The Terri Schiavo case and end-of-life decision-making

Terry Schiavo

The Case of Terri Schiavo: Euthanasia from the Utilitarian and Deontologist Perspectives and Technology-Centric Social Context

The Terri Schiavo case is a complicated study of medical ethics as it relates to the contemporary philosophies, theories, and even technologies in medicine and science. Terri Schiavo is the most recent example of how euthanasia is assessed in a period in time wherein life is determined quantitatively, through the help of electronic gadgets that help identify signs of life, from strictly biological and physiological points-of-view.

Schiavo was hospitalized for years and was sustained only through the help of life-sustaining feeding protocols. Controversy regarding her hospitalization and continued survival despite the non-responsive nature of her body and mind developed as a result of debates on whether she should be given the chance to survive, in the hopes of dying a natural death, or not.

This paper looks into two perspectives from which the Schiavo case can be assessed. Using the principles of utilitarianism and deontology, this paper posits that these perspectives provide opposing views on the issue of euthanasia: deontology as determined by Immanuel Kant argues that an individual has the right to live unless s/he decides not to, while the utilitarian perspective developed by John Stuart Mill asserts that the decision to live or die ultimately depends on whether the individual's survival is beneficial to people concerned (in this case, Schiavo's husband and immediate family).

In addition to the analysis of these two theoretical perspectives in medical ethics, this paper also looks into the role that technology played in developing the dynamics and opposing views that later formed the Schiavo case a very complicated and tumultuous study in medical ethics. This paper assumes the stance that the existence of technology (i.e., feeding protocols or life-sustaining gadgets) in the Schiavo case altered the way society viewed life and death both as philosophical and biological concepts.

The deontological perspective subsists to the belief that individuals must have respect for each other's free will. Thus, as a response to this belief, an individual must be allowed by his society to determine for himself how to live his life, which involves deciding his own fate. This determination of fate involves, primarily, one's decision to live or die, so long as the individual's decision does not cause direct and explicit harm to other people. As an example, deontology considers it permissible for an individual to choose death and commit suicide; however, while his decision to decide his own fate is considered moral, deciding to kill himself along with someone unwilling to do so is an immoral act. The direct harm the other individual ultimately determines the rightness or wrongness of the individual's actions and decisions.

Applied in the Schiavo case, deontology then considers the decision to deprive Schiavo of the feeding tubes that sustains her life as not a permissible act. It is true that with Schiavo's death, both her husband and family will not be aggrieved or directly harmed with her death; instead, both parties will feel relief with the eventual decision to 'end' Schiavo's physical suffering. Her death will not cause any detriment to the lives of her husband and family, making Schiavo's death ethical, to the extent that it relieved Schiavo from the physical suffering she experiences, and her family from worrying about her condition and the continuous financial burden they experienced as a result of her prolonged hospitalization. However, despite these arguments, the decision to discontinue her life support was made by her family -- thus rendering the decision as a violation of Schiavo's right to determine her own fate and a disrespect for her autonomy as an individual, whether she is capable of mobility and human interaction or not.