Two or Three (.net)

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. - Jesus

3.17.2005

Life or death - who decides?

by Unknown [+/-] show/hide

I don't see how this is fair?

With the Terri Schiavo case, we have two interest at war - the husband and the family. But in the case of 5-month-old Sun Hudson, the only interest was his mother and the hospital was allowed to remove him from life support against her wishes after a judge ruled against her.

Sun may not have ever gotten off the ventilator and may have died in the next few days, weeks or months regardless, but how does a hospital or government have the right to end a life?

For those of you (Sam) who support the right-to-death, what do you think about this case? The baby clearly could not speak for himself, but the mother could and she wanted the baby to live.

i don't see how this is right or fair. How does the hospital get to decide? What limitations do they have? This is very troubling to me.

Hat Tip: World Mag Blog

posted by Unknown at 9:03 AM 2 comments

2 Comments:

  • I don't think we can be overly simplistic, and we must balance our idealism with pragmatism. I mean, if idealists had it their way, no one would ever die!

    Even though I consider myself a conservative Christian, I don't agree with all of the current stands on issues, including the right to die.

    There are instances when medical treatment should stop, and we should let people die. For instance:

    - when further treatment will not change the outcome, and a person would rather spend their last few days/weeks at home without the side-effects of treatment, rather than dying with nausea in the hospital

    With regard to children, I admit that Sun's case is awful - but in the hospital's defense, I say the following:

    - like it or not, the hospital is a business, not a charity. If no one is going to pay, or if no charity is going to step up, then blame the charities, not the hospital
    - extending this type of extreme care in a case where there is little or no hope of recovery is just not practical.
    - every day children die in other countries of dehydration, and we are focusing on a child that wouldn't have even made it through the first few hours of life without extreme technology?
    - the plight of this mother is awful, but every child that dies is awful, and every mother would want to keep trying beyond hope. Many of these cases are truly hopeless. We have to be able to identify these and say "let go, this one will not make it."

    In Sun's case, perhaps he would have made it off of the ventilator, but I am guessing that the hospital's data showed otherwise. Sad story.

    By Blogger danielg, at 3/17/2005 10:17 AM  

  • I agree with most of what you said. I just really don't know what to think about this. How much power over those decisions should a hospital have.

    I understand that a hospital is a business, but was this woman (or her insurance) willing to pay for the ventilator? That was a question I had.

    I don't have any answers on this case. I have more questions than ideas. I just don't want to see how far the prescedent can be stretched.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 3/17/2005 10:29 AM  

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