Comatose People are NOT Vegetables!

By playing with words, our culture is once again choosing a specific part of human society to dehumanize and systematically destroy. People in comas are now called "patients in a persistent vegetative state." The clear and obvious assumption of this new term is that these patients are no longer people, no longer truly human. They are now "vegetables" in the sense that they can do nothing more than vegetables can do. Their lives have now - in the terms of our materialist, secularist society - become useless and meaningless. This new mindset was seen in the US spotlight in the case of Terri Schiavo. It has now made the spotlight in Italy, where the courts have ruled for the first time that a feeding tube be removed from a comatose patient - at the request of the girl's father.


Italian man wins the right to end the life of his daughter after 16 years in coma - Telegraph

Eluana's father Beppino based his appeal on the fact that she had been in good health and of sound mind before the accident and would not have wanted to be kept alive in a vegetative state.

Here is the line we can expect to hear a lot of: "she wouldn't have wanted to live this way." Her life has no meaning, no value because she is no longer healthy, active and productive.

Last night Mr Englaro said: "I still can't believe it. I don't feel any pain as, for me, my daughter died 16 years ago.

"I feel that I can now free the most splendid creature I have ever known. She was in an irreversible coma, now we can free her, it's not euthanasia its freedom.

Mr. Englaro's appeal is poetic and emotional, but it is sadly mistaken. His daughter's beautiful life was still being lived. Her beauty is not dependent on her state of consciousness. A person's ability to express herself does not change her dignity or the value of her life. The truth is that Mr. Englaro did not set his daughter free. He who was able to see her beauty while she was conscious and vivacious failed to see her beauty when she was vulnerable and in the most need of love. By fighting for her death, he judged that her life was no longer worth living.

This same judgment was passed down from the judge's bench:

In the ruling from Judge Filippo Lamanna yesterday, he cited "the extraordinary duration of Eluana's persistent vegetative state, as well as her sense of freedom and vision of life" as reasons behind his decision.

He added: "Her conception of life was incompatible with her total loss of physical capacity, she was biological only in body.''

The Catholic Church holds firmly that all human life is sacred, no matter how much "physical capacity" one has. My brother, who has cerebral palsy and very little "physical capacity," is living a beautiful life because of the love of his family, especially of my mother and father who care for him every day. There was a time when doctors would counsel families to talk to comatose patients because there was a chance that the patients could hear their loved ones. This practice is beautiful because it is a practice of love. This kind of love expresses belief in the inherent dignity of the person that is not dependent on what the person does, but on whom she is.

The Church does not teach that life must be preserved at all costs. It is precisely the cases of comatose patients that make it seem so. The Church's teaching is that all ordinary means of treatment must be given to a patient - no matter what their "quality of life" seems to be by cultural or personal standards, but that extraordinary or emergency measures may be refused. For a comatose patient, feeding tubes would constitute ordinary means of treatment as long as the person is able to receive and process nutrients.

I am planning a full explanation of the Church's teaching on end-of-life treatment in "Living the Divine Life" in the Library soon. Keep a lookout for it! This is a teaching that preserves the dignity of every human person, and that finds the balance between the inestimable value of human life and the temporariness of our life on earth.