Mother pleads for child to die

A 12-year-old girl has died in hospital after having food and drink withheld - with court permission. It is the first time a child not on life support and not suffering from a terminal illness has legally been caused to die.

Nancy Fitzmaurice was born with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia. She could not walk, talk, eat or drink. She needed 24-hour hospital care and was fed and watered by tube.

Her mother, Charlotte Fitzmaurice (36), of Ilford, said "Simple things like birds singing and hearing children play would put the most beautiful smile on her face. She loved Michael Buble, and when I slurped my tea she would give out a hearty chuckle." 

Nancy had apparently developed neurological problems and screamed with pain, despite painkillers.

The mother told the High Court "My daughter is no longer my daughter, she is now merely a shell. I truly believe she has endured enough. For me to say that breaks my heart. But I have to say it."

Justice Eleanor King, granting permission for nutrition and hydration to be withheld, said of Nancy "In her own closed world she has had some quality of life. Sadly that is not the case now."  It took 14 days for Nancy to die.

Said Charlotte: "Watching my daughter suffer for days while they cut off her fluids was unbearable. She went in pain. All I wanted was for my daughter to die with dignity with me holding her hand. Although I will live with the guilt forever, I know I have done everything I can for her and she is at peace.

"Although I know it was the right thing to do, I will never forgive myself. It shouldn't have to be a mother's decision to end a child's life. I believe hospitals and parents should be able to decide without mothers or fathers going to court."

Said Dr Andrew Fergusson, of Care Not Killing: "It is never ethical to speed up the process of dying by any intervention which has the primary intention to end life. Weakening laws that protect the sick, disabled and elderly would put vulnerable people at risk."

ASAN, an American charity, said "Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist."
    

Not a slippery slope, but 'an avalanche'

Frank Van Den Bleeken, who is serving a life sentence for rape and murder, has become the first prisoner to be given permission by a Belgian court to undergo euthanasia.

He is 50 years old and is not terminally ill, but claims he is suffering "unbearable psychological anguish." "What's the point in sitting here until the end of time and rotting away?" he says.

Some 15 other prisoners have now reportedly made inquiries about euthanasia.

Since euthanasia was legalised in Belgium some 12 years ago, qualifications have been steadily expanded. Says Paul Moynan, of CARE for Europe: "With euthanasia being packaged as palliative care, our care homes are not safe. With its extension this year for all ages, our children are not safe. And now the mentally ill are not safe. This is not a slippery slope, but a rapid avalanche."

This is the danger of making so-called mercy killing legal. Wherever it has been permitted, it has become increasingly easy to obtain.

Since 2006, British parliaments have been asked to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide three times. Each effort has been unsuccessful. But the House of Lords is now believed to be more favourably inclined to a change in the law. And in a recent appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the law, dismissing the appeal, but hinted that if Parliament does not make a satisfactory change it would consider allowing individuals wishing assisted suicide to have their cases heard by a High Court judge.

 Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill, which has already passed its second reading, has been criticised for its lack of adequate safeguards. It would allow doctors to dispense lethal drugs to adults who were mentally competent, judged to have six months or less to live, and to have a "settled wish" to end their lives. These conditions are difficult to assess. Apparently it would only be necessary for a doctor to say it was his "genuine view" that these conditions applied for lethal drugs to be given.

All major disability rights groups in the UK oppose the bill. It would allow assisted suicide for a few - but place pressure on a far greater number of vulnerable people - old, sick, disabled, depressed - to end their lives for fear of being a burden to others.
    

'Keep assisted suicide illegal' - dying cleric

A plea from a dying clergyman for assisted suicide to remain illegal has been sent to every member of the House of Lords by the Church of England in an attempt to prevent a change in the law.

Lord Falconer's bill on assisted dying is expected to be voted on at its second reading in the House of Lords on Friday.

The Rev Christopher Jones, former chaplain of St Peter's College, Oxford, and a tutor in doctrine at Cranmer House, Durham, wrote of his experience when he was dying of cancer. He died in 2012.

He said he experienced intense stress and a sense of hopelessness when he realised his condition was terminal, and might have been open to ending his life by legal means, had they existed. Since then, he had experienced renewed energy and vitality "beyond anything I could have expected, and I am enjoying life in this period of 'remission.'

"The legal prohibition of this course was immensely helpful in removing it as a live option, thus constraining me to respond to my situation more creatively and hopefully. . . I now know that had I taken this course, I would have been denied the unexpected and joyful experience of being 'recalled to life' as I now am."

There was great danger in giving decisive significance to a sick patient's judgment that their life was no longer worth living as their feelings could change drastically in a short space of time.

Lord Falconer's bill would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs for terminally ill people who were expected to die within six months. He says there have been more than 200 new appointments to the House of Lords since the matter was last debated five years ago, and he believes a majority of peers now support a change in the law.

Baroness Jane Campbell, the disability rights campaigner who is herself disabled, will be fighting the bill. "Assisted dying is to abandon hope and ignore the majority of disabled and terminally ill," she said.

Paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, who is also wheelchair bound, said: "An assisted dying law is playing with fire, especially when there are no safeguards in place. Lord Falconer's bill just isn't fit for purpose."
   

The shambles that is Britain's abortion industry

The Department of Health has published abortion figures for 2013. There were 202,577 abortions in Great Britain; 190,800 in England and Wales and 11,777 in Scotland.

Of 185,331 abortions in England and Wales on England and Wales residents, 98 per cent were funded by the NHS. Abortions using abortion pills, as opposed to surgical abortions, were up at 49 per cent of the total. Thirty-seven per cent of the women had had at least one previous abortion; 49 women had had eight previous abortions or more. Legal abortions in Britain have now topped eight million.

But the Department of Health figures, it turns out, cannot be relied on. The reason is bad record-keeping by abortion doctors.

Here is how the discrepancies were revealed. The National Down's Syndrome Cytogenetic Register is notified by hospitals each time a Down's syndrome diagnosis is made, and researchers follow each case to abortion or birth. The register showed 994 babies aborted because of possible Down's syndrome in 2012. Some were over 24 weeks.

Abortion doctors are required by law to report each abortion to the Department of Health with reasons for the abortion. Department of Health figures showed only 496 abortions for the condition. In some cases, other reasons were given for termination. The remaining records are missing.

In 2011, of 937 Down's syndrome abortions, only 410 could be matched by DoH records.

Are the offending doctors to be pursued with a view to prosecution? Evidently not. The DoH says simply "The Department of Health asked the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to consider the possible reasons for under-reporting of abortions on the grounds of fetal abnormality and make recommendations for improvement. . . The Department of Health will work closely with RCOG and other organisations in implementing the recommendations where possible."

Fiona Bruce, Conservative MP for Congleton, said it was clear that doctors had breached the law. "Worryingly, the department appears to have made no attempt to see the law is properly enforced. We now know that nearly half of abortions for Down's syndrome were incorrectly recorded. How many doctors were referred for investigation? None."

Ms Bruce led an independent parliamentary inquiry into abortion on grounds of disability, a particular concern of hers.

"Abortion for foetal abnormality is something society would rather not face. But every single day at least eight babies have their lives prematurely ended because they happen to be disabled," she says. "This kind of practice does not belong to the 21st century. Disabled people are equal and we should not have special laws to prevent them from being born."
       

Why respect and dignity matter

John Wyatt's mother had dementia.

"To begin with, the changes were subtle," he says. "Unexplained anxiety and tearfulness, episodes of uncharacteristic blankness, irritation and anger with medics and their pointless tests. As the dementing process continued, my mother tragically changed and aged before our eyes. Her confusion increased, she was frequently distressed by terrifying visual hallucinations. Her limbs became permanently flexed and distorted. Visiting her on the acute psychogeriatric ward, I remember being overwhelmed by grief at her obvious distress and fear. I wept in the consultant's office, powerless to do anything to alleviate my mother's anguish.

"Thankfully that dreadful period passed. Quetiapine had a remarkable effect in improving the psychotic symptoms, and compassionate and skilled nursing and medical care transformed my mother's condition. She became peaceful and relaxed. Although she could not communicate, she enjoyed holding hands with my father, listening to music, sometimes even singing along, especially to old hymns from her childhood in the Christian Brethren.

"My father was tireless in visiting her, spending hours every day at her bedside. It was very important to him that the staff knew about her past, knew the sort of person Grace used to be. He put photographs on the wall - this is what she used to be. Grace with her children, Grace at the nursery school she pioneered, Grace laughing delightedly with a little child. . . 

"It mattered that the staff treated her with respect and dignity, because of who she really was. She was so much more than this little aged, distorted, pathetic being appeared to be. . .

"But as our family spent time with my mother we were sometimes reminded that this was not the end of the story. As the family met at her bedside, in those occasional but special times of prayer and singing, although my mother could not speak and sometimes did not even recognise us, we knew that we shared in the Christian hope. This was not the end of the story."

In an article in Triple Helix, John says that caring for people with dignity, respect and love is always important. The worst of people can be transformed and enter into the new creation. With his mother, they had an assurance.

"By God's grace, those who were round her bedside will meet my mother again. And together we will walk and laugh and sing in the new heaven and new earth. The love poured out years ago has not been lost or forgotten."

You can read the full article here.
  

Tribute to a remarkable woman

Alison Davis was born with severe spina bifida. She suffered from hydrocephalus, emphysema, osteoporosis and arthritis. She was doubly incontinent and sometimes had intractable pain.

For years she tried to find happiness without God, but found it didn't work. She attempted suicide several times, until friends persuaded her that life was worth living. The former atheist turned to Christianity and the former abortion advocate became pro-life.

Her pro-life conversion came when a Dr Donald Garrow starved and dehydrated a disabled baby to death. He made a video of the baby's last days, and the video was shown on TV. Alison was horrified. She wrote to Dr Garrow and told him she was disabled in just the same way the baby had been, and she felt he had made a horribly wrong decision.

Dr Garrow invited her to speak to his hospital team. "I can't remember exactly what I said, but I pointed out that life with spina bifida and hydrocephalus could be full and happy, and that it was in any case wrong to deliberately kill any child on grounds of disability."

Alison became head of the handicap division of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which later became No Less Human. She appeared on radio and TV and her erudite letters often appeared in newspapers.

Despite being confined to a wheelchair, she was widely travelled. She went to India to visit seriously disabled children and became "mother" to 130 of them. She established a charity to support them and learned Telugu so she could write to them in their own language.

She once said: "Sometimes what desperate people, disabled or not, need is to be given hope. What they definitely don't need is to be told they are right to feel so unhappy and that they would be better off dead. This is simply the moral equivalent of the practical example of seeing a person about to jump off a high bridge and giving them a push." 

Alison died this week. She was 58.

Earth's loss is heaven's gain.

"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."  Rev 21:4.