Thoughts On Latimer

Robert Latimer was denied parole yesterday.

I don't believe there's any doubt about Latimer's actions or their criminality under law today. However, that doesn't make his case an easy one by any means and warrants consideration.

In many respects, Tracy Latimer is a product of technology. As recently as fifty years ago, I doubt that medical technology could have kept her alive much past the first year or two of life. Today, we are able to keep babies with all manner of problems alive well beyond the first year. As long as their bodies can breathe and digest food, just about anything else we can keep going.

While we have amazing technology that can keep people alive, I don't think we've quite begun to understand the social and psychological implications what that means.

Arguably, the Latimer case is one where the constant stress of looking after someone with severe disabilities and with limited support from the community around them resulted in a drastic decision being made by a parent who saw only limited options.

In many ways, we have created the very moral and ethical dilemma that the legends such as "Pandora's Box" speak to. In the quest to achieve ever greater levels of medical prowess, we have lost sight of the other costs - the price that those around the patient will pay.

No parent wants to see their child die, even less so is the kind of ongoing pain and suffering that repeated surgical intervention in the body causes. Even more distressing is that because of other problems, Tracy had only the most rudimentary ability to communicate with her parents.

Which leads me to a question I simply do not have a good answer for: Does the fact we can keep someone alive mean that we should?

When we are talking about adults otherwise in possession of their faculties, the conversation about whether to intervene in the case of severe injury or debilitating illness can be had and the decisions "prepared" somewhat in advance {not that it makes it any easier at the time, I'm sure}.

Children like Tracy Latimer simply cannot have that conversation with their families and caregivers. This leaves their families in an awful place. What happens when the caregivers run out of emotional resources to sustain them? The Latimers found themselves stuck with the draining tasks of day to day care for their daughter, and then on top of that a seemingly endless stream of surgeries and other drastic decisions that had to be made on their daughter's behalf. Was the next surgery going to make her hurt? Probably. Could they explain it to their daughter? No.

Ultimately, as parents, the Latimer's found themselves with the worst of all possible choices - continue to hope that medical treatment could sustain their daughter and make her life bearable eventually, or refuse further treatment and watch their daughter deteriorate and finally die. Agree or disagree with him, Robert Latimer chose option "C" - and actively moved to end his daughter's life before she could (in his mind), suffer further.

I feel for the Latimers. One can only imagine the situation they found themselves in. We can talk all we want about how "the system" failed them, but until we begin to ask ourselves the same questions about "how far do you go?" with technology and intervention we will not come to an adequate answer for the questions that the Latimer case raises.

Is there a life "not worth living"? Handicapped rights advocates will argue - rightly - that they have a right to live - period, and to some extent I agree. On the other hand, we have to recognize that in the case of the Latimers, that there is a huge cost to the patient's family as well - especially since there was little chance that Tracy Latimer would ever be able to express her own wishes. Every decision about medical intervention then requires the parents to decide not only "in their child's best interests", but they have to decide what their child's wishes might be - the emotional and psychological burden that represents is staggering.

Sometime in the 20th century, we crossed a threshold we barely noticed - one where medicine's advances started to exact a price not merely in terms of the patient and their life, but those around the patient. When is that price too high to pay?

There are no clear answers - and may well never be. These are complex moral and ethical points that must be discussed carefully and rationally. The only thing that is clear to me is that two wrongs do not make a right.

On the matter of giving Latimer parole - it's unlikely he would ever reoffend, and it's equally clear that serving time in prison is of little value. He's already been through a crucible that few of us will ever really understand. He made his decision, and he made his peace with that decision long before the legal system became involved. The man is not a martyr, nor will he ever be truly free of his past. While we should take the questions his case raises to heart and consider them carefully, it is time to let Robert Latimer go.