Birth & Death

On both sides of the Atlantic, D.D.s and M.D.s last week took strong positions on matters of life and death.

P: In New Haven, Conn., three Protestant clergymen filed a suit in Superior Court to contest the constitutionality of Connecticut's 79-year-old law forbidding the spread of birth control information. The law, originally coupled with a ban on the sale, distribution or printing of obscene literature, has been under attack for years by physicians and their patients, but is regularly kept in force by the state senate, strongly supported by the large urban concentrations of Roman Catholic constituents. The New Haven ministers --the Rev. C. Lawson Willard of Trinity Episcopal Church, Luther R. Livingston of Bethesda Lutheran Church, and George Teague of the First Methodist Church--declared that they were "bound by the teachings of the church and our c n religious beliefs to counsel married parishioners on the use of contraceptive devices and to advise and counsel to use same and to give such advice in premarital counseling."

P: In London, England, the Rev. Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, past president of Britain's Methodist Conference, came out in favor of legalizing mercy killing. General Practitioner Dr. Maurice L. Millard, 58, whose father founded England's Euthanasia Society 22 years ago, had touched off a debate on the subject in the British press with his bland statement in a Rotary Club speech that he had recently given a suffering patient, near death from cancer, a lethal dose of a drug, after she had "made her peace with God" and settled her affairs. "What I did . . . was to give her a drug to keep her asleep until she died," explained Dr. Millard. Many other M.D.s approved, and Methodist Weatherhead rallied to their cause. But, added Weatherhead, "it is not fair that the community should leave this responsibility to the merciful feelings of one doctor, or that a patient's escape from suffering should depend on one doctor's views." Instead, he recommended legislation so that "a patient suffering agonies of useless pain from an incurable disease could slip away in peace and dignity with the help of a government-appointed, medically qualified referee. I myself would be willing to give Holy Communion to the patient and to be present with the doctor concerned so as to share the responsibility." It is "nonsense," he added, to hold that death "should be 'left to God.' Do we leave birth to God?" Replied Roman Catholic Bishop George P. Dwyer of Leeds: "A doctor may give a drug to relieve pain, even if he foresees that the life of the patient may be shortened thereby . . . But death must always be indirect."

P: A committee of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) ruled that artificial insemination of a wife by someone other than her husband is a violation of the marriage vows; without the husband's consent, it should be grounds for divorce. Furthermore, "we do not think a husband ought to give his consent to insemination," said the committee report. "We doubt if he would in his heart ever do more than unwillingly agree."

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