Being human - What Jewish law has to say about the Terry Schiavo case.

[drdon326]

Like the mental state of the incapacitated woman at its center, the Schiavo Saga doesn't lend itself to a simple label. On one level it exists as a family feud; on another, as a political football; and on yet another as a cultural touchstone.

But regardless of the motivations of the husband or parents of Terri Schiavo, who as of this writing is dying of court-ordered dehydration, regardless of the propriety of congressional involvement in the matter and regardless of what reactions to the case might or might not say about America as a society, the tumult has also been a teaching moment, an opportunity for us all to ponder nothing less than the meaning of life. And Judaism, here as always, has much to teach.

Jewish religious law, or halacha, does not always insist that life be maintained. When, for instance, a person is in the state called "goseis" - "moribund in imminent danger of death," in Rabbi J.David Bleich's words, Judaism forbids intercessions that will prolong suffering, although the active removal of connected life-support systems is another matter entirely. And there are times when even a healthy Jewish person is required by halacha to forfeit his or her life -- most famously, when preserving life would entail the performance of an act of idol-worship, murder or sexual immorality.

However, when an individual is incapacitated, even severely, but clearly alive, Judaism considers that life to possess no less value than that it possessed before it was compromised. Even a previously expressed desire to be killed if in such a state, while of considerable import in American law, carries no halachic weight at all. Although there are those who like to assert otherwise, the Jewish high ideal is not autonomy but responsibility.

It is not hard to make a slippery slope case here. In the Netherlands, where patients in compromised states have been "mercy-killed" for years by doctors, today 16-year-olds with "emotional pain" can legally enlist medical help in committing suicide (a 15-year-old requires parental consent).

And there is already at least scholarly slip-sliding in our own country, like the pronouncements of renowned ethicist Professor Peter Singer of Princeton, who not only advocates the killing of the severely disabled and unconscious elderly but has made the case as well for the dispatching of babies who are severely disabled. Such children, he has written, are "neither rational nor self-conscious" and so "the principles that govern the wrongness of killing nonhuman animals ... must apply here, too." Or, as he more bluntly puts it, "The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee."

read much more

http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Article%5El1687&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Opinions&

[IndianaGreen]

1. Christopher Reeve was not married to someone like Michael Schiavo

Good thing for all of us that Christopher Reeve was not married to someone like Michael Schiavo.

The article you posted, drdon, has a link to another well-worth reading article. I post it here because it is also relevant.

Who Wants to Marry Michael Schiavo?

Meet one of America's worst husbands.

by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

America has never quite witnessed a husband like Michael Schiavo, a man who is prepared to take on the entire might of the United States government to ensure that his wife ends up six feet under. And who could fault him? After all, to great men like Michael Schiavo, a promise is a promise, unless of course, it's a promise of sexual fidelity in marriage.

Many people in America wish they were dead, none more so, it seems, that teenagers. According to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center, almost 1 in 5 teens have seriously considered attempting suicide. More than 1 in 6 have made plans to attempt suicide. And more than 1 in 12 have made a suicide attempt in the past year. Like many Rabbis, Priests, and pastors, I have personally sat with a number of people who wanted to kill themselves. I sat with a nineteen-year-old girl who tried to slit her wrists because she thought she had already ruined her life. I have sat with women whose husbands, like Michael Schiavo, have abandoned them for another woman. They too have told me that the pain of rejection and the feeling like they are dried-up, used goods, has made them wish they were dead. And I have sat with men whom financial failure had left in such despair that they thought of serious violence against themselves.

In each of these circumstances, like any decent human being, I tried my utmost to inspire these individuals to choose life. I told them that this feeling of hopelessness would pass. That after feeling that they had hit rock bottom there was nowhere to go but up. That people loved them, that their lives were meaningful, that they dared not succumb to despair.

http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Article%5El1689&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Stories&

[drdon326]

3. The people in GD seemed very receptive to the article.

:eyes:

[IndianaGreen]

4. Like the poster that said "Rabbi Marc Gellman is a liar!"

and the ones that called Eloriel a freeper for not being part of the group-think.

How about the one that said "enough religion already"?

[Misskittycat]

5. The analogy between Christopher Reeve and Terry Schiavo is wrong

The two cases are in no way the same, and the ethical considerations are monumentally different. This Rabbi is orthodox, and out of the mainstream of American Jewish thinking.

[IndianaGreen]

2. We can break any law in order to save a life

that's has always been an important precept in Judaism. Rabbi Shafran points out that life, however limited, has value:

The Jewish view, though, of lives like Terry Schiavo's is, in the end, not dependent on slopes or slippage. According to halacha, withholding food and water from a person in a "persistent vegetative state" is, in and of itself, a grave wrong. Judaism invests human life -- no matter how limited it may seem -- with inherent, infinite meaning.

Respect for life, or lack thereof, is at the core of what is wrong in our country. Starving and dehydrating people to death is okay, as is torture and holding people in a concentration camp indefinitely.