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In Praise of Robert Latimer
Presented by Bob WrigleyAll his life, everything he put his mind to, My father did well. He even died better than almost anyone else. Late one afternoon, in his 83d productive year, he sat down in his chair, leaned back so it would elevate his feet and settled into his nap. When my mother took his arm to wake him for supper, she found he was stone cold dead.
It is my duty this morning to point out to you a number of awkward truths, truths that we generally avoid thinking about if we can, and #1 is that everyone in this room, and everyone we love, and who loves us, sooner or later; all of us are going to die. And truth #2 is, that, unless society can be made to change its attitudes and procedures regarding death, darned few of us are going to get out of this life as easily as my father did.
Three months after my father’s passing, I found myself in front of my parents' North Carolina home, lifting my mother, who had leukemia and diabetes, in my arms to transfer her from a wheelchair I’d just rented, to her car to go into hospital. She cried out, as every place I might put pressure to lift her, hurt her unmercifully.
Not long afterward she was in a bed in intensive care, antibiotics in a IV drip to her arm, and oxygen to a clear mask over her nose and mouth. From time to time she would regain consciousness for a moment, and would pull down the mask so she could say something. Once it was, “Does your father know?”, and later “I’m glad you’re here,” and lastly, “roast beef, 325 degrees.”
When I telephoned the hospital the next morning, I did so in dread that the treatment she was receiving would rally her just enough for her to linger painfully for months. She had told me that the closer her death would approximate my dad’s, the better. I was actually relieved to hear a nurse say she was deeply unresponsive.
At the hospital, a doctor, not hers, said she was certainly never going to return from the coma that held her, and blessedly, that she was feeling no pain.
I’d promised my mother I’d protect her if I could from hospital heroics. However, North Carolina is not a progressive state. They have chain gangs.
Apprehensively, I asked for the IV drip and the oxygen to be removed.
“Certainly,” said the doctor, “its your decision.” I’ll bring a form for you to sign.” He did, and I signed it. After some time, a nurse came and freed my mother from the connections that tied her to earth.
She remained deeply unresponsive. Her hand never again squeezed mine. Her face was placid. But her unconscious was on the job. Signals were sent of oxygen deficiency. Her breathing became steadily deeper and more rapid. The body fought as if its life depended on it, in Olympic exertions.
I thought, “Oh God, in well-meaning ignorance, have I only succeeded only in intensifying anguish in whatever last sensations were left to her?” Her struggle continued for what seemed to be a long time.
Finally, the steam-engine huffing and puffing ended, replaced by peaceful sighing, followed not long after by an end to breathing altogether.
I’m telling you this, of course, because these things can happen to anyone, and because it was an experience and a decision-making that has similarities to that of Robert Latimer, who on Monday of this week was sentenced in a Battleford court-room to a period of one year in jail for causing his daughter Tracy’s life to come to its end.
It may be some of you wouldn’t have had me “pull the pin” on my mom. Who knows, maybe her coma was merely diabetic, and with a bit of sugar or insulin, she might have come around and lived hours, weeks, even months more. Years even. Long ago, Mrs. William Wrigley Jr, the gum magnates’s widow, was kept a alive but in a coma for more than ten years, without ever regaining consciousness. With today’s technology, fully utilized, there’s no telling how long we could hold back the grim reaper from taking every semblence of human life.
You can think me wrong, that I had intervened too much, or not enough. I want you to think about these things this morning, and I don’t expect all of you to think alike. But I hope you won’t come up to me later, and tell me I did wrong. After all, she was my mother, not yours. The responsibility happened to fall on my shoulders, not yours, I made the best decisions I could.
I actually don’t expect you to criticise me, or call me a murderer or a coward. What I want to suggest is that it was Robert Latimer’s child, and the responsibility for the manner of her last days, and her leave-taking fell on his shoulders, a responsibility much heavier than which fell on mine. And, he accepted that responsibility, not dodging it as he could have. Many men with incurably sick children have abandoned their families, and they are free men. But Robert Latimer is not only criticised by our society, he is condemned.
Admittedly, what Robert Latimer should have done, and did not do, was that he should have asked permission for Tracy’s suffering to be ended from of one of the legally constituted mercy-killing bodies of authorization that exist throughout the civilized world, which give sanction to positive measures to release those who are suffering an existence few would want to experience.
The legality of such in the state of Oregon was once again reaffirmed in the elections last month, where a second referendum on doctor-assisted mercy-killing was on the ballot. It passed, again, this time 60% to 40%. A similar initiative barely lost in Washington a few years ago.
Unitarians were influential in these reforms. Ralph Mero’s Compassion in Dying’s mission statement reads “Assurance of a humane death enhances the celebration of life.” The Oregon vote made legal, to Oregon citizens, a service which the Seattle group was already providing to the citizens of the Pacific NW, a service they call “intentionally hastened death.”
To qualify for this, an individual, such as the late Sue Rodriquez of Victoria, has to meet many criteria, including:
Similar services for physician-assisted suicide are available in every locality of the Netherlands, and have been for years. But that nation, and the states of Oregon and possibly Washington (Judge Rothstein’s judgement has been appealed,) are, as far as I know, the total extent of the civilized world as I see it.
There is no such legal thing in uncivilized Saskatchewan or anywhere else in uncivilized Canada, so it is no surprise that Robert Latimer did not turn to such a body for help.
He had made a decision which he should not have had to make himself because we as a society had not provided to him, anywhere to turn. That fault is ours, not his.
A committee of the Canadian Senate not long ago recommended against legalizing mercy killing, but by a very narrow vote. It opted for better palliative care instead. The Senate commitee was chaired by Senator Joan Neiman, a prominant member of First Unitarian Congregation, Toronto.
Now I have to confess to you, Robert Latimer wouldn’t have got to first base in Oregon either, or in Washington State from Dying With Dignity. Assisted rational suicide is not available there for the inarticulate. No one else can apply for you.
That is too bad. To my mind, children who cannot speak, such as Tracy Latimer, should go to the head of the line, before any adults. Why should they be forced to endure agony we would not, just because they cannot pronounce the word “enough?”
Children also must be protected from suffering a condition of the spirit more debilitating than any physical suffering.
I’m sure you know that if a child is raised by parents who use physical and/or sexual terror as instruments of upbringing, that child is often forever psychologically damaged. Further, and it breaks your heart to hear of such cases, which are real and documented, of loving couples who adopt such a child, and find to their dismay that nothing they can do will bring their adopted son or daughter to accept them or trust their love or that of anyone else.
Psychologists have given a name to this malady, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
One group of children who get it are those born with physical disabilities, say a malformed heart for example, or who have suffered a severe childhood accident, whose lives can be saved only by a long series of painful operations and subsequent recoveries. Such children, who in the end may well be physically whole, manifest the same psychiatric disabilities as deliberately abused children. And the reason is not hard to find.
Little children are not good at seeing deferred positive outcomes. They live in the here and now. And, little children think that Mommy and Daddy can make any pain go away. So reluctant are we to disabuse them of this idea, that we often make an "owie" go away by kissing it better, or cover it with a medically unnecessary band-aid, and lots of times it even works.
And so it is that unavoidable medical procedures, if severe or prolonged, can be a torture to our young children. They cannot understand why we, who could make the pain stop, allow it to continue. The operations are, alas, just as dispiriting and destructive to them as if we had turned them over to Aushwitz’ Dr. Joseph Mengele for experimentation without anaesthesia.
The psychologist I spoke to early this week told me she had looked into the eyes of a child afflicted with this syndrome, and she told me, “I could see that something had died in there.”
Was it true that Robert Latimer really had to do what he thought he had to do?
Laura and Robert Latimer are sure. They appear bewildered that everyone else cannot see it. But we weren’t with them, and we do not know what they have known.
We do know some things though. According to the age/weight chart have at home which I got from a nurse at the Idylwyld Heath Unit the last time I had my daughter weighed there, the median weight for 3 year olds is 34 pounds. Tracy was 12 years old when she died. She weighed only three pounds more.
When Laura Latimer went to pick up her child from her bed, the day she had died, she found Tracy relaxed for the first time in memory, and she knew something had happened. The couple tell us the only way they used to be able to get her relaxed was by putting her in a hot bath, but now that her bedsores had gotten so bad, a bath was an agony she could bear only for seconds.
Physically, Tracy was about in as bad a shape you can be in, and still not be “dying.” And, I am sure she also was victim to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In an interview with The National on CBC a week ago Monday night, Hannah Gartner asked Laura Latimer if Tracy knew who she (Laura, her mother) was. Laura said that when Tracy was younger, she was certain that she did. But “after the operation (to put the steel rods in her back to straighten it, without anesthsia) after the operation she wasn’t the same.” And her father added, “She laughed when we put the iodine on her back before the back operation, but she was in terror after.”
In just ten days after the date of her death, Tracy Latimer was scheduled to be operated on for her hip. Doctors would remove the bone in her right thigh which skeletally connected her right leg to her body.
The parents had been expecting a surgery which would reconstruct the joint, and were surprised and devastated, in tears, when they heard the joint was too far gone, and instead, this was to be it. The hip was a problem because it was permanently dislocated, and caused incredible pain resulting from bone and tissue damage during her frequent epileptic seizures as she thrashed about. But, even in recovery, after surgery, Tracy could not be given any pain-killer stronger than Tylenol, because these lessened the effectiveness of her anti-seizure medication. Also, because she could no longer swallow, a feeding tube, to use Robert Latimer’s words was going to be “cut into her.”
Perhaps the Latimers had never heard of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, but they knew that during the last operation, a great part of what had made Tracy precious to them had been lost, and what had made them precious to her had been lost to her also.
So this was the time at which Robert Latimer felt forced to take a course of action, the only one he could think of that would prevent her being “mutilated,” (his word) and tortured, body and soul, yet again.
Should Robert Latimer be in jail?
There are basically four reasons for jailing anyone. First, the convicted person may be a clear and present danger to society; no one says that is the case here.
Second, to placate the victims' relatives' desire for vengeance, also not applicable.
Third, to improve the character of the convict. The Quakers invented the penetentiary so an inmate, locked in a cell with a Bible, kept from any human contact, would presumably become penetent. It didn’t work. Solitary confinement drove them crazy. Bad idea.
Which leaves deterrance. A jail sentence is thought by some to deter others from doing the same thing.
If so, what does Robert Latimer’s conviction deter us from? To those who like Job suffer greatly, and long for death, the deterrance in this incarceration instructs us, “Show them no Mercy.”
Robert Latimer did what was unlawful, but he did what was right for his child. Our community needs more Robert Latimers, and his family,.his wife and three children, need him also. It isn’t right that he is behind bars.
The next to last question: . How should the law on assisted suicide be changed?
The law on assisted suicide in Canada now is absolute prohibition.
There are problems with absolute prohibitions. One is that they do not stop people from doing that which is prohibited. They do, however, tend to prevent the prohibited activity from being done well.
And, absolute prohibitions bring into disrepute the prohibiting authority.
Prohibition of alcohol didn’t stop Americans or Canadians from drinking, but it did result in many of them drinking methyl alcohol when they thought it was ethyl, so they went blind or died, and it created vast corruption in the ranks of the police and the courts.
Prohibition of divorce (except by act of parliament, and later, except in cases of adultery) didn’t keep all families together, though it did a good job of preventing many subsequent and potentially more successful families from forming, and it led to a lot of perjery in court. More reasonable grounds for divorce did coincide with a sharp drop in Canada’s murder rate.
And the absolute prohibition by the Catholic Church of contraception has been met by North American adherents, with them absolutely ignoring the edict. Absolute prohibition of all sexual expression by priests and nuns, has contributed to many many horrendous cases of child abuse, and, to a near zero rate of applicants for the priesthood. The very existence of the church is threatened.
All authorities hate to give up power they have or think they have.
Absolute prohibitions are made and retained by those who have little trust in human beings and their ability to make wise choices, if they were given the alternative, which is “judicious flexibility.” I’m sure the main reason that legalizing therapeutic abortion has been fought tooth and nail for so many years is, the fear that women would make the wrong choice if they had a choice. If you open the door of judicious flexibility an inch, some fear, floodgates will open as well, and civilization will decend precipitously on the slippery slopes of sin. In the last few weeks, it has been hard to find an editorial on the Latimer case without one of those two phrases, or “murder is murder.”
No doubt the reason Unitarians have come to the forefront on this issue is that we are a group concerned about ethical issues little bound by dogma, and we are trusting in humankinds’ potential to choose wisely when judicous flexibility permits such choices, sometimes when it doesn’t.
The law should be changed so that assisted suicide is made legal, but only when criteria similar to those established by Compassion in Dying are be met. Only then would a a physician is granted leave to intentionally hasten death for compassionate reasons, and of course, bodies whould be established to judge if such criteria are met. And, it would be permissive only. Anyone who still wanted to suffer until the bitter bitter end still could, God’s will be done.
A more reasonable set of criteria than prohibition, in every instance in the examples I gave before, would have meant better control of the evil it was meant to stop, not less. In the case of euthanasia, the disabled community should have a strong hand in drafting those criteria, closing loopholes the able-bodied would never see. It would make its handicapped members safer, not more endangered than they are now.
One of the great tragedies of the Latimer case has been that disabled persons and their advocates have been cast in the role of adversaries to those who would be merciful to the sorely afflicted. But in the Latimer trial, “the evidence did not in any way suggest he killed his daughter because she was so disabled.” That is certainly my opinion, but those are not my words, they are the words of Mr. Justice Ted Noble in his judgement, and it is a great pity that they have not been more widely disseminated. I found them in the back pages of the Globe and Mail, and they have not been printed at all in the Edmonton Journal.
What can we do now?
You can write the Latimers in support. Their address is in the order of service.
Their legal bills are large. Without our financial help, their farm will be lost and their response to appeals may well fail for lack of resources. Including a cheque in the envelope with your letter would help. Or, you can donate without a letter through a local CIBC bank branch.
You can write to Anne McLellen of Edmonton, as she is the federal Minister of Justice, asking her to take steps which lead toward legalizing and properly regulating mercy killing. Her address is also provided to you.
And you could urge the Joint Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Churches of Edmonton, toward bringing to Canada, Legally Assisted, Intentionally Hastened Death with proper safeguards for both the articulate such as Sue Rodriguez and the inarticulate, such as Tracy Latimer.
On Monday morning of this past week, as I anxiously awaited Mr. Justice Ted Noble’s judgement, I did something I never do. I prayed to God. I not only prayed to God, I asked for a miracle. I asked that Mr. Latimer receive mercy, since commiting mercy was what he was tried and convicted of. It may have worked! Mr. Justice Ted Noble’s sentence was more merciful that we expected and feared; a small miracle at least.
In all this, we have heard more than once that life is entirely sacrosanct, and that no one should take the life of another, for whatever motive. A noble sentiment, surely, and seemingly hard to rebut. But wait a minute. Our nation in its brief history, has many times awarded medals to men, who in serving their country, have taken the lives of others.
In time of war, we have frequently honoured those who have killed other men, even those who have killed women and children with bombs and shells, in order that we as a citizenry, at home, and future generations, might be protected from the deprivation of various precious freedoms, not the least of which would be freedom from torture.
Hannah Gartner asked Laura, “Did your husband love his daughter?” and she answered, with admirable patience, “He would give his life for Tracy.” Then she added, “He already has, hasn’t he?”
Even if Robert Latimer serves all of a life sentence of 25 years in jail, I am certain that he will emerge as convinced as I am, that what he did was right, that it was the only way to save his much loved, ever so fragile child from a fate clearly worse than death.
I believe he would receive from any civilized and just society, its highest praise. He deserves, not our condemnation, but honours, even a medal for his selfless courage.
I believe he would receive from any civilized and just society, its deepest sympathy and highest praise. He deserves, not our condemnation, but honours, I believe the Order of Canada, for his selfless courage.
Bob Wrigley
December 7, 1997
Mr. Wrigley retired from the ministry many years ago. At the time of this presentation,
he was an active member of the Westwood Unitarian Congregation.
He now attends the Edmonton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers.)