Voices from the Non-monolithic Left on Terry Schiavo.

Slate publishes a moving essay by Harriett McBryde Johnson, which supports Congress' attempt to intervene in the Terry Schiavo matter. Johnson is a disability rights lawyer with a unique perspective on the subject; because of her disability, her future will include a feeing tube. Some of her observations tie into some of the comments I made to the post several posts below, specifically as to the question of why everyone assumes that feeding tubes constitute "medical treatment."

Johnson writes:

2. Ms. Schiavo is not dependent on life support. Her lungs, kidneys, heart, and digestive systems work fine. Just as she uses a wheelchair for mobility, she uses a tube for eating and drinking. Feeding Ms. Schiavo is not difficult, painful, or in any way heroic. Feeding tubes are a very simple piece of adaptive equipment, and the fact that Ms. Schiavo eats through a tube should have nothing to do with whether she should live or die.

3. This is not a case about a patient's right to refuse treatment. I don't see eating and drinking as "treatment," but even if they are, everyone agrees that Ms. Schiavo is presently incapable of articulating a decision to refuse treatment. The question is who should make the decision for her, and whether that substitute decision-maker should be authorized to kill her by starvation and dehydration.

The rest of Johnson's essay is worth reading as well.

All hydration and nutrition in our society is artificial. Unless you are living in the countryside with a stream and a supply of animals that you can rip and rend with your teeth and bare hands, you get your hydration and nutrition artificially and through the cooperation of others. Whether the means for delivering food and water is artificial or natural is simply a red-herring.

Ultimately, the issue is whether the supply of food and water is "heroic" or inolves unreasonable risks or costs, without regard to the person being fed or hydrated. Conceivably, there could be a time when feeding someone does involve unreasonable risks. For example, if a person required a steady diet of platinum or baby livers, that diet would probably cross the line into heroic effort or cost.

But, according to Johnson, feeding tubes don't involve that kind of cost or risk. What the denial of hydration and nutrition through feeding tubes says is that the patient is not worth feeding, and, more specifically, that the purpose of pulling the tube is to eliminate the costs associated with the patient's continued existence, as distinct from the cost of feeding the patient through tubes. In other words, the removal of feeding tubes is not about medical treatment, and if it's not about medical treatment, it's really about euthanasia.