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Della
Guest
According to the Church’s stance, it would be all right to take the girl off the ventilator if it is being used merely to prolong the process of dying, while the feeding tube is not to be removed unless the person is dying. It doesn’t sound like it in this case, though. Being in a so-called “persistive vegetative state” is not dying, but merely disabled. This is the fruit of the Terri Shiavo case all over again! 
Whether or not someone could be charged with murder if the girl is removed from life support or if there would be anyone to care for her or considerations about her “quality of life” ought to have nothing to do with maintaining her life as it is.
Whether or not someone could be charged with murder if the girl is removed from life support or if there would be anyone to care for her or considerations about her “quality of life” ought to have nothing to do with maintaining her life as it is.
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mlchance
Guest
Removing her from the ventilator is permissible if she cannot breathe on her own. The feeding tube ought not be withdrawn unless leaving it in could cause harm.
– Mark L. Chance.
– Mark L. Chance.
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Crow
Guest
I do not clearly understand ‘not removing’ the feeding tube.
From what I know, the curch teaches that the basic necessities of life cannot be removed; air, water, and food.
However, medical interventions prolonging life can be withdrawn, for so long as air, water and food are NOT DENIED.
Removing a feeding tube does not really deny food to the person, it denies a ‘method of feeding’ but not food itself.
If you remove the feeding tube, it remains a duty of the caring person(s) to attempt to feed that patient nonetheless. If not possible to keep feeding the person, and the person dies, I still have trouble seeing the wrong. Removing the feeding tube remove a ‘method’ of feeding, not food itself.
Can someone help me with this?
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mlchance
Guest
If a feeding tube is the only means of providing nutrition to a patient, then a feeding tube is required, and it can neither be removed nor withdrawn except for the explicit request of the patient (who can always refuse treatment) or if keeping the feeding tube in place poses a health risk (such as in a patient with, for example, a bowel obstruction).
Also problematic with this case is the state making the decision to remove life support. This child has no other relatives? Have the parent’s parental rights been removed?
– Mark L. Chance.
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Della
Guest
If the only way a patient can receive nourishment is through a feeding tube (because he cannot swallow, etc.), then removing the feeding tube is the same thing as denying him food. Do you think anyone tried to feed Terri Schiavo after they removed her feeding tube? No. They just let her starve to death–a process that took several agonizing days. Some form of mercy!
God deliver us all from such “mercy.”
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Rosalinda
Guest
Della, Pardon me for this little clarification but didn’t it take almost 2 weeks for Terri to die? It was a long, agonizing ordeal both for Terri and her family. I watched my sister die of cancer; like Terri, she was in her early forties, and it is was horrific experience to watch her shrivel day after day. The palliative care nurses forbade us to even spritz the inside of her mouth supposedly because she would choke on it or suffer from congestion. Two years later, I’m still wondering if that was really necessary or if they were trying to hasten her death because they needed the bed.
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Crow
Guest
Yes, I am aware that no one tried to feed Teri once the tube was removed, and I agree this w2as wrong.
I can fully agree that not ‘attempting to feed her or give her nurishment’ is wrong.
I cannot however agree with the removal of her feeding tube. The feeding tube remains in itself a medical intervention like any other.
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Crow
Guest
I can sympathize.
Relieve yourself of your guilt, I am certain you do not deserve it. Remember you’ll join her someday, and I’m certain she does not hold a grudge against you.
If I remember Terri died from lack of water, not food, and it took a few days, not weeks. But that point is not important.
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Ortho
Guest
What is the logic of differentiating between ventilator and feeding tube?According to the Church’s stance, it would be all right to take the girl off the ventilator if it is being used merely to prolong the process of dying, while the feeding tube is not to be removed unless the person is dying. It doesn’t sound like it in this case, though. Being in a so-called “persistive vegetative state” is not dying, but merely disabled. This is the fruit of the Terri Shiavo case all over again!
Whether or not someone could be charged with murder if the girl is removed from life support or if there would be anyone to care for her or considerations about her “quality of life” ought to have nothing to do with maintaining her life as it is.
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Mom_of_one
Guest
It took almost 2 weeks for Terri to die. And dehyration is a horrible, agonizing death!
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Mom_of_one
Guest
Adoptive mom(her aunt) is dead(suicide), her birth mom signed over her parental rights to the aunt. I have heard 2 reasons for that, but I don’t know which is true, or if both are true.
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amor
Guest
But making that distiction as you have done is the same ISTM as saying that there is a distinction between denying someone who needs an IV feed for nutrition and denying the nutrition (the food in liquid form) itself. I think you could see that denying someone the IV feed would be wrong (unless there just wasn’t enough IV feeds to go around)
I think the same is true of assisted breathing where the breathing is facilitated by say an asthma spray – in such a case it would not be legitimate to deny someone that assistance (unless again there were not enough asthma sprays to go around)
As for machines that pump air and essentially function as an external organ, I don’t think it would be morally required to provide that since what is required is to assist the body and its organs, not to create artificial, external organs (or artificial organs or human or animal organs that are then surgically inserted). An asthma spray, an IV feed, and a feeding tube all do not function as any kind of organ – they merely assist the organs already in place.
If there were two viable methods of feeding someone – say someone could be fed either by IV or by mouth, then for sure one could choose to give only one over the other. But when there is only one, it is required to give that – unless that method consists of the creation of some foreign organ (be it artificial, human or animal) – such as a stomach transplant or something like that.
BTW, the sad and outrageous thing is that now the State is backtracking and saying that they may have messed up in starting to kill the girl. They have suspended plans to finish killing her in light of new evidence. I bet in court they argued that such a thing could never happen – but now it has. This is why you should always be skeptical of such arguments:
Plans to let battered US coma girl die are suspended
Reuters
BOSTON (Reuters) - Officials on Thursday suspended plans to end life support for an 11-year-old girl beaten into a coma, saying her condition had changed, just two days after a court cleared the way for her to be allowed to die.
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Jennifer123
Guest
I know of people who can’t feed themselves but are otherwise perfectly healthy and regular functioning people. For instance, a young woman who has paralyzed her stomach muscles by the practice of bulemia. She uses a feeding tube. By the same criteria used by those who wished Terri Schiavo to die, she would also have to have her tube removed too if the courts deemed her life had a “diminshed quality” using this totally subjective criteria.
The feeding tube delivers food to the body. So does a fork. Should we not use them since it’s an artifical device, an intervention of sorts?
Hope this helps too.
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