Each of us can be a beacon of hope

One Bright Light for Life

By Don Parker

As NRLC's Membership Development Director, I often receive very powerful and moving stories from our members, tales of lives saved, sacrifices made, victories won in defense of life. There are far too many to relate, but they always give me confidence that our movement has the tremendous dedication needed to prevail and return our society to a respect for all human life.

This includes the unborn, of course, but also those who are born and face special challenges. Their stories remind us that every life is a gift not only to the person living it, but to the rest of us as well.

I thought of this as I read the story of Joanne Walsh, a long-time pro-life activist from Eaton, Ohio, who passed away last year.

At age 17, just as she was to enter her senior year in high school, Joanne was stricken with polio. She spent 23 days in an iron lung and five more months in recuperation and therapy before being allowed to return home. She would never walk again.

Nevertheless, she worked hard, caught up in her studies, and graduated with her senior class. Confined to a wheelchair at a time when few buildings were easily accessible, Joanne attended college and was married shortly after her graduation in 1954. I'll let her husband, Robert, tell the rest of the story:

"Our union produced five children, all of whom she raised from her wheelchair, without assistance. Only God knows how she did it. Going off each day to my job as a public school teacher I left with full confidence that she was equal to the task.

"Joanne was a strong, brave woman but she was frightened by those who would 'improve' the world by getting rid of all those deemed undesirable by some, such as the handicapped, elderly, 'unwanted' children, and so forth. So in 1987 we helped start Right to Life of Preble County here in Eaton, and for the first four years she served as secretary-treasurer.

"Here is just one example of her spunk: In 1981, at age 40, I had a heart attack and spent three weeks in the hospital. Coming home, I was greeted by her saying, 'I have learned to drive.'

She did and took over some tasks that had traditionally been mine. The woman was a marvel. I have told you only a small part of her remarkable story. In her final years she had to deal with hearing loss and increasing blindness. She dealt with these adversities the same way she did the others, with faith in God and a ready smile. The polio finally did its work. She died of respiratory failure attributed to post-polio syndrome just 10 days after our 46th wedding anniversary. I am very proud that she chose to share her life with me. I was truly blessed."

How far our nation has come. My own father had two strains of polio in the early 1950s, and although he almost completely recovered, he once heard his doctors talking when they thought he was unconscious and couldn't hear. At first, they said he wouldn't live, and then, when it appeared he might survive, they said he might well be a "vegetable." Today, patients like Joanne or my father might be candidates for death by denial of treatment - - so-called "passive" euthanasia.

Tragically, it happens. Just the other day, I was reading a Los Angeles Times article about Robert Wendland, a victim of a serious automobile accident seven years ago. The article lists some of the things that Mr. Wendland can do:

"Robert Wendland, 48, can toss and catch a ball from a hospital gurney and follow simple commands. . . . He is aware of his environment, experiences pain and shows flashes of what appears to be anger and frustration."

According to the Times, Wendland's wife is insisting the hospital cease feeding him through a tube, and have him die of starvation. Wendland's mother, Florence Wend-land, and other family members are conducting a heroic legal fight to allow Robert to live. [See also the story about Mr. Wendland on page 10.]

But a California Court of Appeal has ruled that his wife may have the feeding stopped. Florence Wendland has taken the case to the California Supreme Court to save Robert's life. In one of the great understatements of the whole euthanasia debate, the Times offered the opinion that "a court decision allowing her to remove Robert's life support would significantly widen the scope of laws that permit surrogates to terminate treatment for loved ones. Accident victims, stroke patients and perhaps many sufferers from advanced cases of Alzheimer's disease could all be affected."

And polio victims, I might add, if the disease hadn't been largely eradicated in developed nations decades ago.

Is the goal of medicine to be the eradication of people with diseases, instead of the eradication of disease itself? Consider what has happened in the Netherlands.

Late last year, the lower house of the Dutch Parliament passed a law to formally allow euthanasia, which has been permitted by the judicial system for several years. Children as young as 16 will be able to request active euthanasia, that is, a lethal injection from a doctor, without a parent's consent. Children 12 and older may request euthanasia if a parent agrees.

Western society has jumped so enthusiastically into the abyss that it isn't even aware that it barely touched the slippery slope on its way to bottom.

On issues like abortion, euthanasia, and now even infanticide, we are all going to wake up one day and realize just how far we've fallen, and how steep that incline is and how hard it will be to get out.

In the meantime, many good people will have died and countless others will have their lives devalued by those whose guiding principle is not the precious value of every life, but what is convenient and expedient for themselves at the time.

As our society finds itself near the bottom of that pit, trying make our way back up the greased and treacherous steps of the slippery slope that was so easy to glide down, we will find some bright lights beckoning us upward to where we are supposed to be, to how we are supposed to be. Those lights will grow stronger as we make our way, with great difficulty, nearer and nearer to the top. And at some point we will realize that they aren't lights at all, but the examples set by people like Joanne Walsh and Florence Wendland, and the millions of people who fight in their own way for the right of every person to enjoy their God-given right to life.

And as we use the beacon provided by a Joanne Walsh or Florence Wendland to help us see our way, remember that we are a light to others. What we say to educate our neighbors, how we vote, what we do to help the pro-life movement will hasten the day when society finally rejects mere convenience and expedience, and embraces what should truly be valued--the precious gift of life.