"Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
Pope Benedict XVI


"It strikes me that after all the archbishops and politicos and true believers have their say on the ethics of the matter of euthanasia, bare fact sounds very compelling and very challenging."
Thomas Lynch

Introduction | Task | Two Groups | Process | Evaluation | Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

The "right to die" for seriously ill patients is one that brings with it hugely emotional sentiments for most people. Lawyers, doctors, the clergy, politicians, the elderly -- all have a stake and something to say in this issue dealing with perhaps the most delicate and important moments in a person's life: their death.

TASK

Not far in the future a court date approaches where experts and family members will gather with lawyers and judges to adjudicate the matter of a brain dead woman's possible death.

TWO GROUPS

For the purposes of this project, you must choose from one of two groups

Death With Dignity Group:

  1. husband
  2. lawyer
  3. politicians
  4. medical professionals
  5. clergy
  6. expert witnesses

Right to Life Group:

    1. parents
    2. lawyers
    3. politicians
    4. medical professionals
    5. clergy
    6. expert witnesses

and the following two roles --

  1. Theresa Szabo
  2. judge (Mr. Geib!)

 PROCESS

This project shall progress thusly:

  1. Find out what team and role you shall play in this scenario.
  2. Meet with the members of your team and take the time to see your partners in this project and what role they will play.
  3. Conduct research for your role both individually and as a team.
  4. Come together as a team to put forward a joint effort and a coordinated position and message in court and out.
  5. Prepare speeches, pamphlets, PSAs, etc. to support your point of view.
  6. Be prepared for court on the day appointed by the Judge (ie. Mr. Geib).
  7. Perform your role in court in a well-informed and effective manner.

COURTROOM HEARING

The courtroom hearing will proceed in the following order:

    1. Judge calls court to order
    2. Opening speeches by lawyers (you may use a PPT in this speech)
    3. Rebuttals by lawyers
    4. Press Conference outside
    5. Judge's ruling
    6. Dualing post-trial press conferences with public statements by family, lawyers, politicians, clergy, and ordinary citizens.

Graphically-speaking, the process will look like this:

SOCRATIC SEMINAR

After the courtroom hearings, we will have a Socratic seminar. Possible questions to bring to the seminar might be akin to the following:

EVALUATION

Be advised beforehand of the individual rubric for this project, as well as this group rubric; you will be responsible for filling out both an individual and group rubric.

CONCLUSION

Euthanasia is a subject, like abortion or the death penalty, that facilitates discussions that quickly turn into arguments and rants. It deals with ultimate subjects such as life and death, human rights, and the dignity of the individual. Most do not demonize or cast doubts on the motives on the other side, but they solidly -- and sometimes loudly and emotionally -- clash.

Mr. Geib hopes that through this project you will come closer to formulating your own informed opinion on this complex, delicate issue. As a member of the FTHS Bioscience Academy, you may find yourself one day as a medical professional (or otherwise) having more than an "academic" involvement with "the right to die." It would do well to have thought it over beforehand -- some famous literature on death and dying.  

THE DEATH BED SCENE: THE FINAL MOMENT

Compassion? Or Murder?

"People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death."
Polly Toynbee

"The truth is that we all have a right to die with dignity, which means being given good palliative care and pain relief. What the supporters of euthanasia are really arguing for is not the right to die with dignity, but the right to be killed. They are demanding of doctors that they become killers."
Archbishop Peter Smith

"Am I a criminal? The world knows I'm not a criminal. What are they trying to put me in jail for? You've lost common sense in this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma."
Jack Kevorkian

"Euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person."
Pope John Paul II
Evangelium Vitae, 1995

"I'm for absolute autonomy of the individual, and an adult, competent woman has absolute autonomy. It's her choice."
Jack Kevorkian

"Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless."
Pearl S. Buck

"This life in us. . . however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened. To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish. Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
Malcolm Muggeridge

"My intent was to carry out my duty as a doctor, to end their suffering. Unfortunately, that entailed, in their cases, ending of the life."
Jack Kevorkian

"I never want to wonder whether the physician coming into my hospital room is wearing the white coat of the healer or the black hood of the executioner."
Alexander Capron

NOT copyrighted - SPREAD THE WEALTH!

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."  
-- Thomas Jefferson