Abstract
There are the questions relating to the freedom of people to marry or use mind-affecting substances, one the one hand, and, on the other, the even more central ones involving hegemony and the environment. But further key concerns for people in general, let alone pagans in particular, that involve the ethics of choice and possibility are the right to take one’s own life and that of another. Quality of life is affected not only by how we derive the energy needed for our lives and lifestyles but also by how we are free to live day-by-day without the threat of bodily harm and/or loss of life. War is one thing; suicide bombing is another. The former is political and results from the decisions of public policy or the loss of effective governmental policy. The latter is also political inasmuch as it is an attempt to challenge the state and its policies. In this chapter, I wish not only to examine such death issues as abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia but also those actions in which there is explicit intent to cause unexpected fatalities. War, of course, has the aim of destroying belligerent enemies, but in today’s world terrorist activity also seeks to decrease the quality of life of others or eliminate it altogether.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Sol Sanders (2005), “That there is a general self-pitying commonality throughout the wretched Moslem world – based on legitimate and fanciful grievances, many dating back to European colonial pasts – is not to be denied.” He adds, “That Moslem extremists exploit this among young tortured souls is again undeniable. But equally clear is the particularism of local situations which feed into international terrorism.”
- 2.
The present American stance that appears to thrive on the idea or fact of ‘getting away with something’ is a highly seductive myth. It is a marketable one as well. Many people apparently like to buy into it. Vis-à-vis the rest of the world, this, alas, has seemingly become the characteristic American position. Europe, by contrast, teeters on the double-edged sword of support for this American ethos. The present hope is that Europe is in some sense yet a child – a child that wishfully is on the verge of growing up. Once it does, it will develop a voice of its own. Increasingly from a European perspective, the historical annals that are yet to be written will place Bush and Cheney into the same infamous category along with Hitler. Both the Americans and the German were originally democratically elected – however questionable this might be in the American case. For the view that the “American invasion of Iraq has boosted recruitment for Al Qaeda, IS and other jihadist groups, increased Muslim hatred of the West, injected a dangerous instability into a turbulent region and given suicide bombers new cause for their zeal,” see Cohen (2005). Cohen, however, offers this scenario as only one possibility and suggests that a new political awareness throughout the Middle East of liberalism and democracy may be producing different results.
- 3.
For the ‘Persian inversion’, vide York (1995:164–84).
- 4.
To distinguish terrorism specifically from the broader range of violent action, we need to resort to some kind of definition. While the word itself was first formulated during the Reign of Terror by the Jacobin Club in post Revolutionary France (1793–1794), earlier illustrations of terrorism can be allocated to the Jewish Zealots of first-century Palestine, the Thuggee cult in seventh-century India, and the Shiite Assassins of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The United States State Department defines terrorism today as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”: “Terrorism: Questions and Answers” (Council on Foreign Relations): http://cfrterrorism.org/home/ (accessed 2 February 2006). See further: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/info/c16718.htm (accessed 27 July 2014). In line with this understanding, the following would also have to be included as terrorists: the late-nineteenth-century anti-tsarist populist Narodnaya Volya (‘People’s Will’) in Russia, the 1867-launched Irish Republican Brotherhood or Fenians, the 1893-founded Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and the second-half-of-the-1940s Zionist Irgun organization within the British Mandate of Palestine. While the Narodniks and Anarchists of Russia were engaged in ideological political struggles that ultimately had their own success, the independent states of the Republic of Ireland, the Republic of Macedonia and the nation of Israel were the final results of terrorist activity that, in hindsight, can be attributed to ‘freedom fighters’. In other words, geopolitical change has occasionally come about as the consequence of terrorist violence.
- 5.
The United States Department of Defense has also defined terrorism as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological” (Zalman u.d.) For the Code of Federal Regulations’ definition of terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives,” see http://www.fema.gov/hazards/terrorism/ (accessed 2 February 2006) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (2006).
- 6.
- 7.
Some of the more prominent examples include the Front de Libération du Québec (or felquistes), the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. “Suicide terrorists were thought to compel American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983, Israeli forces to leave most of Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995, and the Turkish government to grant measures of autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990’s” (Pape 2003). A more recent example of a successful resolution is to be seen in the peace agreement signed on 27 March 2014 between the Philippine government of Benigno Aquino III and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that granted greater political autonomy for the Muslim areas of southern Mindanao
(http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/philippines-muslim-rebel-group-sign-peace-deal-23077896 – accessed 5 April 14) or Sabapathy (2014).
- 8.
http://cfrterrorism.org/home/. In fact, the website lists six types of terrorism: nationalist, religious, state-sponsored, left-wing, right-wing and anarchist. The site designates over three dozen terrorist groups: Al-Qaeda, the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Egyptian Jamaat al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Nigerian Boko Haram, the Somaila-based al-Shabaab, the Kashmir Militant Extremists (e.g., Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen group, Jaish-e-Muhammad organization, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba), the Iranian Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the Iraqi Abu Nidal Organization, the Iraqi-Islamists/Kurdish separatists Ansar al Islam (Supporters of Islam) as well as their offshoot Ansar al Sunna (Supporters of Sunni), the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Chechnya-based separatists, the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement in China, the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey (PKK), the Jemaah Islamiyah of Southeast Asia, the separatist Abu Sayyaf Group of The Philippines, the Israeli extremists of Kach and Kahane Chai, the Irish Republican Army, the IRA splinter groups such as the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, the Northern Ireland Loyalist Paramilitaries (the Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF, the Ulster Defence Association or UDA, the Loyalist Volunteer Force or LVF, the Red Hand Defenders and the Orange Volunteers), the separatist Euskadi ta Askatasuna or ETA (Basque Fatherland and Liberty) in Spain, the leftist November 17 and Revolutionary People’s Struggle in Greece, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, the sectarian Aum Shinrikyo (home-based in Japan), the Columbian rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia or FARC, the National Liberation Army or ELN and the United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia or AUC, the Peruvian leftists of Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru), and various radical American militant extremists (the Weathermen Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Armed Forces for Puerto Rican National Liberation or FALN, the Ku Klux Klan, the Christian Patriot movement). See,
e.g., Moran (2006) andthe Country Reports on Terrorism 2012 (published May 2013): http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2012/209979.htm (U.S. Department of State 2013). For a succinct listing of the ‘U.S. Government Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations’, see http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2012/ (U.S. Department of State 2014) (accessed 5 April 2014).
- 9.
The United States has singled out the nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan as sponsors of terrorism: Luxner (2010).
- 10.
Noam Chomsky (Institute for Policy Studies) argues that the CIA support of Guatemalan death squads or of the Baathist violent overthrow of the Iraqi government in the 1960s already qualified the USA as “a leading terrorist state” (Chomsky 2001); “Another problem with the official definitions of terror is that it follows from them that the US is a leading terrorist state” (Chomsky 2003:55); and Chomsky (2002). For more on political critic Noam Chomsky, see also Lennard (2013). To this, the underwater mines planted by the CIA in the Corinto harbor of Nicaragua would be one more illustration. Further examples of state terrorism could be argued for the dropping of atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Luftwaffe’s bombing of London or the Royal Air Force’s bombing of Berlin, Dresden and other German cities.
- 11.
Pape (2003), however, argues that nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns are secular with their specific strategic goal “to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.” Whether Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Chechnya or Saudi Arabia, it is political self-determination that is behind the terrorist campaigns. Cohen (2005), by contrast, suggests “fanatical Islamic fundamentalism, anti-imperial nationalism, anti-Zionism, or simply the defense of threatened privilege” as all possible causes for the continuation and augmentation of terrorist violence.
- 12.
Religious forms of terrorism are found among Israeli extremists, American white-supremacists, ethnic pagan fascists, the Japanese doomsday sect of Aum Shinrikyo, Irish Christian separatists and loyalists and the Hindu Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka. Indeed, in 1995, “nearly half of the 56 known, active international terrorist groups were religiously motivated”: Bruce Hoffman (RAND): cited in Kawilarang (2006:387).
- 13.
Among the foremost Islamist terrorist groups, there are Al-Qaeda, ISIL/Islamic State, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and Séléka – with factional bands ranging in addition across Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, Central African Republic, Chechnya, China, Kashmir, The Philippines and Southeast Asia. Pape (2003), however, on the basis of studying every suicide bombing and attack worldwide between 1980 and 2001, denies that there is much “connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any religion for that matter.” Of the 188 incidents he uncovers, 75 were committed by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, “a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion.” Pape’s prediction, that “Even if U.S. intentions in Iraq are good, the presence of Americans there will continue to help terrorist groups recruit more people willing to blow themselves up in the war against America,” would seem to have been accurate. But if the “presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism [was] wrongheaded” in 2003, it no longer appears to be the case in the 5 years since the compilation of Pape’s original database. For a more recent discussion of Pape’s ideas, now with an extended database to 2004, see his 2005 interview with Scott McConnell (Pape 2005). For the database from 1981 to 2011, see http://cpost.uchicago.edu/search.php (posted 14 October 2011).
- 14.
See Gat (2006) and Dillinger (2006). The site http://www.vaemergency.com/threats/terrorism/toolkit/terrguide/weapons/incendiary.htm (accessed 3 February 2006) is no longer available.
- 15.
During a 17 May 2005 interview with Leonard Weinberg, author of Global Terrorism: A Beginner’s Guide: see Kagan (2005). Weinberg himself stresses that “terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology or a doctrine.”
- 16.
As Cohen (2005) explains, citing the words of Palestinian psychologist Dr. Eyad Serraj, in “the culture of martyrdom – … shame is transposed into honor through self-sacrifice and defeat is conquered by assuming ‘the ultimate power, the power to kill’; … martyrs [are] on the level of prophets and so [cannot] be questioned ‘although their acts are devastating to us politically’.”
- 17.
Stanley (2005a).
- 18.
Stanley (2005b) sees al-Qaeda “[a]s the heirs to a bizarre 1960s and 1970s cult [Takfir wal-Hijra ‘Excommunication and Holy Flight/Emigration’] that condemned mainstream Muslim society to apostasy, they bear about as much relation to the Muslim world as the Charles Manson cult bore to the Western world.” Moreover, he adds, “[t]hey are willing to break traditional Muslim prohibitions in order to infiltrate Muslim and Western societies alike.”
- 19.
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004413.htm (accessed 3 February 2006 but no longer available). While the Danish cartoon publications, followed by their republication in France-Soir and other European newspapers, have caused Muslim dissension across the world, the volatility of the situation cannot be attributed to this particular event but rather to the current polarization between Western and Islamic cultural values. The prophet Mohammed has long been depicted, and often satirically, despite the prohibition against his portrayal. For the imagery of Mohammed since the Middle Ages in both the West and the Muslim world, see http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/ (accessed 3 February 2006).
- 20.
Succinctly, even though this was the response enunciated by United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair and British Muslim community leaders (see Sanders 2005): “no cause however moral justifies … immoral horror”. In the very least, for a pagan, any cult of martyrdom and carnage sacrifice transgresses the limits of good taste.
- 21.
See Cholbi (2004): Section 3.2 (“The Deontological Argument [for Suicide] from the Sanctity of Life”) at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suicide/ (accessed 18 February 2006). See also Borger (2005) who considers that, before the Terri Schiavo case, “the sides in America’s culture wars were largely played out in black and white: for or against capital punishment, for or against abortion.” The Schiavo debate threw America’s former moral certitude deeply into question. Still, Borger asks, “How can a true ‘pro-life’ politician … also support the death penalty?” and she quotes Senator Sam Brownback (Kansas), “If we’re trying to establish a culture of life, it’s difficult to have the state sponsoring executions.”
- 22.
Robinson (1996–2014) – italics in original.
- 23.
The child was usually placed in a clay pot and sometimes was rescued by a childless woman or by an entrepreneur who brought the foundling up as a slave (Connolly and Dodge 2001:32).
- 24.
Aristotle, Politics 7.16. Greek philosophical thought held that the male embryo developed life and sensation not until after forty days from the time of conception; female embryos, being considered slower, developed only after eighty days. See “Abortion in ancient history” (BBC u.d.): http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/abortion/legal_history1.shtml (accessed 11 February 2006) – now http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/legal/history_1.shtml (accessed 15 June 2015).
- 25.
Stark (1996).
- 26.
E.g., Exodus 21:22–3, Leviticus 27:6, Numbers 5:12–31. See also Numbers 3:15. The modern Jewish understanding is that the fetus is pre-human and only becomes fully human with the first breath of the child as it emerges from the birth canal.
- 27.
Didache 2.2. See Robinson (1996–2014).
- 28.
For instance, John Harris, a member of Britain’s Human Genetics Commission and bioethics professor at Manchester University, does “not see any moral difference in aborting a fully grown unborn baby at 40 weeks and committing infanticide. … He did not believe there was any ‘moral change’ that occurred during the journey down the birth canal” (Rogers 2004).
- 29.
According to bioethicist Bill Allen, “having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood” (Leo 2005). Other criteria include “rationality, the capacity to experience desire, or the ability to value’s one’s own existence,” but Leo in connection with awareness alone contends that “Fetuses, babies, and Alzheimer’s patients are only minimally aware and might not fit this definition of personhood” (ibid.) Pagans are likely to agree.
- 30.
Partial birth abortion (PBA) is the colloquial expression for ‘dilation and extraction’ procedures (D&X, Intact D&X and intrauterine cranial decompression). It is employed when a fetus is 5 months or more.
- 31.
The Romans presumably had a ritual custom in which the mother placed the newborn child before the threshold of the home. If the father believed the child to be his, he brought it inside, but if for some reason he did not want the newborn, the baby was left on the street. Christians were the ones who were alleged to have ‘scooped’ up these unwanted children to raise them in their own faith.
- 32.
Driscoll and Rogers (2004:2): In Britain, “Spontaneous abortion is known to be common and many embryos are lost before a woman even realises she is pregnant. Anything up to 80 % of fertilised eggs are lost naturally during the first two weeks of pregnancy.”
- 33.
Ibid.: recognizing that the approximately 185,000 abortions that occur in the United Kingdom each year are simply abortion on demand, the legal situation still is that “two doctors must attest to the mental stress that a women [sic.] will suffer if the pregnancy is to continue. But nobody seems to have come across a case where a woman was refused an abortion, other than the few – 100 or so a year at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, for instance – who are turned away because they are too late.”
- 34.
See further Harrow (u.d.)
- 35.
Deane-Drummond (2004:134n64).
- 36.
Taylor (2003:30) refers to the ‘slippery slope’ arguments used to argue against stem cell research: involving first the willful taking of human life but eventually to the harvesting of organs from defective fetuses, next handicapped infants, “and then, who knows.” He concludes that “by that kind of reasoning we should not allow even the occasional use of alcohol, or divorce, or homosexual unions, or indeed, anything to which someone has an aversion.” For more innovative and non-embryonic ways of securing stem cells, see, e.g., http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28106253, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1842061.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/san_francisco/1177766.stm (accessed 28 July 2014).
- 37.
As Cahill (2005:2) points out, “Religious traditions, themes, and symbols expressing an experience of or belief in a transcendent being or power and the nature of human life in relation to the transcendent do not offer many specific guidelines for the development of genetic research or its use.” There is a noticeable silence, in fact, from within the various traditions of the world’s major religions concerning bioethical research issues and their application. Cahill adds, however, that religions “create a context of values, dispositions, and practices within which specific ethical questions can be taken up.” This is no less true for paganism despite the non-transcendent bias of the pagan context as well as Cahill’s assumption that the transcendent framework is “key” to any religious perspective.
- 38.
Referring to George W. Bush, former New York governor, Mario Cuomo (2004), asked, “Aren’t the people of this nation who do not share the president’s religious views on what is ‘sacred’ entitled to reasons for denying the benefits of stem cells that are based on science and not just his personal religious commitments?” In calling for a critical “conversation” about values, Cuomo asserted: “The president now has the opportunity … to lead the nation in a discussion concerning abortion and embryonic stem cells, beginning with the answers to some of the critical underlying questions” (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-12-05-values-cuomo_x.htm). Robert Lechler (2005:13) acknowledges the ethical issue involved with the use of stem cells for tissue replacement and repair which, beside assisting to overcome the problems and shortfall of organ donation, might become applicable to “defects in the brain that cause debilitating conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, to replacement of insulin-secreting cells as a cure for diabetes, to cartilage and bone repair for worn-out joints, and retinal repair for a form of eye degeneration that affects many people as they age.” He acknowledges further that “a relatively advanced and regulatory structure in the UK … allows the generation of human embryonic stem cells and their use for research purposes.”
- 39.
See further, “The Ethics of Biotechnology” and “The Ethics of Cloning” in Deane-Drummond (2004:86–110, 111–135).
- 40.
Barth Maria Knoppers in Cahill (2005:162).
- 41.
Ibid. p. 163.
- 42.
Clark, “Thinking about Technology: toward a theory of just experimentation” in Deane-Drummond et al. (2002:165–77) – see page 175. The major problem in genetic manipulation and reproductive cloning might be their costly availability to only the super rich rather than to humanity in general.
- 43.
On 20 April 2006, the BBC World Service reported an Amnesty International claim that currently there are approximately 200,000 people worldwide on deathwatch. The country signaled out as having the highest rate of executions was China – followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
- 44.
The notion of the Christian crucifixion grows out of this pagan substratum of substitutional atonement offering to the godhead.
- 45.
See, for example, Singer (1994:76f).
- 46.
Exodus 21:23–5.
- 47.
For example, in eighteenth century Britain, stealing an animal as well as cutting down a tree without permission from its owner were both crimes punishable by death. See http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/history/history.PDF – the Michigan State University and Death Penalty Information Center (2014 – accessed 29 February 2014). Between 1823 and 1837, the number of crimes that were punishable by death were reduced from the 222 they had reached in the eighteenth century to just over 100.
- 48.
Beccaria published Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (‘On Crimes and Punishments’) in 1764. Tuscany (1786), the American state of Michigan (1847), the Roman Republic (1849) and Portugal (1867) – apart for a brief period in China (747–759) – were the first to ban capital punishment constitutionally.
- 49.
Harris Poll (2004): www.prodeathpenalty.com/news.htm; Death Penalty Infomration Center (2014): http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/national-pollsand-studies#Pew2014 (accessed 6 April 2014). On the European outrage over the US execution of Troy Davis, see Sayre (2011).
- 50.
Certainly any such efforts to empty the death row of a prison such as that of San Quentin in California because of agitation by property developers who wish to demolish the prison and build leisure homes on the site would be something that would be roundly condemned by ethically minded persons of all faiths. On the 21st of February 2006, the scheduled execution of Michael Morales was cancelled because no physician or nurse was willing to attend – a requirement in case of problems with lethal injection. See http://www.deathpenalty.org/pdf_files/MichaelMorales.pdf – accessed 23 February 2006; no longer available. The execution of Dennis McGuire in the state of Ohio on the 16th of January 2014 with a combination of previously untested lethal injection drugs was controversially “prolonged”: Strauss (2014). For the Joseph Wood case, see BBC News (2014).
- 51.
“In euthanasia, the doctor actively ends the patient’s life, whereas in assisted suicide they [sic.] provide the information or means for patients to do it themselves” (Ellis 2005:5).
- 52.
- 53.
Campbell (2000–2002).
- 54.
http://www.lamp.ac.uk/~noy/death9.htm (accessed 18 February 2006; no longer available). See also, Plato, Phaedo 61b-62c as well as Laws 9.854a3-5 & 873c-d.
- 55.
Bible.org (2013). The ASBS site (http://dumkopf.stormpages.com/) suggests that the Christian condemnation of suicide was part of the Church’s response to the heretical sect of Donatists in the fourth century who held to a militant separation of church and state that encouraged martyrdom. Since Donatism was founded and flourished principally in North Africa until the Islamic conquest of the region, “there has been some speculation that Donatist beliefs may have influenced that new religion” (Korngold 2006:xvi). The Christian bias against suicide is essentially the result of influences from Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.
- 56.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 5.11.1138a5-14.
- 57.
Natural History 2.27.
- 58.
Seneca, De Ira 3.15.4. See also Seneca’s Letter 70.14-16, 20, 23 & 26 (e.g., 15: “If you enjoy life, live. If not, you can return to the place you came from.”) In Seneca’s estimation, self-death is better than being forced to kill another. It provides release from torment and humiliation.
- 59.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.30.74. See further 1.34.84. Aelian (3.37) relates the Ceans’ custom for the old and useless to assemble and drink hemlock so as no longer to be a burden.
- 60.
- 61.
Concerning pagan views on suicide today, for instance, Starhawk, NightMare et al. (1997:251) claim that “Pagan ethics do not tell us exactly what and what not to do. They are situational in principle. Our core ethical statement, our ‘golden rule’, is the Wiccan Rede: ‘An it harm none, do what you will’. While committed to an interpersonal ethic of harmlessness, we resist any arbitrary restriction on personal autonomy. Pagans are free to do anything they want, including end their lives, unless it is clear that doing so will harm others.” But they also add that there could be some purpose in keeping alive “even in a damaged and hurting body. Although Pagans do not value suffering for its own sake, many of us are committed to being ‘willing to suffer to learn’” (p. 255). But see also Deborah Oak Cooper’s “Suicide: One Witch’s Perspective” (pp 262–268).
- 62.
Robinson (1997–2010).
- 63.
For an instance of Dutch euthanasia in a severe dementia case, see DutchNews.nl. (2011).
- 64.
John Leo (2005), in fact, questions whether “Michael Schiavo’s long-delayed recollection of Terri’s wish to die, supported only by hearsay from Michael’s brother and a sister-in-law, met the standard for ‘clear and convincing evidence’ of consent.”
- 65.
Leo (2005) goes further in questioning the neutrality involved with this case and states: “Non-intervention is morally suspect when there is strong reason to wonder whether the decision-maker in the family has the helpless person’s best interests at heart.” Among the various websites devoted to this case, for a presentation of issues and history, see Lynne (2005).
- 66.
http://www.terrisfight.org/ (accessed 19 February 2006); now renamed Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network (accessed 29 July 2014).
- 67.
Robinson (1997–2010). See also for physician-assisted suicide, http://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/pas.html (accessed 17 February 2006) as well as the Longwood University site http://www.longwood.edu/library/suic.htm (formerly accessed 19 February 2006). For the Swiss charity Dignitas whose motto is “Live with dignity, die with dignity,” see “Dignitas: Swiss suicide helpers” (BBC News 2003): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2948665.stm, and for the Dutch hospice by the same name: http://www.hospicehoorn.nl/ (both accessed 23 February 2006).
- 68.
For a pagan prayer “For One Assisting Someone to Die,” see Starhawk, NightMare et al. (1997:255f).
- 69.
The adoptive parents of unmarried Karen Anne Quinlan were originally denied the right to turn off their daughter’s life-sustaining respirator by a Morris County, New Jersey court in 1975. The court reversed its decision the following year, but even with the respirator removed, Quinlan continued to live and only succumbed to pneumonia in 1985. Following an auto accident which left the 25 year-old Nancy Cruzan in a permanent vegetative state in 1983, her parents were finally granted the right to remove their daughter’s feeding tube in 1990 by the State of Missouri after previously receiving a negative ruling by the US Supreme Court. In both the Quinlan and Cruzan cases, no spouse existed and the legal guardianship of the parents was not in doubt. Even had there been a spouse, there is little likelihood that either case would have followed a substantially different trajectory. Patricia Devin (“The Releaser,” Starhawk, NightMare et al. 1997:256–62) discusses some of the emotional nuance involved with ending life support and supplies both “A Ritual for Cutting the Cord” and “A Ritual for Healing After Cutting the Cord.”
- 70.
- 71.
In Britain, for instance, “Growing numbers of GPs [General Physicians] … are now demanding the right to help patients end their lives with dignity” (Ellis 2005:1). The British Medical Association opposes both euthanasia and assisted suicide, but Ellis (p. 5) finds that “Research suggests 81 per cent of the public think someone with an unbearable illness should be allowed to receive medical help to die.” She cites Dr. Paddy Glackin, a Central London GP, who says, “… death is a part of life and a good death is part of a good life” (ibid.) In calling for the government to legalize assisted suicide, Glackin asks that the legislation permit decisive roles in such matters to be granted to doctors, spouses, children, friends and lovers.
- 72.
Section 3.2 (“The Deontological Argument [for Suicide] from the Sanctity of Life”) at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suicide/ (Cholbi 2004).
- 73.
Taylor (2003:30).
- 74.
Ibid.
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York, M. (2016). Terrorism and Death Issues. In: Pagan Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18923-9_12
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