The Growing Trend Toward Involuntary Euthanasia.

On January 12, 2001, an elderly California man with Alzheimer's disease fell in his home and broke his hip. He was taken to a nearby hospital, St. John's Health Center, where doctors determined that he would need surgery to insert a pin, a plate, and screws to repair the injury in a procedure that would take little more than an hour.

Four years earlier, the Alexian Brothers Hospital in San Jose, California, had issued its policy on "non-beneficial treatment." Under the guidelines any treatment or testing other than comfort care would be denied to patients like this elderly man, who suffered from "terminal illness with neurological ... or other devastating disease." Further, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was strictly forbidden for patients with severe, irreversible dementia.

Fortunately, this particular elderly man was Ronald Reagan and he was taken to St. John's Health Center, where surgeons were more than willing to treat him. On January 20, 2001, Mr. Reagan went home, seven days after his successful hip surgery. His doctors reported that his recovery was quick and his appetite hearty.

One wonders what might have happened to Mr. Reagan had he been brought to the Alexian Brothers Hospital instead. Would the hospital have denied Reagan's hip surgery based on his "terminal" Alzheimer's diagnosis?

[Clinically, Alzheimer's is defined as a terminal disease, although patients can and do live with it for many years.]

If the surgery had been agreed to, but followed by complications, would the hospital have refused at that point to provide CPR?

Since its inception, the pro-life movement has been strongly committed to protecting the lives of vulnerable older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia. Policies like the one described above, which deliberately deny lifesaving medical treatment to patients because of their disabilities, amount to involuntary euthanasia. Doctors make these life-and-death decisions based on their own personal views about a good "quality of life," but they are sometimes in direct opposition to what the patient and family want.