PINELLAS PARK, Fla. Mar 26, 2005 — After another round of losses in the courts, Terri Schiavo’s parents kept watch over their dying daughter Saturday, seeking permission to give her Easter communion as their attorneys acknowledged the fight to reconnect the brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube was nearing an end.
QUESTION: In general, how should an Orthodox Christian view the current situation with Terry Schiavo? I guess one of the issues is that of extraordinary means. Does the Church have a position on extraordinary means? I presume it does but then what are extraordinary means? Does the Church consider a feeding tube extraordinary means?
Another related question would be: How does the Orthodox Church view the matter of a person’s wishes in the event they ended up in a vegetative state? In other words, does anyone have the moral right to deny themselves food, water, etc. If they enter a vegetative state or would that be considered suicide.
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From Wesley Smith:
I participated in an on-line debate for Court TV yesterday with Florida bioethicist, Bill Allen. We mostly discussed Terri Schiavo. But we also got deeper into the context in which the Schiavo case is being played out, that is, the idea that some of us are not “persons” based on cognitive impairments. Note, that Dr. Allen agrees with my worry, that personhood theory would not only permit Terri to be dehydrated, but harvested for organs, assuming consent. To say the least, this undermines universal human rights. Here is an excerpt. The entire debate can be found here.
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Marc Siegel, M.D. Marc Siegel is a clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University.
Terri Schiavo has lingered for 15 years in what many neurologists call a persistent vegetative state. Because the public has seen her plight largely through a political prism – right to life vs. right to die – core medical issues have been overlooked and distorted.
Regardless of where one stands on this issue, as a physician, I’m disturbed that the medicine of this case has become an afterthought. Doctors have become the medical marionettes as the courts and attorneys pull the strings.
Though most end-of-life specialists are willing to remove feeding tubes, many of the rest of us – physicians who treat severely disabled patients – are not. The only consensus in the medical community on this issue is that we should be consulted, not expected to blindly follow judicial decrees.
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SYOSSET, NY [OCA Communications] — In a statement dated March 24, 2005, Protopresbyter Robert Kondratick, chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America, addressed the case of Mrs. Terri Schaivo.
“As affirmed on numerous occasions in recent years, the Orthodox Church in America fully recognizes and proclaims the sanctity of all human life, created in the image and likeness of God,” Father Kondratick said. “Life is a gift from God, one which we are expected as Orthodox Christians to revere and steward in a wise manner, fully recognizing the image of the Creator in every human being.
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Has anyone noticed the parallels here to the crucifixion of Christ? The suspect witness, the court of elders, Pontius Pilate, the clammering crowds approving the injustice, the grieving mother at the cross? The fact that this unfolded during (Western) Holy Week — Terri might even die on Good Friday — is a warning to us I think. In October, 2003 I wrote a piece about Terri Schiavo expressing the idea that she suffers as a martyr. The timing of her death may prove this true.
This is just horrible. May God have mercy on us.
Peggy Noonan: The bizarre passion of the pull-the-tube people.
God made the world or he didn’t. God made you or he didn’t.
I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people. What is driving their engagement? Is it because they are compassionate, and their hearts bleed at the thought that Mrs. Schiavo suffers? But throughout this case no one has testified that she is in persistent pain, as those with terminal cancer are.
If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo’s death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans “brain dead.” Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay “a slithering snake.”
Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo’s right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having “kicked the sh– out of the fascists.”
Why are they so committed to this woman’s death? They seem to have fallen half in love with death.
WASHINGTON, March 23 /Christian Wire Service/ — The head of the Christian Medical Association today questioned the diagnosis of Terri Schiavo as one of a persistent vegetative state, and debunked the myth that starvation is not a painful death.
“Today a Mayo Clinic neurologist indicated that previous assertions that Terri Schiavo is in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) are incorrect. I, like many Americans who have seen the videos of her interacting with her parents, also question the PVS diagnosis. In fact, I question the validity of the concept of Persistent Vegetative State diagnosis. It is pejorative because it labels a person as being a vegetable — taking away their humanity. It is also impossible to establish this diagnosis. Some patients who have come out of PVS have stated that their mind was in a prison but they knew what was going on around them.”
Dr. Stevens also addressed the pain of dying from starvation.
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This is where we are heading.
Wesley J. Smith writes on National Review Online: Bureaucracy has trumped morality in the Netherlands. How else can one explain a country where, when doctors admit publicly that they commit eugenic infanticide, the leaders’ response is not to prosecute them for murder, but instead to urge that guidelines be created under which future baby killings can openly take place?
[U.S. News]: By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religious Affairs Editor WASHINGTON, March 21 : A curious coincidence seems to link two handicapped people during this Holy Week: In Rome, Pope John Paul II, crippled with disease, can barely bless pilgrims but is unable to speak to them; in Florida, Terri Schiavo, living in a persistent vegetative state, has become the center of a spirited international debate over the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.”