Anna Hanger, a senior at Manchester High School in Midlothian, took fourth place in the National Right to Life Oratory Contest on July 1, held during the NRL Convention in Arlington. Her speech is printed in full below.

Okay, so it’s the year 2000. We finally crossed over that celebrated bridge into the 21st century -- and without the collapse of our infrastructure, without a crash of the stock market, and without our strategic defense systems being thwarted. Yes, even without a flickering of the lights. Nevertheless, the 20th century will be remembered one thousand years from now as an epic age of human progress unrivaled in the history of mankind. The human condition has improved more in the United States over the past 100 years than in all the previous centuries since man first appeared on the earth.

One measure of progress (according to Stephen Moore writing for Human Events) is the statistic of life expectancy. Anthropologists inform us that for thousands of years the average human being could only expect to live to about 25-30 years of age. But since the late 19th century, life expectancy has risen to 77 years in the United States -- an increase of more than 30 years in just one century. "An epidemic of life" is how the respected American Council of Science and Health summarizes the health improvements of the 20th century.

There is no denying that life expectancy in general has greatly improved over the past one hundred years; but if we are intellectually honest and are willing to look beyond how many years most people live, there is strong evidence that suggests that there has been a serious decline in the recognition of the value of human life. When 30 million pre-born babies have had their lives brutally ended by abortion; when babies who are not born perfect are left to die; when young mothers leave their newborn infants in portapotties; when groups lobby for the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia; are we seeing an "epidemic of life" or, as Pope John Paul says, is it rather a "culture of death?"

Today I would like to examine the most recent attack on life by looking at the issues of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Before I go any farther, allow me to define these terms. The definitions come from "To Care or to Kill" by Teresa R. Wager.

Assisted Suicide: the act of helping another to take his or her life. This has a more social dimension than the act of suicide, as it involves a second party. The final action is taken by the individual committing suicide, not the one assisting.

Euthanasia or Mercy Killing: Directly taking the life of another with the motive of relieving suffering or ending pain. This is direct killing of others; the final action is taken by someone other than the individual who is killed.

Experts in suicidology agree that mental illness is the primary cause of suicide. According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, 95% of those attempting or committing suicide suffer from some diagnosable mental disorder. Depression prompts the desire to die, not a fatal disease. Thankfully, depression is treatable whereas a fatal disease is not.

Often depression begins with pain and suffering. The medical field should concentrate on alleviating the pain and indirectly avoiding depression. Pain specialists assert that adequate pain relief exists for 99% of patients. Rather than accommodating dubious requests for suicide, health care providers need to be trained to provide pain relief.

Some of you might be curious as to why I am focusing on both euthanasia and assisted suicide. It is because the legalization of voluntary assisted suicide cannot happen without legalization of non-voluntary euthanasia. Courts in 14 jurisdictions have already ruled that the law must give the same rights to incompetent patients as it does to competent ones. Obviously, an incompetent patient cannot make the decision between life and death, thus leaving it to the surrogate decision makers. Incompetent patients include children as well as those suffering from mental illness, such as Alzheimer’s disease or those whose injuries seriously impair them. These patients would face grave risks of non-voluntary euthanasia if assisted suicide were legalized.

Let me relate to you a true story illustrating this point. There was a 17 year old boy named Mike who was rushed into an ICU after a car accident left him in comatose. Mike could not breathe or respond to pain. A brain surgeon pronounced: "This boy will not live through the night which is actually a good thing because otherwise he would be a vegetable." But Mike did not die that night. For weeks the nurse in the ICU talked to him, left his TV on during the day and encouraged his family to tell him any news. One day he moved his finger and would continue to repeat this action when nurses asked him to. However, when the brain surgeon was called in to observe this encouraging sign, Mike didn’t respond at all and the brain surgeon could find no signs of consciousness. Eventually he was moved out of that unit. No one knew what happened to him until two years later when a handsome young walked in the ICU unit and said, "Remember me? I’m Mike." From then one, the policy in the ICU unit was to treat comatose patients as if they were conscious. If this doctor had had the option to "mercifully" end this young man’s life, the young man would not have even had a decent chance to recover.

Alongside the risk of taking away a person’s chance to recover, comes social pressure dealing with the costs of keeping someone in the hospital for any length of time. Euthanasia will almost always be cheaper than pain relief treatment or hospice care for the old. This argument could attempt to add assisted suicide or euthanasia to a list of medical options for the terminally ill. These pressures would open up more room for abuse as surrogate decision makers would make a judgment call for financial reasons rather than the best interests of the patient.

The challenges of the twenty-first century are great. We must have foresight and determination to prevent the issues of assisted suicide and euthanasia from leading us to the same grave consequences as abortion. We must commit ourselves to work for as long as it takes to reach our goal of a restoration of the sanctity of human life. A poignant illustration of long-term thinking and commitment comes from our British forefathers two centuries ago. At that time England had the most powerful navy on earth. Realizing that a single ship required nearly 50 acres of oak trees to construct, the British Crown saw to it that huge oak groves were planted and carefully tended across England. One naval leader, Vice Admiral Cuthburt Collingwood, was so personally committed to this goal that he carried a pocketful of acorns. Whenever he went ashore and saw a patch of ground suitable to grow an oak tree, he dropped an acorn and pushed it into the soil with the heel of his boot. Vice Admiral Collingwood knew he would die before he saw the oaks he planted grow to their full stature. But he made the investment anyway.

Are we so committed? Are we thinking long term? Will our children be quoting statistics about the number of people who have died from assisted suicide and euthanasia in the next decade as we do now about abortion? May it never be. Let us do everything within our power to see that the culture of death passes with the twentieth century and that a real epidemic of life flourishes within the twenty first.

Published in VSHL Lifesaver, August 2000