Wednesday March 23, 2005
Less than zero news from the Wee Space. (27 days to go until Fusion Day)
My head is discumbobulated by recent news items. Specifically the legal and political battles taking place in Terri Schiavo's family dispute about whether a feeding tube stays out (currently) or is put back yet again.
Seriously, if Terri's husband and parents could agree, or her husband was recognized as sole legal guardian whose decisions are not up for debate, she would not be the centre of the "right to life / right to die" circus of the moment. And from what little we have heard, he has been trying to do what he believes she would have wanted which is to not be kept alive with her current quality of life.
Here's how my head discumbobulated itself. A review of commonly understood laws on the subjects of taking and supporting life in what we like to think of as the civilized world (Canada and the US for discussion purposes):
- Killing of another human being is a crime for which there are severe punishments, if the perpetrator is a civilian. (Governments can legally kill during war; some still condone capital punishment.)
- Capital punishment when it does take place is fairly humane - nobody is starved to death by the government.
- Taking your own life is a crime - although if you succeed you will not be legally punished.
- A terminally ill person can legally refuse life-sustaining treatment.
- Assisting a terminally ill person in their wish to end their life is currently illegal but is now being debated in some courts.
- Withholding the necessities of life from a dependant (child, disabled adult, elderly person) is a crime and severely punished.
- Maltreatment of animals, including starvation, is likewise a crime, although not as severely punished.
- Equipment sustaining a severely brain-damaged human can be legally removed subject to medical and ethical board review.
- Doctors take an oath to do no harm.(Not a law exactly, but morally relevant IMO)
So how's your head now?
The illogical outcome that results from legally removing Terri's feeding tube is that she is left to starve to death - while under medical care. This trips me up pretty badly. Starving is a slow and painful death I hear. Surely this pain is a "harm"?
I've let all this bump around in my head for a while and it still never looks quite "right" - you know?
Aid agencies globally are working to prevent numbers of unfortunate people on this planet from ending their lives this way. And yet, here "we" are sentencing a human to die "naturally" in the same objectionable manner. My sensibilities are deeply offended by this situation.
Surely our civilized part of the planet can do better by people in Terri's unfortunate condition. I'm not taking issue with the decision to finally let her die. Not at all. Even though the battles (and headlines) have all been about that decision. and who will make it. What sickens me is that I have heard no reports that anything is being done in the way of pain relief during her final days. (For that matter, why does she have to go through two weeks' of dying?)
I have to believe that medications are being administered (legally or not) to alleviate Terri's suffering and this little fact has been under-reported. Please let this be true.