Steve, I have a question for you--and for anyone else who may be able to answer. The question ("Am I missing something?") is near the end of this post.
This is the language that Steve calls to our attention in his post yesterday:
A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.
When I read this language, I assumed it meant that the law should not be construed to require the doctors to honor the parents' wishes that their terminally ill child be sedated out of his or her unbearable misery. The doctors may, after their own deliberation, refuse to honor the parents' wishes that they--the doctors-- do so.
Steve suggests that according to the law, the doctors may decide to sedate the terminally ill child out of his/her unbearable misery even if the parents object to the doctors' doing so. If Steve is right about this, then I agree that the law is outrageous for that reason alone, whether or not it is outrageous for any other reason. But is Steve right about this? I would appreciate any relevant information.
In any event ...
Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that a law makes it clear that doctors may, if after appropriate deliberation they decide to do so, cooperate with parents in the scenario I suggested in my post. If I'm right about the implications of the the Doctrine of Double Effect, then the parents' decision is morally permissible--that is, morally permissible according to orthodox Roman Catholic moral theology. (Steve: Nothing in Evangelium Vitae or in the Catechism calls into question the DDE.) And if their decision is morally permissible, then there is no reason doubt that the doctors' cooperation with the parents is morally permissible too.
So: Am I right about the implications of the DDE?
Here is what I said in my earlier post:
Wouldn't the Doctrine of Double Effect permit parents to authorize the administration of a sedative (e.g., morphine) to their child in order to relieve the child's unbearable pain--even, if necessary to relieve the pain, to the point where the child's respiratory system is depressed and the child dies . . . so long as the parents do not intend the death of the child but only the relief of the child's unbearable pain? Of course, the proportionality test (which is the second part of the DDE) would not be met if the child's condition were not terminal. But if the child's condition is terminal--if the child will die within the week--then wouldn't the proportionality test be met?
Again: Am I missing something? I would appreciate any comments you might have about this situation. Steve? Anyone?
One more thing, Steve: A reader of your blog, where you X-posted your December 4th post, might think that I am trying to justify infant euthanasia. I am not. To administer the sedative with the intent to kill would be engage in an act of euthanasia. I am not trying to justify any parent's doing that. Crucial to my application of the DDE is that the parents are NOT acting with the intent to kill their child. (Moreover, I am seeking feedback about WHETHER my application of the DDE is correct. I thought this blog was in part about discussion.)
Since I may want to run for the presidency of the United State some day, I hope you will make it clear to your blog's readers that I am an apologist neither for infant euthanasia nor for Nazi doctors!
Michael Perry's response to my post on the Groningen Protocol omitted a key paragraph from the description of the protocol:
A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors. (Link)
Michael's question - "Wouldn't the Doctrine of Double Effect permit parents to authorize the administration of a sedative (e.g., morphine) to their child in order to relieve the child's unbearable pain--even, if necessary to relieve the pain, to the point where the child's respiratory system is depressed and the child dies . . . so long as the parents do not intend the death of the child but only the relief of the child's unbearable pain?" - thus strikes me as wholly irrelevant to the real issues raised by the Groningen Protocol.
Being a mere corporate lawyer and an adult convert doubtless handicaps me, but as far as I can tell Church teaching is pretty clear. Paragraph 2277 of the Catechism states:
Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.
And Catechism paragraph 2279 explains:
The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable.
On November 12, the Catholic News Agency reported:
Receiving participants in the international conference on palliative cures at the Vatican this morning, Pope John Paul II issued strong words against the practice of euthanasia as a means to alleviate suffering, saying it is “motivated by sentiments of a poorly understood compassion” and that it “supresses” rather than redeems the person from suffering. ...
The Pope underscored that administering painkillers "must be proportional to the intensity and cure of pain, avoiding every form of euthanasia" by giving a quantity of medicine that would cause death.
Doubtless I'm missing something. Until somebody explains what I'm missing by reference to clear teaching in the Magisterium, however, I will maintain that the analogy to Nazi doctors is entirely apt. (X-posted at ProfessorBainbridge.com)
Saturday, December 4, 2004
My intuitive reaction to Rick's post on the "Family in Europe" may be too simplistic or it may simply be wrong, but here goes. American culture with its individualistic bent was largely fashioned by Protestants. European culture (more predominant in parts of Europe) with its more communitarian bent was largely fashioned by Catholics. As the Christian foundations of both cultures are destroyed (by both neglect and design), the ensuing structural decay will reflect the cultural remnants unique to each particular civilization.
One often encounters the (not implausible) suggestion that, for all its merits, American-style market-capitalism has caused, or at least enabled, our slide into atomism and the Casey-style delusion that unencumbered, unsituated, unrooted, Promethean individuals are able, and even entitled, to define for themselves the mystery of the universe, etc., etc. This piece, from a recent issue of America, suggests that things might not be much better among our purportedly more communitarian friends in Europe:
Today the European Union embodies a vision of political, social and economic solidarity that excludes the family and the church. European integration—something to be encouraged—is being driven by a socialist individualism in which the family, the fundamental unit of society and the cradle of moral personality, languishes.
Rick
Friday, December 3, 2004
As I was reading an article in today's ABA Journal eReport, among other things quoting the founder of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression to the effect that "Dale’s expansive view of expressive association turned out to be exactly what was needed to give law schools and organizations in the academic community a basis to resist a government policy," I wondered whether overall the freedom of expression of law schools will be enhanced by this decision. Although there are clearly a number of schools for whom the decision is a victory in that they can no longer be forced to allow the military on campus, there are many other schools who do not object to the miliary's recruiting presence on their campus. If the unconstitutionality of the Solomon amendment means that schools that want to exclude military recruiters can do so and those that don't want to exclude them can continue to allow the military to recruit on campus, no one loses. But I wonder whether this will be the case. I believe that the AALS has taken a strong position against allowing the miliary to recruit on law school campuses. If the absence the Solomon amendment means that the AALS will be tempted to take steps through its inspection/accreditation role to try to force law schools to exclude the military, will anyone be championing the expressive freedom of those law schools? Re Rob's and Rick's postings last week on the subject of this decision, shouldn't adherence to the principle of subsidiarity force us to defend the right of each school to make its own decision on this question?
I ran across an op-ed piece in today's San Francisco Chronicle that takes what is apparently an increasingly common position among law professors who are in favor of abortion rights. The essay by Mary Dudziak argues that the current concern about the fate of Roe v. Wade with new membership on the Supreme Court is misplaced because "the heart and soul of Roe was actually overruled in 1992." According to this view, the Court in Casey "retained Roe in name only. It pulled out the substance, and inserted a substitute. It was not the core of Roe that was preserved, but instead just a shell." This is very similar to the view expressed by Chris Whitman in the centennial issue of the Michigan Law Review. See 100 Mich. L. Rev. 1980 (2002). There, Whitman argued that "only a sliver" of the right to abortion remains after Casey. I recently published a comment on Whitman's article in a University Faculty for Life volume edited by Father Joe Koterski SJ. My comment explores this argument in more detail than I can provide here. But I think the rhetorical startegy of Dudziak and Whitman needs to be countered. Any serious discussion of the constitutional issues raised by pro-life legislation needs to begin by accurately describing the current state of affairs, and a discussion that contends that the right to abortion has only a "minimal existence" under current law doesn't meet even the lowest possible standard of accuracy. We ought to be able to expect better from distinguished academics.
Richard
