By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This story is almost exactly 30 years old—this account of successful surgery for Phillip Becker appeared in the October 13, 1983, edition of National Right to Life News—and is as inspiring today as it was three decades ago. Phillip Becker’s story is the latest in our year-long “Roe at 40” series where we are reprinting some of the best stories from NRL News going all the way back to 1973.
San Francisco, CALIF.-Phillip Becker’s successful heart surgery Sept. 28 was a storybook finish to a tenacious six-year struggle waged by Phillip’s guardians and friends to give him a chance for a normal life. It is a tale of gritty determination and unselfish love generated by a youngster whose spontaneity and appetite for life touched the lives of all who came in contact with him.
Phillip, who has Down’s syndrome, first came to national prominence in 1978-79 when his parents refused to authorize life-prolonging heart surgery for him. Warren and Patricia Becker argued they were afraid Phillip might outlive them and be “warehoused” in a state institution, and that he might be a burden on his two brothers.
As recently as three months ago, doctors at the University of Southern California Medical School had about given up hope for Phillip, believing that the long delay had in all likelihood made corrective surgery futile. Now they are predicting a normal life span for Phillip, who just turned sixteen, according to Jay Spears, attorney for Patsy and Herbert Heath, Phillip’s legal guardians since 1981.
“He has had a few minor complications, but the doctors don’t anticipate any problems,” Spears said. Phillip underwent successful open-heart surgery to close a quarter-size hole between the ventricles—the pumping values—in his heart.
“Without the surgery, Phillip’s condition would have grown increasing worse to the point where he would have been confined to bed,” Spear said. “Eventually, he would have died before he was thirty with symptoms much like those associated with emphysema or tuberculosis.”
Phillip’s surgery climaxed a ferocious legal war that started, oddly enough, in 1977 when the youngster was to undergo oral surgery. That he had a heart problem was known from the beginning (roughly 40 percent of Down’s syndrome children have heart defects). Before the oral surgery could be performed, however, doctors had to check his heart to see whether it could withstand the anesthesia.
With the aid of a new diagnostic technique, Dr. Gary Gathman, Phillip’s cardiologist, discovered that Phillip’s disease was “ventricular septial defect,” a hole in the wall that separates the heart’s two pumping chambers. Dr. Gathman recommended immediate surgery, but the Beckers refused.
Pressed by Phillip’s friends, juvenile authorities in San Jose approached the courts to make Phillip a dependent of the state just long enough to have surgery performed. The Beckers responded by hiring an attorney to contest the authorities request.
Juvenile Court judge Eugene Premo heard the case in April 1978. Warren Becker testified that Phillip was better off dead, and a pediatrician hired by the parents to examine Phillip submitted a letter saying that Phillip led “a life I consider devoid of those qualities which give it human dignity.”
Those who worked with Phillip at the John Rouleau Children’s Center in San Jose painted a very different picture of Phillip. Phillip was on the high end of the spectrum for Down’s children and Jeanne Haight, assistant administrator at the center, testified that Phillip was a happy child, able to dress and take care of himself, able to make the bed, and help out with household chores.
Nonetheless, Premo upheld the right of the parents to withhold surgery, which he described as “elective” rather than lifesaving. He said that the state’s involvement raised the “specter of 1984 when I see this kind of case coming before the court.” Premo said he wasn’t about to second-guess the Becker’s decision.
Phillip’s supporters did not give up. They convinced the California Attorney General’s office to appeal Judge Premo’s decision. However, a court of appeals, the California Supreme Court, and finally the U.S. Supreme Court either upheld Premo’s decision or refused to review the case.
At this point (1980), Patsy and Herbert Heath petitioned the courts to become Phillip’s legal guardians, and the Becker’s relationship with their son came under full scrutiny. Phillip had been institutionalized since birth; never once had he been brought home for a visit. The Beckers visited him according to their count about six times a year, twice according to staff at the center.
Eventually in 1981, Judge William Fernandez awarded custody to the Heaths. Judge Fernandez said that a true parental relationship existed between Phillip and the Heaths.
According to published accounts, Judge Fernandez described Phillip’s case as wonderful and tragic: Wonderful because of all those who worked for Phillip, braving “a storm of parental indignation including scathing cross-examination and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit”; tragic because “I weep uncontrollably” as he contemplated Phillip’s slow decline into a painful, bed-ridden existence and eventual premature death.
Newsweek columnist George Will, from whose column these last quotes were taken, was himself sued by the Beckers. Eventually, Newsweek settled by allowing the Beckers to publish an opinion column defending their decision to oppose surgery. (Curiously, nowhere was it noted that the column was part of the suit’s settlement.)
Once the Heaths became Phillip’s legal guardians, their effort to have the heart surgery performed were foiled by nearly two years of legal challenges. By the time a second exploratory test was performed in July 1983 to determine Phillip’s chances, gloom had set in. Doctors knew that ordinarily, the degeneration is such that by this time surgery would be pointless.
Miraculously, Phillip’s condition had not changed since 1977. The odds of success were still over 90 percent and the decision to operate was unanimously approved by doctors at the University of Southern California Medical Center.
By the night after surgery, Phillip was up and about, asking for pizza. “He is incredible,” Spears told NRL News. “He has more spunk and grit than any other kid I know. This is a classic good-ending story.”