Scott leaves this comment on one of our older posts on Terri:
Well I have only recently become familiar with this case however i am split on my thoughts. I Feel for all people involved with this situation. and pray for their grief. I have expressed in the past to my spouse that i would not want to live like teri’s condition or any condition where i was unable to continue to feed myself or take care of myself and have never felt the need to discuss this with my parents this legislative ruling shows not only should i do that but perhaps put in some sort of order with the state clerk. Listening to her brother they have not had medical records or acess to doctors reports in the past 10 yrs perhaps there is more then they know at this point. May god allow the one that i entrust with my wishes make the decsion for me and not a body of lawmakers or any other party that thinks they have my best intrest in mind but rather the one that i share my deepest most inner thoguhts to on this subject and may he allow the others to grieve properly for their loss
Scott, thanks for stopping by.
One thing that you might want to consider in this case is that although the family has been denied access to Terri’s records, they have not always been denied access to Terri herself. I urge you to head over to http://www.terrisfight.org and see the pictures for yourself. Terri is not in a persistent vegetative state, pure and simple. Her husband spoke a great deal about her potential for rehabilitation during the malpractice suit.
There are also sworn affadavits from nurses who cared for Terri stating that medical records had been falsified.
But even if Terri were even more seriously disabled than she was, that does not justify withholding basic human needs from her. People who are brain-injured can be medically stable though still disabled. Withholding basic care from them — including food and water — with the intent to hasten their death is wrong.
Think twice before you start signing those advanced directives. It’s easy when we are well to see a disabled person and think, oh, I’d never want to live like that. But you have no idea how your thinking might change should it actually happen. Sure, it’s inconvenient to be unable to feed yourself or put on your own socks. But that doesn’t mean that your life isn’t worth living. Don’t you think Christopher Reeve’s kids are glad he’s around to watch them grow up? How about Mattie Stepanek and his mother, both disabled?
If you suffered a severe brain injury, which would you rather hear — your wife’s voice saying, “I love you, and I’m going to keep pulling for you, and I’m going to see you whenever I can”? or some lawyer saying, “sorry, I know you think he’s in there, but even though he’s otherwise healthy we can’t feed him — that’s what the paper says” and having the lawyer’s voice ring in your ears as your stomach churns from hunger and your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth? when you know you still love your wife and are still happy to see her?
It’s not our ability to care for ourselves or make widgets that makes us human and gives our lives value. Even people with profound brain disabilities still retain the ability to love and to be loved — and to suffer. There’s a difference between saying good-bye to a dying person and hastening the death of someone whose life is inconvenient.
Although Catholic teaching gives a person’s “wishes” for medical treatment consideration within certain limits, I don’t understand how they assumed such primacy in so many Christians’ evaluation of these situations.