feeding tubes
The Vatican on Life and Death in Italy
The Pope is cheesed because he couldn't keep feeding tubes stuck in some woman. She's been in a coma 17 years and we're 10 years into her father's battle to enact her wishes, that she'd be allowed to die. Finally, she's been allowed. They had to move her out of a state hospital to do it. Italy has no law allowing someone to provide advance directives: instructions for health care (or lack thereof) in the case one is unable to make one's own decisions. The Vatican has been trying to make it mandatory for unconscious patients to be hooked up to food and water indefinitely. Conscious patients have the right to say no, but the unconscious are to have no say.
In some ways it's sad, maybe pathetic. People used to live and die on the Pope's word. Armies marched for him. From baptism to marriage to extreme unction to burial, the Church had you, body and soul. Not so today. Today the Pope struggles to maintain control over the most helpless of us, those who have been injured into coma. Everyone else has shrugged him off. And now he doesn't get to make life and death decisions for anyone, not even the comatose.
I've always supported the right to die, but boy howdy has the last year made that support personal.
The Pope is cheesed because he couldn't keep feeding tubes stuck in some woman. She's been in a coma 17 years and we're 10 years into her father's battle to enact her wishes, that she'd be allowed to die. Finally, she's been allowed. They had to move her out of a state hospital to do it. Italy has no law allowing someone to provide advance directives: instructions for health care (or lack thereof) in the case one is unable to make one's own decisions. The Vatican has been trying to make it mandatory for unconscious patients to be hooked up to food and water indefinitely. Conscious patients have the right to say no, but the unconscious are to have no say.
In some ways it's sad, maybe pathetic. People used to live and die on the Pope's word. Armies marched for him. From baptism to marriage to extreme unction to burial, the Church had you, body and soul. Not so today. Today the Pope struggles to maintain control over the most helpless of us, those who have been injured into coma. Everyone else has shrugged him off. And now he doesn't get to make life and death decisions for anyone, not even the comatose.
I've always supported the right to die, but boy howdy has the last year made that support personal.