Christian Worldview Concepts

Feeding Tubes and End-of-Life Decision Making

A Very Public Death

Terri Schiavo's very public death brought to the public's attention (again) the potential for conflict at the end of life. This is not the first time a critically ill person's death has been hastened by the removal of a feeding tube. In 1992, after appealing all the way to the United States Supreme Court, Nancy Cruzan's parents won the right to remove her feeding tube, which resulted in her death on Christmas Day.

Since Cruzan's death, many patients in hospices, nursing homes and other long term care facilities have quieting and privately died following family decisions to either remove or never insert a feeding tube. The only reason anyone in America knew about Terri Schiavo was because her parents and husband disagreed about what Terri herself would have wanted.

Both parties argued that they were following her wishes; her husband argued that she would not want to be "kept alive" in such a condition by such a method, while her parents contended that Terri would never want to be starved to death. Had both parties agreed, the feeding tube would have been removed, Terri would have died by exactly the same means and there would not have been the extensive media coverage.

The spectacle surrounding Terri Schiavo's dying, made worse by non-stop coverage, the numerous court hearings and the sometimes bizarre behavior of those trying to get her feeding tube reconnected overshadowed significant ethical issues which were either ignored or given scant attention this hyper-sensationalized death watch.