Catholic bishops vs. right to die

[Niles]

More interference with health care from Catholic bishops; Catholic bishops vs. right to die
Susan Jacoby
11/20/2009
Washington Post

This story won’t get as much publicity as the Catholic Church’s efforts to insinuate its doctrines on abortion into the health care bill, but the bishops also declared this week that Catholic hospitals must provide the  equivalents of food and water even to patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The new directive extends to patients “in chronic conditions (eg., the `persistent vegetative state’) who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care.”  In English, what this means is that if you are unlucky enough to be taken to a Catholic hospital, and you have experienced a seizure or traumatic accident that puts you in a vegetative stage from which there is no hope of recovery, the hospital will force-feed you through intravenous tubes—even if you have a living will that specifically rejects nutrition and hydration in such circumstances.

Why, you may ask, does this matter? After all, no one is forced to use a Catholic hospital. Except people are forced  to do just that, in the many areas of the country where Catholic hospitals have merged with secular hospitals and have successfully demanded, as part of the price of the merger, that health care rules approved by the church be followed  in the merged hospital. For more information, visit www.mergerwatch.org. MergerWatch is a nonprofit organization that has been tracking the effects of these unions between secular and religious hospitals for more than a decade.

Should hospitals be eligible for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement if health care decisions are dictated by the rules of  any religion?

In general, what happens when Catholic hospitals merge with secular hospitals is that whichever institution was larger, and more capable of functioning by itself, sets the terms. The bishops’ statement this week, which would force artificial nutrition and hydration even on patients who have explicitly stated that they do not want to be kept alive in such circumstances, is deeply troubling. There is no exception for people whose living wills specifically reject such “treatment.”

A Catholic hospital, the bishops say, is obligated to provide artificial nutrition and hydration. When the bishops say that a patient in a “persistent vegetative state” can “live indefinitely” if force-fed, what they mean is the patient can lie for months or years bound to a bed, unable to communicate, swallow, or  perform any voluntary muscular tasks, as long as he or she is able to breathe without a ventilator. That is what the Catholic bishops call life.

I have a living will that explicitly prohibits such measures were I ever in a vegetative state—and I have designated a legal representative to act for me. So has my 88-year-old mother, and we have discussed this matter many times. The bishops would take away my right to determine what treatment I want if, say, I should be unfortunate enough to have a terrible auto accident and be taken to a nearby Catholic hospital. They would take the same right away from my mother and from any other patient unlucky enough to wind up in a hospital that follows the orders of the Roman Catholic Church. 

A legal representative would, presumably, have to take steps to remove the patient to a secular hospital in order to carry out the dictates of a living will. I view this as a complete outrage in a multireligious society with a secular government.

And most of the public is unaware of the degree to which religious policies have been introduced in merged hospitals that receive public money and are generally regarded as nondemoninational by their communities.