[Theodore R.]

Are the bishops saying that removal of a feeding tube of a person who can breathe on his own is NOT euthanasia? What about the agony of starvation? Did not the bishops come to the defense of Bobby Sands, who starved himself to death in 1981 regarding Northern Ireland-British controversies?

[Don Joe]

"Are the bishops saying that removal of a feeding tube of a person who can breathe on his own is NOT euthanasia?"

ISTM that the position is a very "phariseesque" word game distilling down to "mere removal of sustenance is not tantamount to 'killing', and the fact that the person dies is not due to the action of those who decide not to feed the person; she merely dies on her own, nature taking its course"

Allow me to assert that if this is the case, then every mother who has been prosecuted for the death of her infant due to lack of food (and I believe there are plenty of such cases) will need to be reviewed, and reversed.

It is painfully obvious that the act of withholding sustenance from a person who is unable to provide it on his own is the killing of that person.

It is a despicable level of hypocrisy to pretend otherwise.

And it is an indictment of our culture that this is tolerated, let alone encouraged.