Terri Schiavo's Autopsy

The banner headlines and the articles tell us that the autopsy results for Terri Schiavo show that her brain damage was untreatable and that this result means it was right to deny her food and water (see, for example, today's N.Y. Times). The N.Y. Times reports that the official cause of death is "marked dehydration," not starvation. It is no surprise that no county physician would have used the word "starvation"--that would have been like expecting the current Supreme Court to call abortion "murder." Authorities know that words, however factually accurate, can be dangerous to the legitimacy of their power.

Even if one should accept the conclusion that Terri's brain damage was untreatable in any way or form, the immorality, the evil, of starving her remains. She was not dying. The courts killed her precisely because she was not dying. The feeding tube was not damaging her, but rather keeping her alive. She did not have a disease that was causing her crucial organs to stop functioning.

And so the question becomes: do you deny the ordinary care of a feeding tube to someone whose severe brain damage seems to be beyond treatment of any kind? The answer is no because in these circumstances denying the feeding tube is an act of mercilessness and cruelty. Ordinary care is that care which is the basic minimum required by mercy. In the medical circumstances of Terri Schiavo, mercy required nutrition and hydration. Those who ruled otherwise damaged themselves severely by making themselves merciless. If sin is self-mutilation, then the judges who favored removing the tube in this particular case mutilated themselves morally. And so a moral autopsy of our judicial system would read: "cause of moral death: lack of mercy." As others have said, in moral terms, the one most damaged by evil is the evildoer.