[Mrs. Don-o]

I agree that the responses of some FReepers are deeply troubling.

The article, though, doesn't do a good job of making the issues clear. The central issue is not

• that she's an immigrant (and apparently a legal one);
• nor that Rwnadan culture does or doe not compare favorably with American culture as regards deliberately starving people to death;
• nor that indigent people have or do not have an unlimited right to expensive, futile hospital treatment;
• nor a question of public funding.

The real, central point is that a helpless woman's feeding tube was removed, for the purpose of causing her death by starvation/dehydration. This is murder.

Since she was severely disabled, the proper thing to do would have been to secure "ordinary care" for her -- at a long-term convalescent care center or hospice --- which her adult sons, all apparently employed and enjoying some level of income, should have paid for.

"Ordinary care" is nothing more or less than nutrition/hydration, hygienic maintenance and comfort care; it is not expensive; and it should have been provided by her next of kin. This is their familial obligation. If they can't afford a convaescent home, it could have been provided in a private home, or even an apartment, with home hospice workers and/or family members attending to the (simple) process of tube feeding.

The fact that all the choices were taken away by a court-appointed "guardian" who exercised "guardianship" by arranging for her death by starvation, is gravely wrong. Whatever the legalities, from a moral point of view it is premeditated murder.

[trisham]

Well said, Mrs. Don-o.

[tioga]

Very good points.

[Gene Eric]

>> The real, central point is that a helpless woman’s feeding tube was removed, for the purpose of causing her death by starvation/dehydration.

That method for hastening death is effectively killing someone through torture.

This Country has the manpower to support the necessary convalescence. But too may want their taxpayer funded pensions and retire before their first gray hair.

[moehoward]

"...which her adult sons, all apparently employed and enjoying some level of income, should have paid for"

Correct. It apparently was their decision to ignore that responsibility and leave it up to the hospital/court/government/taxpayers to deal with.