Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Catholic Bishops Enact Plan For “300,000 Terri Sch iavos”

Sat Nov 28 13:19:28 CST 2009

Sickening.  --mkb

On Nov 28, 2009, at 11:32 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:

> 
> 
> FireDogLake
> 
> Catholic Bishops Enact Plan For “300,000 Terri Schiavos”
> 
> By: David Dayen Tuesday November 24, 2009 8:16 am
> 
> The US Conference of Catholic Bishops released an “Ethical and
> Religious Directive” this month that would ban any Catholic hospital,
> nursing home or hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending
> palliative procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an
> advance directive to guide their end-of-life care. The Bishops’
> directive even notes that patient suffering is redemptive and brings
> the individual closer to Christ.
> 
> The Catholic bishops have become more involved in political fights in
> recent years, particularly the issue of abortion coverage and
> immigration provisions in the current health care debate. This has
> caused a schism in the American Catholic community, which bubbled to a
> head yesterday with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) being denied communion
> because of his position on choice.
> 
> More quietly, however, the Church has staked out a radical position on
> end-of-life care, without patients of the 565 Catholic hospitals and
> other Catholic care facilities even knowing about it. As Barbara
> Coombs Lee, president of Compassion and Choices, an advocacy group,
> put it, “When a patient goes to one of these facilities, they don’t
> know that they’re choosing Catholic dogma. The bishops see the
> hospitals as an extension of their ministry.”
> 
> The “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care
> Services” put out by the Catholic bishops would build upon a Papal
> allocution given in the wake of the controversial Terri Schiavo case,
> where the US Congress stepped in to keep Schiavo alive despite her
> persistent vegetative state and the wishes of her husband to end care.
> The papal elocution did state that the permanently unconscious should
> always have access to a feeding tube, but it did not have the force of
> doctrinal law behind it. “There was always some wiggle room” for
> Catholic care facilities, said Coombs Lee. Catholics were allowed to
> use something called a “benefit/burden balance” to determine the
> ethical, moral and compassionate result in any individual case.
> 
> Now, that wiggle room is gone. In the new directive, the bishops state
> that it is unethical and immoral to withhold or withdraw a feeding
> tube from patients, whether in cases of permanent unconsciousness,
> comas, or even cases of advanced dementia when the patient is unable
> to feed themselves.
> 
> This substitutes the wishes of the bishops for the stated wishes of
> families and the patients themselves, said Coombs Lee. Even if the
> family can produce an advance directive or living will, Catholic
> hospitals and nursing homes would be expected to maintain the feeding
> tubes. In addition, all Catholic health care workers are required by
> their faith to continue palliative care, according to the document.
> The directive even addresses patients. “These are directives for you,
> from the church,” said Coombs Lee.
> 
> In many cities, this means that every hospital or medical care
> facility will not allow the withdrawal of a feeding tube. “In Spokane,
> Washington, if you don’t get Catholic health care, you don’t get
> health care,” Coombs Lee said. “In Eugene, Oregon, if you don’t get
> Catholic health care, you don’t get health care.” Coombs Lee
> characterized it as a kind of entrapment, with a sense of “my house,
> my rules.” If a patient’s family wanted to comply with an advance
> directive, they would have to leave the Catholic care facility, adding
> a level of stress and disruption to the already difficult time of
> aggrievement. “Decisions on feeding tubes are hard enough without
> adding this extra adversity,” said Coombs Lee.
> 
> Coombs Lee believes that this could create “300,000 Terri Schiavo
> cases,” the number being equal to the number of feeding tubes inserted
> in the United States each year.
> 
> The Catholic Hospital Association disagrees. Their statement
> responding to the Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directive says that:
> 
> However, the Directive explains that this obligation ceases and the
> measures become “morally optional” when the measures cannot reasonably
> be expected to prolong the patient’s life or when they become
> excessively burdensome. (This provision incorporates into the
> Directive the teaching of Pope John Paul II and the Congregation for
> the Doctrine of the Faith regarding medically assisted nutrition and
> hydration to persons in a persistent vegetative state. Catholic health
> care facilities have already addressed the implications of these
> statements).
> 
> The Directive also distinguishes between patients in a chronic state
> and those who are dying. This distinction has implications for the use
> of medically administered nutrition and hydration. For dying patients,
> medically administered nutrition and hydration may no longer be of
> benefit and may, in fact, impose significant burdens.
> 
> Compassion & Choices says that this language distinguishing between
> those cases where artificial nutrition is “excessively burdensome”
> appears nowhere in the Bishops’ directive. Furthermore, while the CHA
> says the directive only applies to those patients being kept alive by
> a feeding tube, that is precisely their function. As Coombs Lee puts
> it, “Feeding tubes keep people in chronic states like PVS and advanced
> dementia alive… Feeding tubes are not indicated for people actively
> dying and they are rarely inserted in any institution, Catholic or
> not.”
> 
> A 60Minutes piece this weekend looked at the cost of dying in America,
> showing that Medicare paid $50 billion in the last two months of
> patients’ lives in 2008. Compassion & Choices focuses on the suffering
> at the end of life, not federal dollars, but they agree in general
> with the portrait shown by 60 Minutes. Incredibly, suffering is one of
> the selling points in the Catholic Bishops’ directive. “It’s quite
> specific about the role of suffering in Christian dogma,” Coombs Lee
> explained. “It says that suffering is redemptive, that it’s part of
> Christ’s passion. So they are pretty clear on their concern for the
> suffering of the patient.”
> 
> The end of life issue became very controversial in the health care
> debate, over fears that Congress was creating so-called “death
> panels.” However, these secret “suffering panels” put in by Catholic
> hospitals are being done without much fanfare at all. “People need to
> know,” said Coombs Lee, “when they commit themselves to a hospital,
> that they are submitting to a Catholic ministry, in the eyes of the
> Bishops.”
> 
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