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Finn's End
By Michael F. Flach
HERALD Staff Writer
The following unsigned editorial first appeared in the Oct. 18 edition of Our Sunday Visitor, a national Catholic newspaper.
Hugh Finn died a slow death from starvation on Oct. 9, his feeding tube having been pulled Oct. 1 with the approval of his family, the state of Virginia and leading ethicists, including at least two Catholic bishops.
The 44-year-old Catholic man suffered irreversible brain damage and had been in a near-comatose state since a 1995 car crash.
Doctors concluded that nothing short of a miracle would have brought Hugh back to full consciousness. But some, including his siblings, believed that Hugh showed signs of awareness and responsiveness to his surroundings. A state-employed nurse said that during a mid-September investigation, Hugh said ``Hi'' to him.
However, Hugh's wife and state doctors determined that Hugh was in a ``persistent vegetative state,'' an incurable condition that makes it legal to withdraw all further medical treatment from him.
Admittedly, this is one of those awful "hard cases'' that push at the limits of compassion and moral law. It is an area, too, in which Catholic teaching offers no hard and fast guidance.
The church permits the refusal of what the "Catechism of the Catholic Church'' calls "overzealous treatment'' (No. 2278) in incurable cases. But neither the Vatican nor the U.S. bishops have rendered a definitive judgment about whether artificial nutrition and hydration - food and water delivered through a feeding tube - can ever be considered ``overzealous.'' In various "hard cases,'' including the Finn case, individual bishops and Catholic theologians have reached contradictory conclusions.
We have consistently argued that a feeding tube should always be considered ``ordinary'' or basic medical treatment, and that it should be provided to all patients who need it and never withdrawn except when death is imminent.
As Pope John Paul II said in a talk delivered Oct. 2 to U.S. bishops in Rome -- coincidentally, within hours of the removal of Hugh's feeding tube -- ``feeding, hydration and normal medical care'' must be considered ``ordinary means of preserving life.'' Moreover, the pope said, ``the omission of nutrition and hydration intended to cause a patient's death must be rejected.''
Just as the unborn child does not forfeit personhood just because he or she hasn't yet left the womb, Hugh Finn and others in his condition don't stop being persons just because they have lost their ability to communicate or feed themselves.
Whether such people should be allowed to live or die is not solely a "private, personal'' decision, despite what the Finns and others have argued. These "private'' decisions help create a climate of public acceptance for such actions, a climate that can lead to changes in values and laws.
Already, "quality of life'' and "cost-benefit'' arguments are being used to justify denying basic treatment to elderly heart-attack and stroke victims, not to mention children born with birth defects.
We must restore the crucial moral distinction between ordinary medical treatments needed to preserve life and those that are extraordinary or overzealous, lest we descend as a society into a tyranny of the strong against the weak, the healthy against the sick.
It's too late for Hugh Finn. But it's not too late for the rest of us. — M.F.F.
Copyright ©1998 Arlington Catholic Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article was published in the Arlington
Catholic Herald Web Site,
200 N. Glebe Rd., Suite 607, Arlington, VA 22203, Vol 23, No 42;
dated Oct 22, 1998, on page 6.
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