Frenchman in Coma Given “Death Sentence”
In June this year, a Frenchman who was left in a “vegetative state” after sustaining serious head injuries in an accident seven years ago, was in effect sentenced to death by a European Court ruling. Thirty-nine-year-old Vincent Lambert, who has quadriplegia, has been in a semi-coma since his motor-cycle accident in 2008. He is currently a patient at a hospital in the north-east city of Rheims, being kept alive by an intravenous drip and a gastric tube.
In 2013 a number of doctors, together with his wife Rachel and six of his siblings, agreed to cut off Vincent’s life support. Later, when his mother arrived at the hospital, she found him almost dead. Supported by other medical staff, his father and the two remaining siblings, she took the case to a local court, which ruled in her favour to reinstate feeding. On appeal, the case came to the State Council, the highest administrative court in France, which overturned the local court’s ruling and gave permission for the hospital to stop all nourishment and hydration. The parents and the two siblings then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights which, in June 2014, ruled that France must “suspend the execution of this judgement for the duration of the proceedings before the Court”.
The decision gave great hope to M Lambert’s parents; however, a year later, these hopes were dashed as the Strasbourg judges decided by a 12-5 majority that “French law was sufficiently clear and that there was no infringement of M Lambert’s rights under existing conventions”. Effectively a death sentence was handed down to this helpless man. However the five judges who opposed the verdict dissented strongly.
Although euthanasia as such is illegal in France, in 2005 it legalised “passive euthanasia” (the withdrawal of artificial life support); since then the President has passed a law that allows doctors, in certain cases, to place terminally-ill patients in a deep sleep until they die. “Living wills” are now legally binding in France, and Rachel Lambert has used this law, claiming that her husband had spoken about not wanting to live if he should become permanently incapacitated. Significantly, there is no written record of such a wish, although doctors state that M Lambert had shown signs of resisting treatment last year. Mme Lambert insists that her husband “would never have wanted to be kept in this state”.
However, his parents think differently, arguing that Vincent is semi-conscious and responding to stimuli. There is even a video of him on the internet, apparently listening to his mother’s voice over a telephone with some signs of recognition. She says he is showing a little progress and just needs better care, adding: “It is a scandal; our son has been sentenced to death”, while her lawyer demands that the health ministry allow Vincent to be transferred to another hospital “so that those who want to take care of him can do so rather than leave him on death row”. Rachel Lambert does not wish to have her husband moved from the hospital but, mercifully, he is still being fed artificially at the time of writing. The law demands that, as the doctor who signed off his life support no longer works there, a new doctor must be found who would be willing to authorise termination of life support.
We are seeing the insidious tentacles of the euthanasia lobby at work in many countries. Here in the UK it is not yet legal, technically. But another vote is expected soon at Westminster. The ground is shifting in a sinister direction, and France is no different. This man is in a vulnerable state, yet the person who should be supporting him – his wife – seems to want him dead, even when it appears there is some possibility, however small, of his recovery. How tragic when there is little recognition of God as the One who alone has the right to give life and to take it away. How solemn when men and women seek to overthrow God’s law. The Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13) remains as binding today as it did in Moses’ day and those who break it are just as culpable now as then. KHM
US Supreme Court Verdict on Same Sex Marriage
The US Supreme Court has ruled, by the narrowest of margins, 5 to 4, that same-sex marriage is a legal right across the United States. It means that the 14 states which prohibited same-sex marriage will no longer be able to maintain their opposition. Among them is Texas, whose Governor Greg Abbott said that the justices “have imposed on the entire country their personal
views on an issue that the Constitution and the Court’s previous decisions reserve to the people of the states”. Meanwhile President Obama rather meaninglessly declared that the ruling was a “victory for America”.
One of the minority, Justice Antonin Scalia, spoke out strongly against the majority on the Supreme Court imposing their values on “320 million Americans coast-to-coast”. He described the decision as a “judicial Putsch” and “a threat to democracy”, in which the majority discovered a right to marriage that all the US legal minds before them had overlooked. By further broadening the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee to include a universal right of same-sex marriage, he argued, the Court had given itself unlimited power. “It stands for nothing whatever, except those freedoms and entitlements this Court really likes,” he went on. It is ironic that such a major change in the law has been brought about by nine individuals in a nation which makes so much effort to promote democracy in other nations – at the same time overruling laws democratically passed in a number of US states.
More importantly, of course, the objection to same-sex marriage arises on the basis of the Scriptures – for example, Romans 1 – as has been pointed out in some recent issues of this Magazine. We do not wish to multiply notes on such subjects, but we must handle topics that are significant at the moment, and this, sadly, is one that crops up repeatedly as the frontiers of the kingdom of Christ are being – so it seems – rolled back at an alarming rate.
Dr Douglas Kelly, a Professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, has commented, “Here is the problem that the Church [in the US] now must face: since marriage of same-sex persons has now become national state policy, what if the Church follows God’s Word, and therefore refuses to perform such marriages? To refuse to do it will now be to disobey an edict of the US Supreme Court. Does that mean the state will seek to disadvantage the churches by removing their tax deduction, or putting property taxes on them? That remains to be seen.”
Clearly many American churches will welcome the decision of the Supreme Court. They are among those which have grievously departed from the authority of the Scriptures. May we pray from the heart: “O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years . . . in wrath remember mercy” (Hab 3:2).
Demise of English Culture
It is not uncommon for people to find that the familiar world of their childhood has vanished. This happened to the Eastern European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, to the Welsh miners in the “valleys”, and, to a considerable extent, to the Gaelic-speaking culture of the Scottish Highlands. Recent
figures suggest that the same is likely to happen in England during the next century. A BBC report says that 30% of the children at primary school in England are from ethnic minorities, and 27% of the children at secondary school. In the ordinary course of time this will clearly lead to a country in which a third of the people are from ethnic minorities; but in fact the proportion of children from ethnic minorities is rising rapidly, and it is likely that, before the end of the century, “indigenous” English people will cease to be an absolute majority and will be merely the largest ethnic group, and even that may not last for very long according to present birth-rates.
The same sort of thing is happening in most European countries, and one wonders to what extent the new “ethnic mix” in each of these countries is likely to retain the historic flavour of the country. Will Magna Carta and the battle of Waterloo matter in England in a hundred years’ time, or will the bulk of the people be more interested in their own history from different parts of the world? Will the majority language still be English? Already street-names are being changed and are appearing in foreign languages in some English towns. The old Europe with France, Germany, Italy and Spain, which has lasted for the last thousand years, may soon be at an end.
These are sad thoughts for the present writer, especially when one thinks of the gospel blessings that the English have enjoyed, and the eminent Christians such as John Wycliffe and William Tyndale whom God has raised up; but there are two things that make them less sad. One is that English culture seems to have degenerated into hedonism and immorality, according to the “British values” currently being imposed by our rulers. If the English and other European races are too selfish to have children because it may interfere with their pleasures, let their land be taken from them and given to others with a better view of family life. “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).
The other thought is that in the Christian Church there is “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11). The believer finds that he has far more in common with fellow-Christians of different races than he does with his irreligious kith and kin. Christians of other races already give more honour to Wycliffe and Tyndale than most English people do. We remember a Chinese lady-visitor in Aberdeen telling us forcefully, in broken English, that what was destroying Scotland was the ignorance about John Knox. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise” (Mt 21:16). The English nation may not survive, but the righteous, and the memory of the righteous, will be preserved for ever. “The memory of the just is blessed” (Prov 10:7). DWBS