There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
— C.S. Lewis
Today, the Supreme Court ruled that Hassan Rasouli’s doctors cannot remove his feeding tube and ventilator against the wishes of his family. Rasouli was left severely brain-damaged after undergoing surgery to remove a benign brain tumour in 2010.
Though I am happy for Mr. Rasouli, I am reminded of a similar incident in the United States, in which the opposing point of view was victorious. In 2005, the world watched for nearly two weeks as Terri Schiavo was dehydrated and starved to death. Like Mr. Rasouli, Schiavo had severe brain damage, a feeding tube, and a loving family who wanted to care for her. The starvation occurred after the tube was removed at the insistence of her husband, who believed that a life with these limitations was no life at all.
As an aside, my exposure to Ms. Schiavo was the catalyst for my double-conversion. First, I was convicted to do something for the pro-life cause, despite being unable to act on that passion for a few years. Later, I was inspired to learn about the church I was baptized into and began practicing my faith. (Yes, I called myself pro-life before I identified as a Christian.) I am still outraged when I hear feeding tubes described as “extraordinary medical intervention.” We would all die without eating. People with disabilities who cannot eat independently should not lose their lives because of their difficulties. Medical conditions should not be an excuse to deny something that would be considered a human right for a healthy person.
Though the Schiavo case is more meaningful to me, “Baby Joseph” Maraachli’s situation is more comparable to Mr. Rasouli’s. Maraachli was born with Leigh syndrome, a regressive neurological disease that eventually robbed him of the ability to breathe without assistance. Canadian doctors believed that giving Maraachli the tracheotomy he needed was an exercise in futility. With the help of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, the child was flown to the United States where he received the surgery. “Baby Joseph” passed away at home with his family at the age of 2o months.
Both stories illustrate disturbing truths about the way our society functions. We value convenience and productivity to such an extent that we no longer know how to suffer. I believe this mindset is our society’s biggest problem. It can be connected to most of the world’s “wrongs” and offenses against human dignity. Our fear of and unfamiliarity with suffering helps to spread the illusion that trials of all types no longer have a purpose. Even more terrifying is the lie that the pain of life is endless. If there is no point to our suffering and no way to escape it, why must we endure it?
Unfortunately, many people seem to think that the best way to eliminate the problem is to eliminate the patient, or that getting rid of suffering means getting rid of sufferers. This applies to much more than euthanasia and judgments of “futile” medical treatment. How many abortions are committed because parents do not want to see their children live less-than-ideal lives? How many youth commit suicide because they cannot see a way out of the darkness and depression they face? How many homeless and poor people are pushed to the margins of society because we cannot – or more often, will not – do anything to help them? How many people remain disconnected from each other and content with superficial relationships because we cannot bear to share in each other’s pain?
My inner word nerd is reminded of the term compassion, which comes from the Latin for “to suffer with.” Our society claims to have this quality in spades, but is that true?
We say that we love our fellow human beings. How can we, if we stay cooped up in our own little world and refuse to enter theirs?
