A disposable life

by Editor · April 13, 2005

The death by starvation of Terri Schiavo in a Florida hospital on March 31 is an indictment of a society which has rescinded its obligation to treat human life with dignity.

Mrs Schiavo, whose case has made world headlines, was 41 when she died. For the last 15 years of her life she was severely brain-damaged. She could breathe on her own and required no extraordinary medical intervention, but received nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube.

The feeding tube was removed in mid-March by order of a Florida court, favouring an application of Mrs Schiavo’s husband, Michael. The application was opposed by the patient’s parents, partly on the basis of their daughter’s apparently deep Catholic faith as an indication of her will.

Neither Mr Schiavo nor the judge knew the state of Mrs Schiavo’s mind. Her husband offered anecdotal evidence to support his belief that his wife would not have wished to live in a vegetative state. Indeed, many reasonable people would share such a wish.

Mrs Schiavo, however, did not leave a living will, instructing the discontinuation of treatment under specific circumstances. In her inability to communicate, discerning her preference was pure guesswork. The court should have erred on the side of caution.

Terri Schiavo also could not communicate whether she knew that she was going to be starved and dehydrated to death. If she had even just a partial awareness of this, then the judge and those who sought the removal of Mrs Schiavo’s feeding tube are culpable in inflicting an exceptionally cruel death on a helpless human being.

Ironically, active euthanasia might have been a more humane option in this instance. It nevertheless would have been the killing of human life, which the Catholic Church vigorously opposes.

The Schiavo case confirms that today’s society sees human life as disposable. When a life ceases to be useful, some people seek justification for its termination. After Terri Schiavo, how far will the boundaries be allowed to shift?

Last year, Pope John Paul told the Pontifical Council for Health that “quality of life cannot be interpreted as economic efficiency, beauty or the enjoyment of physical life, but it consists in the supreme dignity of the creature made in the image and likeness of God.”

When society usurps the will of God (or, if one doubts God, the way of nature), human dignity is injured.

The Church teaches that prolonging the life of a patient in a persistent vegetative state is beneficial as long as this is not a burden to the patient. Extraordinary artificial means of treatment which keeps a patient alive may be withdrawn.

A patient, no matter what the state of their health, must always be given the right to be fed and hydrated in a safe, clean and warm environment.

Some will defend the decision to end Mrs Schiavo’s life prematurely as a “mercy killing”. This would be a misplaced sense of compassion. The suffering was not felt by Terri Schiavo, but by her husband and by her parents.

The mercy Terri Schiavo was entitled to was her right to live until her natural death but this fundamental right was denied.