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Both the medical and economic arguments for euthanasia are rejected by the powerful right-to-life movement, which commands hundreds of thousands of supporters nationwide. And as on the abortion issue, their stance against mercy killing is based on a theology that places the entire debate in a different context, that of a family of faith that tends most lovingly to its weakest members. The sanctity of a human existence, they argue, does not depend on its quality or its cost. What God gives only he can take away, and to usurp that right is an act of grave hubris. "Our Lord healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the dead, gave back sanity to the deranged," writes Muggeridge, "but never did He practice or envisage killing as part of the mercy that held possession of His heart."
But even within the community of faith there is a vast gray area. Though suffering and death underlie Judeo-Christian theology, basic compassion seems to dictate that a patient in terrible pain should be allowed to die. This is a proposition that the Roman Catholic Church appears to endorse. While both suicide and mercy killing are still strictly forbidden, the Vatican in 1980 declared that refusing treatment "is not equivalent to suicide; on the contrary, it should be considered as an acceptance of the human condition . . . or a desire not to impose excessive expenses on the family or community."
Even more active measures have their clerical champions. The late British Methodist clergyman Leslie Weatherhead rejected the idea that death should be left to God. "We do not leave birth to God," he observed. "We space births. We prevent births. We arrange births. Man should learn to become the lord of death as well as the master of birth." At the very least, argue some clerics, the state should stay out of the way. "The Missouri decision severs family ties," states a brief by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, referring to the ruling against the Cruzans, "by substituting the moral and religious judgment of the state for that of the person."
There is some irony here: the Evangelical Lutherans argue for a family's right to privacy, while the state of Missouri promotes the "sanctity of life." Yet the notion that life is sacred, and worthy of the state's protection, is embedded throughout the American legal tradition, right alongside the protection of individual liberty. When the two rights are at odds, the debates grow fierce. There are specific circumstances in which a society permits the intentional taking of life: in war, in self-defense, as punishment for a heinous crime. The Cruzan case raises the question of whether personal choice and great suffering, by either patients or their families, should join that set of circumstances.
Up until now the legal debate on the right to die has been wildly confused. If a car crashes on the George Washington Bridge and the driver is left comatose, his fate in court may depend on whether the ambulance takes him to New Jersey or New York. In New Jersey his family would probably be able to tell a hospital committee to stop life support. New York State's law is stricter, and without a living will the family would have to prove in court that the driver had left "clear and convincing evidence" that he would not want to be maintained by a machine.