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Terri Schiavo's fight for life riveted our country last March. The 41-year-old brain-damaged Florida woman classified as "persistently vegetative" became the "face that captured a nation." For many, her death was a state-sanctioned murder with frightening implications; for others, it was a victory for dignified death with choice.
Terri's story hit my family in a powerful way. The issues raised by her life—and her death—were more than headlines to us.
At age 41, I gave birth to my daughter, Caroline, on August 30, 2002. But a uterine rupture led to two surgeries and transfusions of 20 units of blood and blood products that night. I developed Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and a roller coaster of life-threatening complications: collapsed lungs, pneumonia, a blood infection, kidney failure, blood clots, and heart problems. In the weeks that followed, I hovered near death, and my family agonized over decisions regarding extraordinary measures and Do Not Resuscitate orders. I walked into the hospital on August 30, and came home just before Christmas on a walker and oxygen.
Terri's ordeal reminded me of my family's pain and of that scary place between awareness and not, the horrors of ventilators, the inability to eat or speak, the long struggle to breathe, and the misery of multiple tubes—their removal and their reinsertion.
The Challenge of the ComplexitiesEvery day Christian families face agonizing end-of-life decisions for their loved ones away from the glare of national news coverage. For example, my friends Angie and Fred struggled with knowing when to stop Fred's aggressive experimental cancer treatment and begin hospice care. My mother-in-law, Mary, was terminally ill with an estimated five years of quality time left, but when she was hospitalized with a life-threatening complication with internal bleeding and scarce hope for recovery, our family tearfully agreed to discontinue her ventilator support. She died soon after.
Here's where scientific complexities lead into a moral gray zone. Are tube feeding and hydration medical treatment, or morally required sustenance? Do we have to keep people in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) alive indefinitely? Is there a difference between a feeding tube and a ventilator? How do you determine the line between "prolonging death" and "sustaining life"? What treatment would or wouldn't you want if your death were imminent, or if you were in a coma or PVS?
Christians, including physicians and ethicists, have varying views on these subjects. Some say feeding tubes and hydration are basic sustenance to feed the hungry (Matthew 25:42-45). Others say they're medical interventions that can be ethically removed.
What happened to Terri Schiavo challenges our thinking as believers on many fronts. "The culture of death we're encountering in the U.S. and abroad," said Dorothy Timbs, legislative counsel at the National Right to Life, "defines people in a utilitarian ethic—whether their quality of life satisfies some subjective standard instead of measuring its intrinsic value."
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