God made a
covenant with Noah. He said that if by man, man's blood was shed, by man
shall that man's be shed. Then came the ten commandments, one of which was
"Thou shalt not kill." It has nothing to do with war, nothing to do with
accidental death. It has to do with premeditated killing of another
individual. Later, Jeremiah, the prophet, was set aside before he was
born. “When I was still in the womb," Jeremiah wrote, God called me and
set me aside." The same thing is found in Isaiah. David in the Psalms,
especially Psalm 139, comments marvelously about how he was formed in
secret. I will sum it up. Tne Bible screams from cover to cover that life

is precious to God.

We suffer today from the effects of a disease, the symptoms of which
are abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. But the disease is really one
which was brought about by a change in our philosophy, and in our religious
concepts, or those things which had their origin in Judeo Christianity.
Judeo Christianity gave us our heritage, it gave us our laws, it gave us
our method of government. In fact it taught us our cultural relationships
and how we can get along with each other. It is the abandonment of that
consensus that is the disease.

You can call it one thing or anotner; I think we probably all
understand it best if we call it secular humanism. It is a new religion in
this country, but unfortunately it does not have a god. Secular humanism
is taught in the United States, whether you are reading a little paper
bound book for children that you found in Woolworth's five and ten cent
store, or whether you are taking post doctoral courses in one of the
country's major universities. God is no longer at the center of the
universe. Man is. The universe is just a great big mechanism. This
planet is just one complex machine. You and I are brought about in some
random fashion from something people call primordial ooze. If you believe
secular humanism, we are machines -- to be sure we are a little more
complicated than the machines we make -- but we are machines nevertheless.
With that philosophy, even the memory of Christian consensus is gone.
Where man was once unique because he was created in the image of God,he can
no longer still enjoy that same position in this philosophy.

Let me pick up another historical note and go back to Hippocrates, the
father of medicine. He not only left us the Hippocratic Oath, which al}
physicians used to take when they graduated from medical school, but he
also wrote extensively on ethics and morals as they pertained to health and
medical care. There was no doubt about the fact that throughout all of
Hipprocates' writings there was one ethic and that one ethic was the
EQUALITY OF HUMAN LIFE. But Hippocrates has now been replaced by the
QUALITY OF LIFE ETHIC. This is one of the major shifts that has taken
place in the ethical and moral thinking of medical care, not only in this
country, but throughout most of the world. There have been several times
when this equlity of life ethic has had major setbacks.

The first setback for the equality of life was in pre-Nazi Germany.
Long before Hitler came to power there was a group of Bavarian
psychiatrists disgruntled about what had happened in World War I. They
were practicing abortion, although it was illegal in Germany, and they
decided that there were those in the country who were not contributing to
the Reich and therefore had quality of lives that were really not worthy to
be lived. They formed the Euthanasia Society which was a corruption of
medicine. But even as bad as that was, the Euthanasia Society would never
have brought about the terrible consequences it did had it not been for the
concomitant corruption of law. Because those Bavarian psychiatrists, in
the form of the Euthanasia Society, went to the German equivalent of the
Supreme Court, they found that it was indeed possible under German law to
exterminate people whose quality of life was not worthy to be lived. Out
of this foundation came the hococaust.

When there is the crossover in our lives of two major influences like
that, there is an opportunity for great good or for great evil. But when in
Germany we had the crossroads of the corruption of medicine with the
corruption of law, when the equality of life ethic was abandoned for the
quality of life ethic, we then ran into the holocaust. It was the
Euthanasia Society that taught the Gestapo how to build crematoriums. The
first 276,000 people who were killed under the Nazi regime were selected
before Hitler came to power. These were people who were retarded children,
’ they were older people who were senile, and they were the criminally
insane. Eventually they got so broad in their classification they accepted
for destruction those who had tuberculosis and even those who had served
their country in World War I, but had ended up with an amputation of one or
more limbs. All these things transpired before Hitler came to power, but
he was the one on duty when the document had to be signed. For this reason
he gets the credit for those first 276,000 deaths in the gas chamber. But
remember, it was not Hitler, it was not the Nazis, it was plain ordinary
people just like you and me, living in Germany, who had decided that the
equality of life ethic was no longer valid, but that the quality of life
ethic had superseded it.

The second setback in Hippocrates' various rules of ethics came a
little bit later in the 1960's. It began with some  tudicrous
interpretations of the health of a pregnant woman -- that if any two
doctors agree that a woman's health, mental health or convenience, was
threatened, they could sign the paper that would entitle her to an
abortion. These interpretations were culminated in the law that the
Supreme Court passed in 1973, which declared the fetus to be a nonperson,
and which removed protection of the Constitution from any unborn child in
this country up until the moment of birth. Sixteen million unborn babies
have been destroyed because of that decision, and every day in this country
4,000 more abortions are added to that register. It didn't take long after
the Supreme Court decision for there to be a tremendous change in this
country's ethical stand.
Three years before the 1973 Supreme Court decision there was an
editorial in the California Medical Journal, which is. the organ of the
California State Medical Society. They have been known for almost all of
this century, for being avant gard. It is such an historic document, it
changed so many minds, and it is such a pillar of what goes on today. In
1970 there was an editorial entitled, "A New Ethic for Medicine and
Society." And here are some of the choice passages: "the traditional
western.ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and
equal value of every human life regardless of its stage or condition. This
ethic has been the basis for most of our Jaws and much of our social
policy. The reverence for each and every human life has been a keystone of

western medicine.”

Absolutely true! But the editor called for a new ethic, which he
acknowledged as follows: “It's quite distinctly at variance with Judeo
Christian ethic and carries serious philosophical, social, economic, and
political implications for western society, and perhaps for the wor ld
society. It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative, rather
than absolute, values on such things as human lives. The process of
eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun -- 1970.
And it may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human
abortion. In defiance of the long held western ethic of intrinsic and
equal value for every human life, regardless of its stage, condition, or
status, abortion is becoming accepted by society as morally right and even
necessary."

The editorial continued, "One may anticipate further development as the
problems of brith control and birth selection are extended inevitably to
death selection and death control, whether by the individual or by
society."

Finally for the Christian, the concluding statement is absolutely
devastating: "It is worth noting that this shift in public attitudes has
affected the Church rather than the reverse." And we as members of the
Church can remember that to our great degredation.

Abortions are done in this country by multiple methods, dilating and
curettage, dilating and evacuation, suction, saline abortions,
prostaglandin abortions, and even hysterotomies, which you know better as
Caesarian Sections. We have progressed in this country from abortion to
other problems in the life issues. They are infanticide and euthanasia.
There are several principles that have been used to get from one place to
the other.

First, the right to life has become not an absolute but a purely
relative situation, depending on the desires of one or more persons. The
right to life which was the unborn child's right for centuries, was
abrogated to a desire, if not the whim, of its mother. With the absolute
gone for the unborn, there can be no absolute for any other class such as
infants, or the ill, or the handicapped, or the elderly. The second
principle, is that physicians are permitted to kill as well as to offer
care and healing. Obviously, if a doctor with equal impunity may deliver a
child or abort it before delivery, why should he not proceed with the same
impunity to kill as well as to care for an individual after delivery?

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I do try to understand the pro-abortion mentality which says that we
have a social problem that can be helped by abortion. I do try to
understand the infanticide mentality which says we have a social problem
which can be helped by withholding nutrition from handicapped newborns. 1!
do try to understand, in part, the euthanasia mentality which says we have
a social problem with the elderly and the terminally ill) and that
euthanasia has an answer for it. What I cannot understand is why my
medical colleagues are willing to become the social executioners, whether
by abortion, by infanticide, or by euthanasia in order to correct what they
consider to be the social ills of our society.

I did not enter into the high calling of medicine in order to have the
expertise which I developed over many years to alleviate suffering and to
save lives, prostituted to become the medical cure of social ills. I came
out of medical school 40 years ago with the idea that I was to save lives
and alleviate suffering. Am I to understand that in the twisted concepts
of the euthanasia movement (and I include infanticide in that) if the
family of my patient is suffering I am to alleviate that suffering of the
family by getting rid of my patient? Now there is already a gray area in
the abortion business where a child born alive after an abortion
(incidentally, abortionists consider a live birth the worst complication of
an abortion) and as much as I despise this inhumanity and what little
respect I have for those members of my profession who perpetrate it, I can
see the logic of their thinking. This is further proof of the
reasonableness of the extension of thinking from abortion to the murder of
the recently living aborted child to infanticide for whatever cause. What
started off to be a woman's right to an abortion has become the woman's
right to have a dead baby.

Just two weeks ago in Philadelphia, an abortionist delivered a live
baby after a prostaglandin abortion. The baby was of gestational age, that
is old enough to be viable. Though it was alive he put it aside in a room
to die, which it did, and for some unknown reason the District Attorney of
Philadelphia has arrested him and is prosecuting him for homicide. Only in
this, the United States, the most enlightened country in the world, only
here do you find abortions done at such an age where that so-called
complication could have occured. It is absolutely illegal in every
communist country on the face of this globe to do an abortion after the
thirteenth week of pregnancy. But in this country, after Roe vs. Wade in
1973, if an abortionist wished to try an abortion up until the minute
before normal delivery there is no protection for that unborn baby, nor is
there any law under which that abortionist could be prosecuted.

~The state that we are in did not come about by any legistation. Never
did anybody get together in Congress and propose a bill that went to a
conference committee and was passed and signed by the President. As a
matter of fact, all of the abortion laws which existed in the 50 states
before Roe vs. Wade were abrogated by the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs.
Wade. We are the victims of sociologic law and all of the constitutional
experts in this country, whether they are pro-abortion or anti-abortion,
agreed that the Supreme Court far overstepped its authority when it decided
Roe vs. Wade.
Several years ago at the University of Pennsylvania where I served on
the faculty for almost 40 years, a student went into the gymnasium and set
up 16,000 dominoes. He did it in such a way that when he knocked over the
first, it knocked over the second, which knocked over the third, which
knocked over the fourth. I'11 not go through the whole 16,000, but he did
get notation in the Guiness Book of Records. I must say that that colossal
waste of time has now passed on to another school, I think it's Nebraska
that holds the domino-falling crown for this country. But I mention it
because falling dominoes (which we usually think about politically as one
country falling before another in time of way) I think has a lot to do with
the three inhumanities that face this country today.

Abortion is the first domino. It fell with an extraordinarily loud
thud. EVERYBODY knows about it. It is the social issue which has
separated our people more than anything that has happened in this country
since the days of slavery. Infanticide is the silent domino. No one heard
it fall at all in the public sector. Some of us in medicine heard it fall
and were very distressed by it. Infanticide is homicide, and homicide is
illegal. Though the doctor, and perhaps the nurse, and perhaps the social
worker, and the parents of the child who is handicapped and is going to be
starved to death are all involved in this homicide, it is still not an
event that people climb up on the rooftop to talk about. So infanticide
has existed in this country for a long time behind the protected facade of
a hospital and in what is considered to be the private relationship between

a. patient and a physician. That all was the case until Baby Doe was born
in April of 1982 in this country in Bloomington, Indiana, and the whole
thing turned around. We can thank God for that little baby.

The third domino is euthanasia. It has been struck, and it is falling,
and what happens to it will depend largely on how we react in the course of
the next weeks, months, and years to see that the world knows what is going
on. We must work to stop this problem before it reaches the same
tremendous stage as abortion and infanticide.

Infanticide in this country means the killing of an infant. It is
quite different from the definition in English law where infanticide is the
killing of an infant by its mother. When you ask a British physician
(where infanticide by our definition has been going on rampantly for
years), “do you have a problem with infanticide in your country?" he would
reply, "heavens no, we don't even know what infanticide is here." That is
the reason for the dichotomy between British and American thought. Please
remember these things about infanticide. Infanticide could never have come
about the way it did if it had not been for the liberalized abortion laws
in this country. Euthanasia in an age group is really what infanticide is
and my great. concern before the Bloomington baby was that if we did not
stop infanticide in this country the day would come when we would have the
practice of euthanasia and when we complained about it people would say,
"Why are you worried about it? we've been practicing euthanasia with
infants for many years." And so we have.

The other thing I would like you to remember about infanticide is that
it is being practiced by that class of physicians who are held up by
themselves, and by us, as advocates for children. They are making their
decision on the quality of life and they are trying to tell us that the way

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to alleviate suffering in families is to get rid of the child that causes
the suffering. Just as semantics did a lot to get the abortion movement
where it is, these same semantics can lead us astray in the field of
infanticide as well. In abortion we talked about the woman's right to her
own body; to terminate a pregnancy with abortion (or the killing of a
baby); we talked about the fetus being only a membrane; we said the fetus
is not a person, and we said every child should be a wanted child.

In a court case that you probably read about in the paper, this little
vignette did not appear. Just four weeks ago, here in Washington, the
prosecuting attorney kept saying, “and so you cut up the unborn baby." The
abortionist said, "stop using that word -- we merely fragmented the fetus."
Now, infanticide in this country is called the withholding of nourishment
for treatment from a handicapped newborn. People will talk about
meaningful life and about the quality of life and about wrongful life.
Wrongful life is the life that should never have existed because it creates
problems for the people who have to deal with it.

I spent 35 years as a pediatric surgeon. I was the sixth person in
this country to devote all my surgical skills to children. When I arrived
in Washington I had been practicing that specialty longer than anyone else
in the United States. I think it fair to say that when I did come to
Washington I had probably operated upon more newborn babies with congenital
defects incompatible with life but nevertheless amenable to surgical
correction, than any other surgeon probably in this hemisphere. ‘So I know
whereof I speak because I dealt’ with so many notential Baby Does. There's
no doubt about the fact that I look back upon that 35 years in pediatric’
surgery as remarkable years, as years that I felt that I was doing a
tremendous service before God for my fellow man, and I know what can be
accomplished in the rehabilitation of a child who's born handicapped. I
know what can be done for such a family of a child. I know that these
children become loved and loving, that they are innovative and creative
people, and that their entrance into a family is frequently looked upon in
subsequent years, not as a tragedy, but as a blessing and an extraordinary
experience.

Abortion set the stage for infanticide and euthanasia. First the
unborn were deprived of their right to life, then the newly born were
classified as having a potential for having no meaning for life or a life
not worth living. What will be the definitions about the elderly? What
will be said about them?

I am frequently told by people who have never had the privilege of
working with the handicapped child and see him be rehabilitated into
society that ‘the correction of a congenital defect has no good purpose.
Some say these children should be allowed to die, or should be encouraged
to die, because their lives could be nothing but unhappy and miserable.
Yet, in dealing with 100,000 patients which I have done, it has been my
constant experience that disability and unhappiness do not go hand-in-hand.
Some of the most unhappy children that I have known have been perfectly
normal mentally and physically. On the other hand, there is a remarkable
job and happiness in the lives of most handicapped children. With the
affluence of our society it stands to reason that we are merely at the
threshold of what can be done for handicapped people both technically and

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medically as well as for the pursuit of education and leisure activity.
Who knows what happiness is for another person? What about the rewards and
the satisfctions in life that come to those who work with and succeed in
the rehabilitation of handicapped children? I believe it is stronger
character, compassion, deeper understanding of another's burdens,
creativity, deeper family bonds, that can result from this so-called social
burden of raising a child who is Jess than perfect. Though from the
materialistic point of view it seems that life can be without meaning, from
the spiritual point of view life can be extraordinarily useful. Such a
life, for example, might provide a source of courage for the treatment of
distress that is caused by disease. There is no doubt that the value
placed upon the patient by his associates as one who is respected, honored,
and loved is a source of inspiration to all who witness it.

There was a day when there was a goal in this country to save every
newborn baby. Older pediatricians might have said that this patient is
dying and we should not prolong the act of dying. I agree with that. Now
the new breed of house officer stands in the emergency room when the
newborn handicapped baby is brought in from an outlying hospital. He
doesn't ask "How should we treat?" He asks::"Should we treat?" We must
feel a certain pity for these new men and women because they have come out
of medical school since 1975 and have really been exposed to only one kind
of medical ethic.

This is the quality of life versus the old Judeo Christian heritage of
the sanctity of human life. In 1978 Francis Schaffer and I made five
movies which we entitled, together with a book, "Whatever Happened to the
Human Race?" The first three were on the subjects of abortion, infanticide
and euthanasia. The last two were on Christian alternatives to those
problems. The second film was on infanticide and one of the most
compelling scenes I think in that second movie took place in my living room
in suburban Philadelphia. I had eight young people sitting around chatting
with me, all of whom I had met in the early days of their lives. I met
some within a few hours after their births, some within the first month.
They had all had extraordinary things done to them. In one child I had had
to’ take the colon and replace the esophagus with it because she was born
without such an organ. One child had had a cancer and I had to remove her
uterus, her ovaries, her rectum and her bladder. One .child had so many
congenital anomalies that he ended up with a colostomy on one side and a
little bag to drain his urine on the other. For one young lady I had _ to
remove almost all of her tongue because of a tumor shortly after she was

born, and so on. These were the problems they faced and the surgery that

was done was very dramatic. They ranged at the time that I was taiking to
them from 11 to 30 years.

I didn't tell them what the movie was all about, I just told them, "You
know I want to film some of things that you say because there are people
who don't agree with what I did to you. Some people say I caused you too
much suffering. Others say I put your family through too much anxiety.
Others say it was too expensive. And there are still others who say your
life is so rotten now, why did we bother? What do you think about that?"
Well, their responses were tremendous. We didn't film all of their anger
because we didn't film the questions that I asked. But these are some of
the things that some of these youngsters said?

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"Because the start of life was a little abnormal it does not mean that
we're going to finish that way. I'm a normal functioning human being
capable of doing anything that anybody else can do." Another said: “At
times it got very hard, but life is certainly worth living. I married a
wonderful guy and I'm just so happy." A third said: "At the beginning it
was a little difficult going back to school after surgery, but then things
started looking up, and with a little perseverence and support I went on to
become an anesthetist and I am happily married. Things are going great for
me." One said: "I really think that all my operations and all the things I
had wrong with me were worth it, because I really enjoy life and I don't
let the things that are wrong with me bother me." One young lady said: "If
anything, I think I have an added quality to my life and appreciation of
life. I look forward to every single morning." One who was up on the
history of the space age said: "They spend millions of dollars to send men
to the moons I think they can spend any amount necessary to save someone's
life. The human life is so important because it is a gift, not something
you can give, so you really don't have the right to take it away either."
That little girl tickled my heart because she said: "And besides, if Il
hadn't met you, Dr. Koop, how would I know I wanted to be a pediatric
surgeon." She is now in the second year of medical school.

I mentioned Baby Doe earlier, and I do so because what is in the
newspapers about Baby Doe and what really happened are not quite the same
things. Baby Doe was born in Bloomington, Indiana in the Spring of 1982.
The obstetrician said the child would be hopelessly retarded and have a
terrible quality of life. The surgeon said that the mortality rate for the
operation to correct the surgical defect it had was at 50 percent. The
child had been born with two problems. One was Down's Syndrome, which
always produces a kind of mental retardation, but it is difficult. to know
how much at first. The other problem was a surgically correctible defect
in the esophagus. But as for the mortality being at 50 percent, I must say
- that I have operated on 475 of those children in my career. In 11 years I
have never lost one that was born full term. My survival rate for
premature babies was 88 percent, so that I think we have reason to believe
that the medical advice given to the family of Baby Doe was not unbiased,
it was not conservative, it was not even true. They decided they would
like to have nothing done to their child including, no food and no fluids.
Pediatricians in the hospital were disturbed enough about this to go to
court to see if they couldn't get an injunction. A court hearing was held
right at the patient's bedside, and the judge decided that the family had
that right. That's the first time in history that ever it was legally
decided in a court of law that the parents' had the right to kill a child
by starvation. The pediatricians immediately appealed that to the Supreiue
Court of the State of Indiana and the Indiana Supreme Court said that the
first judge had not acted outside of his authority and therefore they did
not feel that they had any role to play. That case was then appealed to
the U.S. Supreme Court. -

Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney in that county, Monroe, Indiana,
went to court because he felt that what was happening to that child was
child abuse. So there were two court cases in the legal stream in Indiana
when Baby Doe died from a combination of pneumonia and starvation, and all
of the court proceedings were mooted at that point. It is very important
to realize that never on that occasion or since has the substance of Baby

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Doe been adjudicated in any court of law. It was always the technicality
of what had previously been done and whether that was. in line with the
authority of the previous judicial officer. So even to this day we have no
law that has ever been settled in court about the right to life of a baby
with a handicap.

The third domino is euthanasia. Euthanasia really means “happy death,"
and the euthanasia forces are as broad in this land as they have never been
before. I have said this from platforms for the last ten years. But it's
still true because they're even more active now. There is discrimination
in this country against the elderly and I don't think of myself as one of
them, though chronologically I am. I am 68 but I don't feel any different
than I did when I was 48. However, the elderly are pushed aside. They
have a social death before they have a physical death. They are retired by
an antiquated custom at the age of 65. They become either prisoners in
their homes or in some institution in which their families place them.
When they are placed in nursing homes they really become segregated and
they become just communities for the elderly and the dying.

Thére are organizations in this land and in the United Kingdom and some
in continental Europe that seek to help elderly people commit suicide.
There are two particular organizations, one called Exit (and just imagine
what that means) and the other is the Hemlock Society which takes its name
from the old Greek custom of taking an elderly person out to drink hemlock
for his last meal when he ceases to be of any use to the Greek democracy.
These self-help manuals, I ‘think, are treacherous. I think that in
addition to providing ways for suicide and encouraging the rest of us to
think that that's a good thing to do, they put the elderly into a position
of thinking that they are improperly using a health resource that belongs
to somebody else. That is not true. It is important to be aware of the
infiltration of the Hospice Movement by the euthanasia forces. The Hospice
Movement is one of the finest things that ever happened in this country.
It's been abroad for 200 years. Simply, Hospice Movement means to take a
patient who is terminally ill and treat him physically, emotionally,
mentally and spiritually in the best way that canbe done, and make his
last days on this earth as pleasant and as happy without recourse to all of
the technology that artificially keeps a person alive beyond his time.
Well, what an obviously fertile territory for the euthanasia people to step
in and seem to be on our side by saying, yes, yes, let's take care of these
dear old folks. But while what they have in mind is Exit, what we have in
mind is good loving care. If it is believed that I'm being farfetched
about this, just remember that since we have forced abortion in China or
forced sterilization in India, could extermination of the elderly by force
in this country be very far behind? I don't think so.

The subject of the demography of this country is very important when
discussing this subject. We probably think of the population of this
country as being like a pyramid. Few old people at the top, lots of kids
at the bottom, and the middle-aged people in the middle. That is not the
shape of our country any longer. In the Year 2005, we will have 50,000,000
people over the age of 65, half of them over the age of 75, so that the
pyramid at the top is now beginning to bloom out like the top of a bessemer
furnace. The taxpayer, the wage earner, the mover and shaker of society
(who is the toddler in the first years of the next century) is not going to

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be any more numerous than he is today. One of the reasons for this is that
we have polished off’ 16,000,000 potential taxpayers who would be taking
care of those elderly people in the early years of the next century. Now
that is a tremendous burden for today's toddler to face in the next
century, because he is going to be dealing with the largest group of
elderly people that any civilization has had to deal with. That would be
bad enough if the story ended there, but it's even worse because in
addition to the number of elderly people there is going to be a tremendous
number of children. It will not be because their parents have high
fertility, but because of sheer numbers. In the early years of the next
century, we will be having the echo of the baby-boom. The baby-boom
children will be having their grandchildren. So the taxpayer in the early
years of the next century will have this big population above and this big
population below. We have to be terribly bright to look ahead and see what
the ethical situations are going to be or even to predict how they are
going to be decided. We may find that the things we talk about in
reference to Baby Doe are like a Sunday School picnic in reference to the
ethical decisions that will have to be made about the elderly in another 15
to 20 years, if not sooner.

Now there are not many things that we know of on what to do about this.
We talk about it in government a great deal, but we don’t get very far
because no other group of people has ever faced this or has ever had to
deal with it before. A very few of us will ever have to deal with abortion
as a personal issue. Even’ fewer of us will ever have to deal with the
subject of infanticide as a personal issue. But each of us will have to
face this other issue of euthanasia. We may face it first with a loved
one, a parent, an uncle, or an aunt. Perhaps eventually we're going to
have to face it with ourselves. The decisions that we make now about how
the elderly will be treated are the decisions that the next generation will
make only more severely about us in the generations down the road.

It. isn't enough to be against abortion, against infanticide, against
euthanasia. We must have alternatives to offer the woman who is_ pregnant
and doesn't want to be, or the parents of a child who is born handicapped.
We'must be able to step in and provide surrogate care in the form of
surrogate sons and daughters, or cousins, or nephews, or whatever for the
elderly. I am not going into those details. It isn't.enough to be opposed
to these things, we must have other answers.

Since coming to Washington I have found encouragement as I've reflected
on the lives of two women that I know. The first of these was the mother
of one of my patients. I went to her one time and said: "I have to give a
lecture tomorrow in York University in Toronto, and I want to quote you,
but I want to quote you accurately. Would you mind answering two
questions? What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?" She
replied: "It was having our son born with all those defects that required
35 operations to correct." And I said: "I knew you'd say that because I
did 22 of them and I was there for the others. Now, what's the best thing
that ever happened to you?" She replied: “It was having our son born with
all those defects that required 35 operations to correct." That family has
made such a splash in the Christian community of Philadelphia, ‘that
everybody knows the blessings that come from the extended care that a
family gives to a child who is handicapped. That youngster, incidentally,

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has gone on to have his last operation, number 56. He graduated as
valedictorian in his high school class last year. He was the president of
his class, he was on the varsity basketball team, he is a freshman at
college and he introduced me at the last talk I gave in Philadelphia.

The other woman that I've found encouragement from is Mother Theresa.
She is a great champion of life. I remember that wonderful picture of
Mother Theresa in Calcutta when she picked up a tiny premature baby lying
in the mud of the gutter. After looking at it she lifted the baby up and
said, “There's life in it!"

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