BASIC:

We can't stand by and watch her starve to death (Rabbi Aryeh Spero, 3/21/05, Jewish World Review)

Long ago Jewish law made a distinction between withholding medication and special treatments from a patient as opposed to withholding food and water. Whereas there comes a time when we are no longer required to proactively employ "heroic" medicines and treatments to keep a non-functioning body operating, it is always necessary to continue feeding a patient.

A heart, for example, that beats not on its own but only through an artificial respirator is surviving outside the pale of physiology — its maintenance is artificial. There is nothing artificial, however, in people being fed by others. Babies do not feed themselves, nor do the frail and very sick — for example, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients. While we do not breathe for others, we certainly feed others. It makes no difference if the person is fed from without or within, conventionally or by machine.

While medicating is a conditional decision, not so feeding. Feeding is not a medical question, it is the most basic human need whose purview is not the doctor's or judge's but inalienable. Not to feed one starving in front of you is: "Standing by While the Blood of Your Brother is Spilt." [...]

The apathy displayed by so many remains disheartening, but the tirades from certain liberals against those simply wishing to keep her alive so that her parents can take care of her is truly eye-opening. What pivotal liberal principle is being destroyed by the House wishing to keep this young woman alive? Their anger is roused for they behold via this case the use in our society of standards set forth by religious convictions. This case illustrates their inability — try as they may — to wipe out the animating force and decisiveness of religion in issues important to Americans.

It is Christian groups and the largest Orthodox Jewish grassroots movement, Agudath Israel, who have taken up her cause for life. Inspired by a biblical belief that starving Terri to death constitutes murder, Christian preachers and laymen —the faithful — have come to her rescue. Nothing is scarier to hard core secularists than having issues of the day be framed and won within the rubric of a universal religious standard. So as to avoid the "separation of church and state" police, the House and Senate have had to frame their plea under the more neutral phraseology of "Life, Liberty, and…"

Actually, as the Rabbi demonstrates, that phraseology is anything but neutral.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 21, 2005 6:38 AM