More on the Schiavo case
Professor Robert P. George weighs in:
National Review Online: How should we go about thinking about the circumstances under which it is morally permissible to refuse medical treatment? What principles ought to guide us?
Robert P. George: From a moral vantage point, it can be, though it will not always be, permissible to decline treatment — even potentially life-saving treatment — when one's reason for declining the treatment is something other than the belief that one's life, or the life of the person for whom one is making a decision, lacks sufficient value to be worth living. What we must avoid, always and everywhere, is yielding to the temptation to regard some human lives, or the lives of human beings in certain conditions, as lebensunwerten Lebens, lives unworthy of life. Since the life of every human being has inherent worth and dignity, there is no valid category of lebensunwerten Lebens. Any society that supposes that there is such a category has deeply morally compromised itself. As Leon Kass recently reminded us in a powerful address at the Holocaust Museum, it was supposedly enlightened and progressive German academics and medical people who put their nation on the road to shame more than a decade before the Nazis rose to power by promoting a doctrine of eugenics based precisely on the proposition that the lives of some human beings — such as the severely retarded — are unworthy of life.
George comments on the "federalism" argument here:
NRO: What are the proper limits of the federal government's authority here?
George: I don't see that any just authority of the state of Florida is being displaced by the effort of Congress to ensure that Terri's right to life is honored and that civil rights claims on her behalf are given a hearing in the federal courts. By "just authority of the state of Florida," I mean the authority of the people of Florida to make laws through their elected representatives, subject to the provisions of the state constitution and the Constitution of the United States. I am not impressed by appeals to "federalism" to protect the decisions of state court judges who usurp the authority of democratically constituted state legislative bodies by interpreting statutes beyond recognition or by invalidating state laws or the actions of state officials in the absence of any remotely plausible argument rooted in the text, logic, structure, or historical understanding of the state or federal constitution. The fact is that, under color of law, Michael Schiavo is seeking to deprive Terri of sustenance because of her disability. Under federal civil-rights statutes, this raises a substantial issue. It cannot be waved away by invoking states' rights.
The federalism argument is more plausible in the case of Oregon's assisted-suicide law than it is in Terri Schiavo's case. It wasn't some judge in Oregon who manufactured a right to assisted suicide or claimed to find it hiding in a penumbra. I think the people of Oregon made an unwise, indeed, tragic, decision, but it was a decision made by the democratically constituted people of Oregon. Whether or not there are legitimate grounds for the federal government to override that decision, the federalism argument for not overriding it is far weightier and more serious than it is when trotted out as a reason to keep Congress from acting to prevent Terri Schiavo's being starved to death at the command of her husband.
National Review Online: How should we go about thinking about the circumstances under which it is morally permissible to refuse medical treatment? What principles ought to guide us?
Robert P. George: From a moral vantage point, it can be, though it will not always be, permissible to decline treatment — even potentially life-saving treatment — when one's reason for declining the treatment is something other than the belief that one's life, or the life of the person for whom one is making a decision, lacks sufficient value to be worth living. What we must avoid, always and everywhere, is yielding to the temptation to regard some human lives, or the lives of human beings in certain conditions, as lebensunwerten Lebens, lives unworthy of life. Since the life of every human being has inherent worth and dignity, there is no valid category of lebensunwerten Lebens. Any society that supposes that there is such a category has deeply morally compromised itself. As Leon Kass recently reminded us in a powerful address at the Holocaust Museum, it was supposedly enlightened and progressive German academics and medical people who put their nation on the road to shame more than a decade before the Nazis rose to power by promoting a doctrine of eugenics based precisely on the proposition that the lives of some human beings — such as the severely retarded — are unworthy of life.
George comments on the "federalism" argument here:
NRO: What are the proper limits of the federal government's authority here?
George: I don't see that any just authority of the state of Florida is being displaced by the effort of Congress to ensure that Terri's right to life is honored and that civil rights claims on her behalf are given a hearing in the federal courts. By "just authority of the state of Florida," I mean the authority of the people of Florida to make laws through their elected representatives, subject to the provisions of the state constitution and the Constitution of the United States. I am not impressed by appeals to "federalism" to protect the decisions of state court judges who usurp the authority of democratically constituted state legislative bodies by interpreting statutes beyond recognition or by invalidating state laws or the actions of state officials in the absence of any remotely plausible argument rooted in the text, logic, structure, or historical understanding of the state or federal constitution. The fact is that, under color of law, Michael Schiavo is seeking to deprive Terri of sustenance because of her disability. Under federal civil-rights statutes, this raises a substantial issue. It cannot be waved away by invoking states' rights.
The federalism argument is more plausible in the case of Oregon's assisted-suicide law than it is in Terri Schiavo's case. It wasn't some judge in Oregon who manufactured a right to assisted suicide or claimed to find it hiding in a penumbra. I think the people of Oregon made an unwise, indeed, tragic, decision, but it was a decision made by the democratically constituted people of Oregon. Whether or not there are legitimate grounds for the federal government to override that decision, the federalism argument for not overriding it is far weightier and more serious than it is when trotted out as a reason to keep Congress from acting to prevent Terri Schiavo's being starved to death at the command of her husband.
Read the whole thing.
posted by Kate Marie | 3:47 PM | Permalink
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