Category: Law and Policy

It’s truly sad news that Teri Schiavo has died. Many Christians today are questioning how this happened and what it says about our culture and legal system.

I’ve found this particular case profoundly frustrating. As a Christian who is ardently pro-life, I hate disagreeing with my brothers and sisters who feel so strongly about this case. I certainly do stand with anyone who fears the prospects of euthanasia, assisted suicide, and a culture of death. However, as a lawyer, I understand some aspects of this case perhaps too well. And, as a lawyer, I simply can’t find any fault in how this case was handled, nor can I find any normative principle arising from it which makes it in any way unique. It’s been agonizing to hear otherwise thoughtful people rail against the courts and judges involved in this case and mis-state the nature of the law that was applied. The truth is, the courts applied the law exactly as the people of the State of Florida enacted it through their elected representatives, as confirmed in the independent Guardian ad Litem’s Report.

I’d like to suggest that, if you are a Christian who truly feels Terri Schiavo was murdered, you need to pressure your state legislators to change certain laws that almost certainly are on the books in your state. Before you do that, though, I’d also like to suggest that there are serious questions you need to resolve.

The Colorado Supreme Court issued a Opinion yesterday that should cause all of us great concern. The court held that a juror cannot bring a Bible into the jury room without introducing “passion, prejudice or [another] arbitrary factor” into the decision process. As a result, the court threw out a death penalty sentence, and imposed a lesser sentence of life imprisionment, on a defendant who was convicted of raping and murdering a woman and murdering a second woman who had attempted to rescue the first victim.

The rationale for the court’s decision is as confused as it is shocking.

There’s an excellent interview on the Christianty Today website with John Kilner, President of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. There are more materials from Kilner on the CBHD website.

Finally, here is a solidly Christian, yet balanced and reasonable, perspective on the Schiavo matter. Kilner argues that Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube should not have been withdrawn because of the material doubt about her medical status and the possible availability of other therapies that had not yet been tried. But, he avoids inflammatory rhetoric, and is careful to state that we can’t make overly broad statements about artificial nutrition and hydration based on this one difficult case. For example, he states:

Right now we have to be just a little more careful about sweeping statements about what we would do with nutrition and hydration. There are medical circumstances in a final dying process in which it’s not automatic that you do everything possible to put in the fluid and hydration….

He also notes that we must honor an individual’s clearly expressed wishes about medical treatment, even if we disagree with the person’s decisions:

[I]t is appropriate for us to honor their wishes even though it’s the wrong thing to do, because the person has responsibility for what can be inflicted on their body…. So you just kind of hold those two things together: We have to honor somebody’s wishes to refuse life-sustaining treatment, but we need to do everything possible to help them see that their life really is important and significant and that we’re willing to care for them.

I’m not sure I agree with everything Kilner has to say about the Schiavo case, but this is the kind of discussion I want to see from a Christian perspective: erudite, nuanced, balanced, and carefully thought out.

Just an update to my earlier post on Schiavo and judicial activism: there’s an excellent article today by Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal summarizing some of the court proceedings and placing this case in context.

A recent post at Blogodoxy, picked up by Jollyblogger, suggests that the “real issue” in the Schiavo case is the definition of personhood. I think Blogodoxy is partly right. The definition of personhood is critical for clear ethical reflection on the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) from a person in a persistent vegitative state (PVS). The uproar over the Schiavo case, however, is driven, I think, more by politics and conservative Catholic teaching rather than by independent ethical reflection.

Perhaps unwittingly, many Evangelical and Reformed bloggers and activists are advocating a hard-line position on the withdrawal of ANH that ultimately traces back to the Catholic Magesterial teaching and a recent Address given by Pope John Paul II. While I respect this Pope greatly, I’d like to examine this question a bit more closely, and suggest that a balanced Christian perspective should be less dogmatic about whether ANH can be withdrawn from a PVS patient.