Well, this is good enough for me:
"This has nothing to do with the sanctity of life:” The Rev. John Paris, professor of bioethics, says Terri Schiavo has the moral and legal right to die, and only the Christian right is keeping her alive.
By Andrew Leonard, March 22, 2005, Salon
The decision on whether to allow Terri Schiavo to die has sparked endless controversy over what is legal and ethical when patients are unable to make their own wishes. One observer who brings both legal and moral authority to the debate is the Rev. John Paris, the Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College.
Paris has served as an expert witness on numerous cases involving patients who were being kept alive by artificial means. He is equally capable of discussing the legal details of the Schiavo case and the Catholic Church's view of it. According to Paris, every relevant legal issue has already been decided; the only thing keeping the case alive is the fact that the Christian right has made Schiavo a cause célèbre.
Paris did not serve as an expert witness in the Schiavo case. However, when the case was reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court, he signed an amicus brief on behalf of Michael Schiavo, who wants to take his wife off life support. Salon spoke to Paris by phone on Monday morning. "This case," he says, "is bizarre."
Why is the case bizarre?
In most cases, the court has a theory, you have an appellate review, and that's the end. But this case, the parents keep coming back with new issues -- every time that they lose, they come in with a new issue. We want to reexamine the case. We believe she's competent. We need new medical tests being done. We think she's been abused. We want child protective services to intervene. Finally, Judge George Greer denied them all. He said. "Look, we have had court-appointed neutral physicians examine this patient. You don't believe the findings of the doctors but the finding of the doctors have been accepted by the court as factual.” There have been six reviews by the appellate court. [snip]
The court said, "Remove the feeding tube," and the family protested. Of course, the family has the radical, antiabortion, right-to-life Christian right, with its apparently unlimited resources and political muscle, behind them.
So what do you think this case is really about?
The power of the Christian right. This case has nothing to do with the legal issues involving a feeding tube. The feeding tube issue was definitively resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990 in Cruzan vs. Director. The United States Supreme Court ruled that competent patients have the right to decline any and all unwanted treatment, and unconscious patients have the same right, depending upon the evidentiary standard established by the state. And Florida law says that Terri Schiavo has more than met the standard in this state. So there is no legal issue. [snip]
Isn't the underlying social issue here one that says the law doesn't have authority over this kind of life-or-death matter?
Let me give you a test that I've done 100 times to audiences. And I guarantee you can do the same thing. Go and find the first 12 people you meet and say to them, "If you were to suffer a cerebral aneurysm, and we were able to diagnose that with a PET-scan immediately, would you want to be put on a feeding tube, knowing that you can be sustained in this existence?” I have asked that question in medical audiences, legal audiences and audiences of judges. I'll bet I have put that question before several thousand people. How many people do you think have said they wanted to be maintained that way? Zero. Not one person. Now that tells you about where the moral sentiment of our community is. [snip]
As a priest, how do you resolve questions in which the "sanctity of life" is involved?
The sanctity of life? This has nothing to do with the sanctity of life. The Roman Catholic Church has a consistent 400-year-old tradition that I'm sure you are familiar with. It says nobody is obliged to undergo extraordinary means to preserve life.
This is Holy Week, this is when the Catholic community is saying, "We understand that life is not an absolute good and death is not an absolute defeat.” The whole story of Easter is about the triumph of eternal life over death. Catholics have never believed that biological life is an end in and of itself. We've been created as a gift from God and are ultimately destined to go back to God. And we've been destined in this life to be involved in relationships. And when the capacity for that life is exhausted, there is no obligation to make officious efforts to sustain it.
This is not new doctrine. Back in 1950, Gerald Kelly, the leading Catholic moral theologian at the time, wrote a marvelous article on the obligation to use artificial means to sustain life. He published it in Theological Studies, the leading Catholic journal. He wrote, "I'm often asked whether you have to use IV feeding to sustain somebody who is in a terminal coma.” And he said, "Not only do I believe there is no obligation to do it, I believe that imposing those treatments on that class of patients is wrong. There is no benefit to the patient, there is great expense to the community, and there is enormous tension on the family." [snip]
Of course Boston College is run by them Commie Jesuits, so you probably can’t trust ‘em. Nonetheless, he is where I’ve been all along. The Schindler’s - the family, are grasping at any straw, and I suppose they’ve been deluded and/or are deluded. But they are aided in those delusions by some of the slimiest people on earth. Randall Terry, the guy who ran Operation Rescue and who is almost surely behind blowing up abortion clinics is frequently at their side. They are being used, just as the whores in congress used them and will continue to use them. Is this a great country or what?

1 Comments:
Interestingly, you and much of the world polarize this outcome as the Christian rightists' defeat. I don't.
I'm neither (I'm a way-left-o'-center Wiccan) and I take this case and its outcome as an enormous civil liberty violation.
Please know, it's frustrating the hell outta me that I'm on the side of an issue with the catholic pope and Jethro Bush. That's so uncharacteristic...I'm a Bushwhacker through and through...except this one time we agree on something for vastly differing reasons.
If an adult with compromised intellectual competence can swallow and a spouse elects to withhold all nutritional sustenance in an attempt to end their life, the spouse would be facing criminal abuse and neglect charges in the Health and Human Services Adult Protection Services arena and the dependent adult would be placed under surrogacy - adult "foster care."
There is doubt about the veracity of the husband, there is doubt about the validity of the family's observations and interpretations ... and in my mind, it's not up to any of us to determine where we benchmark "a life worth living" for another.
So many say, "I wouldn't want to live like that, impose that on my family." Don't count me out of that. But that's no rationale to support permitting a severely brain damaged human from being starved to death because she cannot speak and swallow.
I had the pleasure of working in your town for a few months about 10 years ago. I found the hospitality genuine and the tea very sweet...and the barbeque sauce isn't always red, and I'd never have known that had I not stayed there a spell. Regards and thanks for listening, Boston.
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