Dignity Of Life: How Our Faith Informs Our View Of Medical Care
Some will say it does not seem fair that a child be born into poverty or to parent(s) unable to adequately provide for the child’s physical or emotional needs. Others will ask if it is fair to the parents or infant diagnosed in-utero with a congenital defect that he or she be born if knowingly the child needs lifelong medical support. Should the pregnancy continue under these difficult instances?
Even more may ask why we permit pain and suffering in the terminally ill; would not the “compassionate” action involve termination of life? Other situations abound, for example in vitro fertilization with its unused viable embryos. What should be our approach toward these tiny human beings?
What is our responsibility as Catholics toward medical decision making when facing an illness? What we choose affects a human soul, which gives medicine a transcendent nature. Thus, I believe, we are bound in practical fashion to incorporate the moral teachings of the Catholic Church in the engagement of medicine. Not surprisingly, this may prove to be a very challenging task.
The Church provides solid answers through a number of varied teachings. In general, these teachings, coming from years of experience and discussion, recognize the dignity due all human beings. We need to remember every human deserves to be addressed with dignity no matter their socio-economic status, state of health, age, sex, race, legal status, or other conditions.
We are no less human if we are terminally ill than if perfectly well. We are no less human if debilitated with a severe stroke than if very functional. The woman with an unwanted pregnancy must not only recognize her self-worth but also that of her unborn child, who is no less human and no less deserving of dignity and life. This is why the Church speaks out against abortion, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. These medical “treatments” strike against, not for, the human person; they reduce, not build up, dignity and self-worth.
Consider the pregnant woman with a medical condition carrying a risk of death if untreated. Also assume the treatment has a known toxic effect on infants in the womb. The Church teaches that all efforts should be made to save both mother and child. The principle of double effect allows treatment of the mother to eliminate the disease state, even if with the treatment the child should die. The key point is, therapy must be directed at the mother’s illness.
This is not the same as an abortion performed to save the life of the mother where the target is the unborn child. Therefore it is important to question whether there is a true illness in the mother. Speculation of potential problems may merely be a veiled excuse, not valid reason, for termination of the pregnancy.
Let us look at the question of life-support devices like ventilators for maintaining breathing, or dialysis machines for kidney failure. It is permissible under Church teachings to request no machines or even to withdraw them if recovery is thought to be non-existent or very improbable, or the devices prove too burdensome. When a person dies after removal of a life-support device, death is due not from its removal but from the underlying disease state.
On the other hand, the Church does not support efforts to eliminate suffering or pain by promoting death through withholding of potentially lifesaving treatments. Nutrition and hydration (food and water) can be stopped if they are independently causing excessive suffering which can occur on very rare occasions. Otherwise they are necessary. Advanced planning through patient-physician dialogue may help clarify decisions.
The Church provides a moral framework, a moral compass, for how practitioners of medicine should direct their vocation. It also provides guidelines for patients in various stages of treatment. The Church is not imposing hardships; rather, it offers a position of strength to embrace a much needed moral foundation. This moral compass gives direction to a world that seeks to devise its own rules and practices.
Does suffering function to enhance our dependence on God? Could God’s purpose, through a medical condition, be to strengthen our faith or to bring others into a deeper faith life? Faith compels us to investigate the true teachings of the Church and to understand them. Faith and trust in these teachings, enriched by consultations with well-informed priests and ethicists, will lead to a firm conviction of conscience that brings peace and understanding.
Dr. Rosario is president of the Southwestern Indiana Guild of the Catholic Medical Association.
