One of the major issues in terms of ethical policy adherence is the notion of euthanasia and its execution prerequisites. The major challenges faced by the healthcare providers is the patient’s inability to express his or her will, leaving the final decision to the guardians. However, quite often, people happen to have more than one relative or close caretaker, making it difficult for the legal representatives to assign one of them to allow euthanasia. One of the most notorious cases concerning the issue is the Terri Schiavo’s case dealing with one’s end-of-life wishes and basic human right to live. The primary goal of this paper is to identify the case’s bioethical issue and reflect upon its role in the trial process.
As a result of an unprecedented event of 1990, the life of Terri Schiavo was divided into the “before” and “after” parts, as she was no longer available to live a life without medical assistance due to the persistent vegetative state (PVS) emergence (Caudell, 2016). After years of attempts to bring Terri back to life, her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, issued a petition to remove his wife’s feeding tube. The other case stakeholders, Robert and Mary Schindler (Terri’s parents), immediately objected to the following request, assuming that their daughter would have never intentionally ended her own life.
Michael, however, argued that a few years prior to PVS, Terri said that she would not want artificial feeding to support her life in case she struggled with some health issues. In terms of the following situation, one might conclude that the major issue of the case deals with the dissonance between medical practitioner’s intention to save one’s life at all costs and human right to express end-of-life wishes. Hence, the bioethical issue of the case relates to the “end-of-life” policy, which encompasses practitioners’ duty to respect the wishes of their patients, along with the intention to do everything in their power to save their lives.
Taking into consideration the aforementioned case details and the overall concept of human rights to live and receive a proper reaction to their wishes, it might be concluded that both legal ad moral values can reach a consensus exclusively in the case of one’s self-determination. That is, any medical intervention, guardian’s appeals, or external circumstances would never be exhaustive in terms of the decision-making process (Joshua et al., 2005). When faced with a similar situation, the medical employee’s primary goal is to make sure that the full-scale medical service is provided to the patient prior to the final decision being made. Once this ethical milestone is completed, the legal concerns would be tackled in terms of further investigation. In this particular case, a major legal issue concerned a conflict between the patient’s parents and her legal guardian on the subject of euthanasia appropriateness given the situation. On the one hand, the parents’ concern might be understood from the moral point of view, whereas the legal segment implies prioritizing the guardian’s decision in terms of the patient’s intentional life termination.
Considering both ethical and legal obligations that determine the process of one’s decision to terminate medical treatment, it might be concluded that there would never be an appropriate answer to the question of preserving human life. However, the least that could be done in a situation like this is making sure that medical assistance is provided to such an extent that a decision would be made considering all the attempts to save one’s life. The legal case of Terri Schiavo’s life termination serves as a landmark for further policy development in terms of respecting one’s will and following legal guidelines in reaching an agreement.
References
Caudell, M. (2016). The process model and the stagnation of new public policy: an analysis of the Terri Schiavo case.
Joshua, P., Churchill, L., & Kirshner, H. (2005). The Terri Schiavo case: legal, ethical, and medical perspectives. In Annals of Internal Medicine (10th ed., Vol. 143). Vanderbilt University.