Life and Death

 

Questioning--the battle rages.

Seeking an end to suffering,

we discriminate against death--

     but the scythe is useful in its time

     and white flowers bloom for good.

 

A Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Jewish rabbi are walking down a street in New York City debating the beginnings of life. The priest says, "Life begins with conception."

"No," the minister replies, "life begins with birth."

"You're both wrong," retorts the rabbi. "Life begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies!"

I hadn't considered this thought-provoking joke in years, until yesterday. I had breakfast with my mother and my nephew, Todd, at my mother's retirement home. The conversation that took place triggered my memory. Todd brought up the subject of abortion.

"I think it's awful," he said, "that abortion is legal. After all, isn't it taking a life? Shouldn't it be considered murder? Besides, because of abortion, it's almost impossible to find children for adoption. Wouldn't it be better to outlaw abortion and just put the unwanted children up for adoption?"

Addressing these questions, it seems appropriate to consider the adoption of our second child, Anila. It was 1967, and abortion was not yet legal in the United States. In the San Francisco Bay Area where we lived, hundreds of private and governmental adoption agencies were trying to find homes for the tens of thousands of unwanted children born out of wedlock. The papers and magazines were full of advertisements. As long as the children were less than a few months old, and either pure White or pure Asian with no physical or mental handicaps, there was a reasonable chance that a home could be found. However, if the child was of a mixed racial origin, was over 6 months old, or had even a hint of a mental or physical problem of any kind, their chances of adoption were slim. Such children were often passed from foster home to foster home with no sense of permanency. Poor families would take several foster children into their homes because they needed the money that was provided by the state for such services. Some couples would have 6 to 10 kids, and the foster parents would live off the money that was supposed to be used for the children's welfare.

          Because there was little or no emotional attachment, and because problem kids are often difficult to manage anyway, these families frequently took poor care of their foster kids, sometimes abusing them. The situation was far from satisfactory, even in stable families. Social workers were assigned to each case to root out serious problems, but often negligence or abusive behavior could only be discovered after serious physical or psychological damage had resulted. In less extreme cases, parents would discriminate between their biological children and their foster children so the latter would feel inferior or inadequate, having no sense of belonging to the family unit. Children from foster homes seldom excelled in school or continued on with their education in institutes of higher learning; foster parents almost never contributed financially towards the children's college educations.

         Our concern that we should not bring another child into this world if there was already one who needed a home caused us to approach The Children's Home Society of California. We learned that it would take 9 months to get a child, and that it would cost $600 if we were approved. Not coincidentally, that's how long we had waited and how much it had cost to have our son Hans! After several detailed and lengthy interviews, home visits and a delay of nearly eight months, we were informed that we were considered worthy of being adoptive parents.

We had requested a young child with no known physical or mental disabilities but had told our social worker that race was not an issue. All of our requests were granted. Soon thereafter, we were told that twin girls of mulatto (Filipino-African-Caucasian) extraction had just been born and we were possibly in line. "Twins?" we gulped. Exactly as if we had learned that Jeanne would give birth to twins, we went through sudden shock. One infant was all we had banked on, and suddenly we had two! We were taken to the hospital where, through a window, we could see "our" girls. They were beautiful, and we cooed, oohed and aahed like any new mother and father would upon seeing their newborn infants for the first time. We were only upset that we couldn't take them home right away!

         We had planned a two-week family camping trip through Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, and while traveling we adapted to the idea of twins. As the shock subsided, we came to find the idea appealing and exciting. In fact, we became thoroughly entranced with the possibility and shared our excitement with the family members and relatives we visited on the way. Upon our return, we began preparing for the big homecoming, buying this and that and sharing our excitement with more friends. My parents were generally opposed to the idea of adoption, but all others shared our joy. Then, shortly after our return, we received a phone call from The Children's Home Society. Another couple had been chosen during our absence. We were crushed. It was as though our children had been taken from us. After falling in love with the twins, or the idea of having twins, we were never to see them again. We went through a brief period of bereavement.

Our social worker was aware of our feelings, and just one week later she told us that another child, born in San Francisco, was likely to be put up for adoption. The mother of this child was of German-Canadian extraction, and the father was Hawaiian-Korean. We were given little information about the parents, but did learn that the mother had gone to Hawaii for a vacation, had a fling which resulted in her pregnancy, and then returned to San Francisco to have the child. The father had wanted to get married and start a family, but the mother didn't want to marry him. Nor did she want to raise her baby alone. She would sign the legal adoption papers before returning home to Canada.

Baby Martin, later renamed Anila Johanna Saier, and subsequently nicknamed Ani, came into our home to stay at the age of 6 weeks. She was beautiful, a baby with a perfect temperament, even sleeping through the night without waking. However, Jeanne soon taught her that if she would wake up and scream a bit, she'd get a reward. So, our peaceful nights and uninterrupted sleep came to an end.

When she reached the age of about 8 months, Ani developed severe temper tantrums. She would lay belly down on the floor and kick and pound the floor with her feet and hands, screaming at the top of her lungs until she turned purple before giving up in a state of exhaustion. We didn't know what to do as nothing would appease her, and so we did just that - nothing. Fortunately for us that seemed to be the best thing to do. Within a couple of months Ani's temper tantrums subsided and disappeared, never to surface again.

Ani was an easy-going but clever child with an incredible sense of humor. Even when first learning to speak she would come out with the funniest quips that would just set us into uproarious laughter. We could never be sure if her spontaneous remarks were intentional or accidental, but they occurred too frequently to be purely accidental. In fact, Ani has always had a terrific sense of humor and a way with words, recognizing rhymes and rhythm in a way totally foreign to our other two children. This must have been a component of her genetic complement.

         Years later, abortion now legal, the ethical question of its morality still abounds. Todd questioned, "Shouldn't abortion be considered murder? Wouldn't it be better to just put the unwanted children up for adoption?" In answering these questions we have to consider our values and goals. This brings us back to the riddle pondered by the priest, minister and rabbi. The priest suggested, "Life begins with conception." But weren't the sperm and the unfertilized egg that united to give the fertilized egg both alive? Millions of sperm and thousands of eggs produced by the parents die natural deaths, and only occasionally does a lucky sperm unite with an egg. In fact, life never begins; it's part of a continuum! Is it a crime to kill the haploid sperm and egg cells that have the potential to give rise to the diploid egg? Is it a crime, then, to abort a fertilized egg? Is there really a difference? A woman's body naturally aborts over 90% of the fetuses that initiate development. Should the woman be put on trial for involuntary murder?

The fertilized egg is not a human being; it merely has the potential to develop into one, just as do the sperm and egg cells that are required for fertilization. However, it has no nerves, no feelings and no consciousness. In fact, it is a single cell that lacks all qualities we consider human. The early human embryo is in all essential respects the same as the embryo of a mouse, a fly or a sea urchin. "Ontogeny follows phylogeny" as we learned in our high school biology classes, and human characteristics emerge first very late in the developmental process. While a fetus has the potential to become a human, a fly or a sea urchin, it is not until development is advanced that it gains the essential characteristics of its species.

         The minister says, "Life begins with birth." Again, life never really begins, but at birth, the infant at least has sensation and can respond to stimuli. More importantly, for the first time, he or she has the potential to observe the world and can begin to gain a sense of self-identity. However, a full sense of identity, demarcation of self from non-self, will take much longer. This will require the conscious pursuit of a personalized form of education that continues throughout life. It is only with birth that the infant begins to gain the qualities that are normally associated with being human.

         The rabbi says, "Life begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies." Clearly, he's talking about the quality of life. For many, real quality living begins when we have full awareness of ourselves and our surroundings, and we have developed the independence to make choices according to our personal needs and preferences. It's only then that we gain control over our lives. For some, this first becomes possible when we are freed from the burden of child rearing or an unsatisfying job. For such people, the quality of life is greatly enhanced when the dreary and tedious demands of everyday family life are avoided; the obligations that accompany childbirth should be avoided by these people at all costs.

         If it is the quality of life we value, we would like to be able to guarantee that any child brought into this world will have the opportunity to grow up without the threat of starvation, in a warm, caring environment, where there is opportunity for education and fulfillment. If this is not possible, I would maintain that an infant should not be brought into the world. The abortive process occurring naturally, or induced by a physician or pill, does not cause pain or suffering and in fact usually avoids it. To return to the 1960s when abortion was illegal would be a retrograde step depriving both parents and children of choice, opportunity and freedom.

         We spend millions, probably billions of dollars, prolonging by a few days or months the lives of people who will never again achieve quality living conditions. These people may be in perpetual pain, may be terminally ill or may be comatose or brain damaged. They may have lost cognition due to debilitating conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. They may have lost control of their bodies due to an accident, a diseased state or just old age. In most states within the U.S., it is a crime for a physician or a loved one to assist a patient who wishes to die, regardless of their condition. It's also sometimes considered a crime to let a genetically diseased infant with no hope of normalcy die a natural death. Why can't we graciously accept the inevitability of the final outcome of life's struggles? Just as natural abortion is one of nature's designs to prevent the birth of defective fetuses, death of less severely diseased children provides a natural mechanism to avoid the unfortunate consequences of disease. It may be hard to accept, but death at any stage of development is a natural part of human life. As stated so beautifully by Tagore, "Death belongs to life as birth does, the walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down," and by Hesse, "Death is life, and life is death; they are locked together in an eternal, mad love-battle."

Going one step further, are we really concerned with LIFE or just with HUMAN LIFE? On the news last week, I learned that the kangaroo populations in Australia have increased to numbers in excess of what the available foliage can support. As a consequence, a decision was made by the authorities to euthanize 15,000 of these marvelous marsupials. Moreover, our "humane" societies put thousands of healthy, active, young dogs and cats to sleep every day. No legal proceedings are required to implement these decisions. What about the human population and the consequences of its unrestricted expansion? We have depleted the oceans of their denizens, have destroyed most of the rainforests, have caused global warming and have damaged the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. We are polluting the environment at exponentially increasing rates with the United States leading the pack as the #1 polluter. Clearly, our population is out of control. Euthanasia of healthy, functional, fully developed human individuals with a desire to live is out of the question for most of us, but what about an unconscious fetus or a terminally ill patient who only seeks relief from suffering? There is room for re-evaluation of the strange value system our society condones and enforces.