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Depriving Artificially Administered Food and Fluids Is "Inhumane" Says Phoenix Bishop's Directive

By Peter J. Smith

PHOENIX, Arizona, September 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - End-of-life decisions and planning for advanced care are hot topics in the current US health care debate. One Arizona Catholic bishop has entered the fray, setting the record straight so Catholics and Catholic institutions know how to make the right moral and spiritual decisions about when or when not to use artificial nutrition and hydration.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted has published a four-page summary of moral guidelines called "Directives for Catholics Concerning Artificially Administered Nutrition and Hydration" which aims to help individuals, families, and health-care providers understand how to pursue medical treatment in light of the Church's moral thinking.

In the document Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted summarizes Catholic social teaching on end-of-life care in this fashion: "A Catholic is bound to preserve one's life but need not prolong it. Simply put, a person should die from one's illness and not because a basic necessity of life was denied them."

The directives explain to Catholics that an individual has a moral obligation to use ordinary or proportionate means to preserve life. "Proportionate means" are medical treatments which "in the judgment of the patient offer a reasonable hope of benefit and do not entail an excessive burden, or impose excessive expense on the family or his community."

However, an individual also has the right to decline "extraordinary" or "disproportionate" means of prolonging his life, especially when those measures would give him no "reasonable hope of benefit."

Hospice care requires "a presumption in favor of providing nutrition and hydration to all patients, including patients who require medically assisted nutrition and hydration," wrote Olmsted, "as long as this is of sufficient benefit to outweigh the burdens involved to the patient."

The guidelines make clear that food and water are basic necessities that must be provided to patients even when they are "unable to manually feed themselves." To deny water based on a person's condition is "inhumane" reminded the bishop, further illustrating that the undue interruption of food and fluids has the effect of euthanasia.

"In short, a person should not die because of being deprived nutrition and hydration, even if that nutrition and hydration is administered artificially."

Olmsted also makes clear that "the free and informed judgment made by a competent adult patient concerning the use or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures should always be respected and normally complied with, unless it is contrary to Catholic moral teaching."

The Phoenix bishop also declared that Catholic hospitals and health-care providers cannot facilitate euthanasia or assisted suicide in any way. The proper response to those dying patients who request euthanasia is to provide them "loving care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate remedies for pain" in order that "they can live with dignity until the time of natural death," wrote the bishop.

"When someone is faced with severe physical and medical challenges, it is essential that his or her dignity as a person created in the image and likeness of God be respected and protected," said Olmsted in a press release about the newly issued guidelines.  "I pray that these guidelines will help that to happen."

See related items:

Directives for Catholics Concerning Artificially Administered Nutrition & Hydration - September 2009

Diocese of Phoenix Advance Medical Directives (July 2005)

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