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Currents in Contemporary Ethics: “Family” in Advance Care Planning: The Family Covenant in the Wake of Terri Schiavo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

David John Doukas  and
Mark A. Rothstein
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Extract

In the fifteen-year-long public saga of the Terri Schiavo case, one oftcited regrettable aspect of her health care noted in the media was her lack of advance care planning. The withdrawal of her gastrostomy tube was per the consent of her husband, Michael Schiavo, based on the substituted judgment of what she would have desired in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Her parents, the Schindlers, attempted to assert that ending treatment in her state (which they disputed as not being PVS violated her religious convictions.

Many people were upset by the protracted public scrutiny of this private matter - citing the Schindler's public angst, the indignity of Ms. Schiavo's protracted treatment, the interference of politicians, and the financial injustice of devoting so much time and money to this case. All these points are less meritorious than this simple fact: an incapacitated patient had a substituted judgment rendered by her spouse (who was not found to have a conflict of interest),with corroboration by other witnesses for this refusal, and without any compelling contradictory evidence from the once-competent patient.

Type
JLME Column
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Summer 2005 , pp. 372 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2005

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