Divining a Patient's Religious Beliefs in Treatment Termination Decision-Making

Abstract

The tortured path of the Schiavo case represented the worst case-scenario that results when a family fails to agree upon the most appropriate care for a severely impaired loved one. While many treatment termination cases consider how the incompetent patient's religious beliefs may inform how the patient would have viewed her treatment, religious tenants have rarely figured so prominently in a right-to-die case. Unfortunately, most of the discussion about the Catholic Church's position in treatment termination generally, and discontinuation of medically-assisted feeding for patients in persistent vegetative states specifically, was ill-informed and confusing. This article pursues two goals: first to clarify the teachings of the Church regarding treatment termination, and, second, to explore the relevance of those teachings to the legal resolution of the Schiavo case. It concludes that because Church teaching was not itself clear while Ms. Schiavo was still competent on the question of terminating nutrition and hydration from a person in PVS, and because it was even less clear whether Ms. Schiavo understood or subscribed to Catholic teaching on the subject, that Church teaching was unhelpful in determining what Ms. Schiavo would have decided about her continued treatment, or whether continued treatment was in her best interests.