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Posted on 10/16/2003 5:00:14 PM PDT by cpforlife.org
While agonizing over the fate of Terri Schiavo, this murder of the infirm and cognitively impaired has become a mainstay of the American medical and legal establishment. At a Missouri medical center, I was given an information sheet entitled “Fluid Deprivation and the Terminally Ill” which stated, “…the decision not to provide hydration, IV fluids, and nutrition (feeding tubes, etc.), may be helpful. …As death approaches dehydration occurs naturally. Administering IV fluids to the terminally ill patient can increase urine output, often creating the need for a catheter or the frequent use of a bedpan. Administering tube feedings can result in nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. Additionally the administration of IV fluids by IV or by mouth can result in swelling of the feet and hands that contribute to the formation of pressure sores. Oral discomfort is noted to be the only known drawback to natural dehydration. Because foods and fluids have such powerful symbolic meaning, it is often very difficult for family members to decide in favor of natural dehydration for their terminally ill loved ones.”
In response to this policy I wrote the Administration, Board of Directors, and Ethics Committee the following:
Dehydration is a pathologic state or symptom of an anomaly or disease that is to be treated, not produced by withholding fluids and/or nutrition. Withholding hydration, nutrition, or any medical treatment should not be done unless death is imminent, (not terminal) and the removal of such hydration, nutrition or medical treatment should not be the etiological or causative factor in the death of that individual, but as a natural consequence of the disease state. This directive on removal of hydration from the terminally ill is paramount to passive euthanasia (murder)…This medical institution needs to eliminate its policy on the terminally ill since the word terminal has many definitions and it is too illusive or subjective to be used in policies affecting those patients in whom death is imminent. All policies affecting the medical treatment of patients whose death is imminent need to safeguard the patient and/or significant power of attorney, stating that if the patient’s condition changes and death is not imminent, all hydration, nutrition and appropriate medical treatment will be reinstated. (“Imminent” defined as the approximate relation to death of a patient in an irreversible, persistent catabolic state or an irreversible respiratory or metabolic acidosis). In conclusion, no medical treatment or the withholding of medical treatment should be the etiological cause of a human being’s death; the disease, anomaly, pathology or trauma should be its etiological cause.
By acting in this way the legal and medical establishment usurp the place of God in so much as they arbitrarily choose whom they will allow to live and whom they will send to their death. No doctor or lawyer can claim this right to decide on other peoples’ origin or destiny. The purpose of their institutions is to safeguard the health, dignity and welfare of their patients and constituents—not to help them or any other persons to hasten their death!
Richard Mahoney, founder
NATIONAL AMERICAN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
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| 2280 Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of. |
| 2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
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| 336 From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life." Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God. |
| 2367 Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God. "Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility." |
| 1524 In addition to the Anointing of the Sick, the Church offers those who are about to leave this life the Eucharist as viaticum. Communion in the body and blood of Christ, received at this moment of "passing over" to the Father, has a particular significance and importance. It is the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection, according to the words of the Lord: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." The sacrament of Christ once dead and now risen, the Eucharist is here the sacrament of passing over from death to life, from this world to the Father. |
| 2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation: "The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death." "The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights." |
| 2288 Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good. Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance. |
| 1007 Death is the end of earthly life. Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all living beings on earth, death seems like the normal end of life. That aspect of death lends urgency to our lives: remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment:
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| 1641 "By reason of their state in life and of their order, [Christian spouses] have their own special gifts in the People of God." This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple's love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. By this grace they "help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in welcoming and educating their children." |
This is the critical point in any discussion of the topic of euthanasia. In fact, this is precisely why the Roman Catholic Church allows the removal of a terminally ill patient from a ventilator but condemns the practice of removing a feeding tube. A patient who cannot breathe on his own will die naturally of whatever sickness or injury afflicts him, while a patient whose feeding tube is removed dies of starvation.
It's usually not arbitrary.
It's becoming clear that he legally can't.
If he could have, his legal team would have done something yesterday.
In Florida, Chris Reeves could --- given that he had someone not like the angel who is his current wife, but instead a different spouse in the same vein as Terri's husband --- be found unworthy of life by a Florida or federal courts' decisions, and thereupon some government agent might be wrong enough to actually accept culpability in the name of the judges and remove Chris Reeves' feeding tubes.
Given Chris's medical condition, he would die.
Me too. Bill O'reilly just salved his conscience by having a neurologist convince him she can not interpret pain. He also suggested quite clearly that a lethal injection would be kinder, since the decision had already been made.
Great now murder is only a decision. Sort of reminds me of another word used do describe murder of the unborn. Procedure.
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