Terri Schiavo's Right to Life

 

By Bishop Michael J. Sheridan
Diocese of Colorado Springs

6 April 2005

As I write this column Terri Schiavo’s life is slowly and painfully ebbing away. I pray that by the time this piece is published her life will have been spared, but at this moment it does not appear likely.

The plight of Terri Schiavo has captured the attention of the American people as few other crises have. Much of what I have heard and read is the typical mix of a lot of emotion and very few facts. Let’s be clear about the facts.

First, when a terminally ill person is in the process of dying it is not necessary that extraordinary means be employed to prolong life. This is standard Catholic teaching. But, Mrs. Schiavo is not dying. She has been living quite successfully for 15 years since her heart attack. It is true that she is dependent on others for all of her bodily needs, but then so are many people, including infants and children, the elderly and those who suffer from severe handicaps. Are we looking at these people, too, as candidates for starvation?

Not only is Terri Schiavo not dying, the administration of nutrition and hydration is not an extraordinary means of preserving life. Every human being needs food and water every day to live. Food and water are not medical treatments. They are ordinary care. In his address to the participants in the International Congress on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegitative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas” on March 20, 2004, Pope John Paul II said this: “I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act.”

Second, the inherent dignity of the human person and her right to life are not derived from another person’s or society’s determination of a sufficient “quality of life.” Those who would argue that Terri Schiavo should be left to die from starvation often employ the argument that her life is miserable and pathetic and that she does not conform to what most people understand to be a “normal” human being. Even the use of the medical term “vegetative state” seems to support the conclusion that Mrs. Schiavo is less than human. Pope John Paul has spoken forcefully to this kind of rhetoric in the above-cited address: “…I feel the duty to reaffirm strongly that the intrinsic value and personal dignity of every human being do not change, no matter what the concrete circumstances of his or her life. A man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man, and he will never become a ‘vegetable’ or an ‘animal’…Even our brothers and sisters who find themselves in the clinical condition of a ‘vegetative state’ retain their human dignity in all its fullness.”

Third, the discussion of the situation of Mrs. Schiavo is often framed as a “right to die with dignity.” Let’s never forget the power that words have to shape our way of thinking and acting. And let’s not be duped into thinking that this is a case of the right to die. Without food and water Terri will indeed die, but only as a result of a positive act meant to end her life. The removal of nutrition and hydration is essentially the same as an injection with poison. The latter may be quick and painless, while the former is slow and agonizing. Both are murder and both are gravely sinful acts.

Ever since 1973 and the Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion , i.e., the murder of an infant in the womb, we have been sliding down a dark and slippery slope toward the next logical stage in our growing culture of death – euthanasia. Once we convinced ourselves that an infant has a right to live only if her mother “wants” her, it was not a very big step to conclude that the chronically sick or disabled have a right to live only if their quality of life measures up to the standards of a spouse or a judge or a society. If Terri Schiavo is made to die by starvation, a precedent for legalized euthanasia will have been set. The moral and social consequeunces of such a precedent are incalculable. Pope John Paul’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) makes it clear that “by euthanasia in the true and proper sense must be understood an action or omission which by its very nature and intention brings about death, with the purpose of eliminating all pain”; such an act is always “a serious violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person” (n. 65).”

As with the abomination that is abortion, euthanasia is not a religious issue as such. It is an issue of human rights – the right to life that is bestowed on every person by our Creator and guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. May God move our country toward the creation of a new culture of life.