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Abortion mentality has led to euthanasia, says nurse

When abortion was legalized in 1973, Nancy Valko, a registered nurse working in a trauma unit in a St. Louis, Mo., hospital, scoffed at pro­lifers who said that legalized abortion would lead to euthanasia.

"I didn't believe it. I was so stupid!" she told her audience at the Delaware Pro-Life Convention March 29.

The truth came home to her in a very personal way.

In 1982, in a famous legal case in Indiana, a boy was born with Down's syndrome.

"He needed a relatively simple surgical operation to live, but the parents, on the advice of their pediatrician, said no, let the child die," said Mrs. Valko.

While the case was being appealed by the hospital doctors, the 6-day-old child died from starvation.

During this time Mrs. Valko was pregnant with her third child who, unbeknownst to her, also had Down's syndrome.

"She also had a serious heart defect," said Mrs. Valko. "It was a shock. It was even more of a shock when my doctor said that she had an 80 to 90 percent chance of survival with one open heart surgery, but he would support me 'either way'!

"I understood at once what the pro-lifers had been saying: this was the equivalent of a fourth trimester abortion for fetal defect."

Mrs. Valko realized that she had to fight to protect her daughter's life.

At one point, her daughter was in a Catholic hospital being treated for pneumonia. She was horrified to find out that, against her specific orders, the doctor had given a "do not resuscitate" order for her daughter behind her back.

"The doctor thought I was too emotionally involved with my retard­ed baby!" exclaimed Mrs. Valko.

"You can see how we're getting to the point of euthanasia: misplaced sympathy, misplaced compassion. People felt sorry for me, when it . was my daughter who was sick!"

Mrs. Valko recalled that when she graduated from nursing school in 1969, prior to the legalization of abortion, nursing ethics were very uncomplicated.

"We didn't have an actual ethics course, but there were no 'Catholic ethics,' there were no 'pro­life ethics'; there was a common agreement on ethics.

'We knew we didn't lie, we didn't cause or hasten death, we didn't betray confidences, and we especially protected patients who couldn't speak for themselves-the disabled, the elderly."

Now, she said, "There are so few pro-life nurses, we almost feel like a guerrilla group: we are a thin white line. This is what the abortion movement and the 'right to die' movement have done."

Mrs. Valko's experience with her daughter led her to become involved as a speaker on Down's syndrome. In the meantime, her personal life continued to challenge her pro-life convictions.

After her retarded daughter died, her husband had a mental break­down. When she was 6 months' pregnant with their fourth child, he suffered a second breakdown.

"His psychiatrist told me, 'Your husband might get better faster if you weren't pregnant.' He was offering me a second trimester abortion!''

Other people asked her pointedly whether she had had an amniocentesis. Ignoring them all, she had the baby, a girl whom she named "Joy."

Her husband's mental illness continued, he abandoned the family, and Mrs. Valko struggled to support herself and her three children.

"Even my own father said, 'Your life would have been a lot easier if you hadn't had that baby.' That hurt!" she said.

When Mrs. Valko's youngest child was a toddler, her mother was stricken with Alzheimer's, and she took her in.

"It was just around the time that Dr. Kervorkian killed his first victim, who had mild Alzheimer's. One of the first questions I was asked was, are you going to feed her?"

"I said, my mother will die of her illness, just as my daughter died of her illness, not of starvation."

Someone asked her, "How can you take care of someone who doesn't recognize you?"

"My answer was, the important question is, do I recognize who she is?"

Nancy took care of her mother until she died. Then she went out to look for a job-not an easy task, because she hadn't been working for 13 years. But she eventually found work and is currently working' in intensive care.

Being a pro-life nurse has been difficult.

"One of the biggest problems we have is attitudes," she noted.

Once, for example, when she was working in an intensive care unit, a 17-year-old boy named Mike was brought in who had been severely , injured in auto accident and was in a coma.

The neuro-surgeon said within the boy's hearing, "This boy won't live until morning, but it'll be better if he doesn't, because he'll be a vegetable."

Mrs. Valko, however, kept working with Mike and, operating on the principle that he still might have his hearing, kept talking to him. She got him to move his finger, and even to say "Hi."

But when she tried to get him to do these things in the presence of the doctor, she got no response.

The boy was sent to a nursing home and she heard no more about his case.

Two years later, a handsome young man came into the hospital. He said, "I'm Mike, and I've come to thank you for saving my life!"

Mrs. Valko, of course, was overjoyed. But she asked him why he­would never respond to the surgeon.

The young man looked angry. "Because he called me a vegetable!" he replied.

From then on, she said, all the nurses in the intensive care unit have talked to the patients who are in comas.

Mrs. Valko deplored the recent pressure on doctors and nurses to push patients to sign "advance directives"-statements that they want all food and medical treatment withheld under specified conditions that can be as mild as "frequent inability to recognize relatives."

"Some people are afraid they will be kept alive forever," she said. "Guess what? You can't! My daughter died on a ventilator. People die on feeding tubes. When it's your time to go, it's your time to go."

Mrs. Valko champions her pro-life views as president of Missouri Nurses for Life, has served on medical and nursing ethics committees, and writes and speaks on medical ethics throughout the country.

"The big thing is that we don't cause or hasten death," she said. That doesn't mean that you don't allow someone to die, and you can use aggressive pain relief.

"People ask me, what do you do when someone really wants to die-wants you to kill them? The answer is, you say no!"

It's always abnormal to want to die, said Mrs. Valko.

"I tell my patients, I'll do anything in the world for you, except kill you. People respond to that. When you tell them that, they turn around.

"We need to protect vulnerable people, like my daughter. We need to change our attitudes. We need to give our young people the idea that we all have to take care of each other at the beginning and end of life."