Jewish Law About Terry Schiavo's Case

Traditional Jewish Authorities are in agreement about Terry Schiavo's situation:

Rabbi Avi Shafran of the fervently Orthodox Agudath Israel of America said the Schiavo case is “straightforward from a Jewish perspective: The most important point from a halachic standpoint is that a compromised life is still a life.”

“In the Schiavo case, you’re not dealing with a patient in extremis,” he said, noting that until her feeding tube was removed, Schiavo was not dying.

In halachah, there is a category for a person at the edge of death; the rules for such a person, called a goses, are complicated.

“There are times when certain medical intervention is halachically contraindicated,” Shafran said. “There may be times when it’s OK not to shock a heart back into beating, not to administer certain drugs. You do not prolong the act of dying.”

But Schiavo was not a goses, Shafran said. Instead, before the tube was removed she “had the exact same halachic status as a baby or a demented person. Like a baby, she was helpless, could not feed herself and was not able to communicate in any meaningful way. But a life is a life.”

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, the central arm of modern Orthodoxy, agreed that from a halachic perspective the Schiavo case is straightforward.

“It’s not permitted to do anything actively that would stop the process of a person’s staying alive,” he said. “In this case, that would be withdrawing a feeding tube, which is tantamount to starving a person to death.”

Like Shafran, Weinreb said the wishes of the patient or the family are not relevant.

“It might have a bearing on whether new measures are undertaken, but once a person is on a support system, removing it is not possible,” Weinreb said.

“Doing something to actively interfere with a person’s ability to continue to live technically is murder,” he said. “I can’t imagine a scenario that would make removing the feeding tube permissible.” [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Comments

[Jewish Mother]

Terry's husband has a common law wife and 2 children from her. He is really Terry's former husband. Do you want your former husband to decide if you will live or die? I don't!!!
Feminists, where are you when we need you?