Is it killing?
Lysaught, M. Therese
with rapt attention, laughing with de- of people laying in supplies of cat food, these things simultaneously: drive, talk light and crying real tears. Those who toilet paper, and...
...More time may change the sitviving the surgery and leading a "normal" life were cast as uation...
...uations where death is the unintended and unavoidable outThe children are likewise juxtaposed...
...sleepless nights about what ought to be done...
...Those who toilet paper, and dishwashing liquid as on the phone, drink coffee, eat a bagel, chose not to knew exactly what they were if Armageddon were just around the listen to music, and smoke a cigarette...
...their daughters so that the God who acts "immediately," other might survive...
...A quart make life in this country so vibrant (it can milk (in some places you can choose be- of ice cream in India is called a "party get pretty boring in a small Indian town...
...In inevitable imperfections as and rural communal life reinforcing conscience, they could not do well...
...But if not separated, the strain on Jodie's heart will ultimately kill them M. Therese Lysaught both...
...The parents, on the other hand, Appeal...
...God's will for life, healing, and wasn't born with the capacity to live and death is inevitable...
...Or perpromises the eschatological renewal of all creation, giving haps it is the presence of the two babies in my own womb, hope...
...dren...
...cians to proceed with the surgery did little to clarify the Jodie, Mary & God moral terrain...
...the sort of God who gathers as clear-eyed, God, indeed, would not will souls to his heavenly bosom single-minded knights, that the parents kill one of in his own good time...
...has his own good reasons for Although I have built a case his actions, which are beyond for justifying the surgery, such our ability to see or under- a case would only permit...
...It is they who bear the terrible burden of dren should not survive, then so be it...
...Without a doubt, "utterly futile...
...When "facts" are fluid, adequate moral analysis is impossible...
...India, most people do one thing at a time...
...Mary "It was not God's will that [Mary] should live because [she] may be less than whole...
...Wholesale grocery stores are full The average American can do all of India...
...thing else...
...Commonweal I I October 20, 2000...
...Much as we may feats the objective of providing each of pleasure from the experience than the hate to admit it, to a baby there is nothing us with a neater fit but it inflates our one who lingers over the last bite, wish- boring about the same old mother or fasense of self-importance...
...Initially, Jodie's odds of sur- expectancy together is correct...
...Later reports, In the end, we do not have enough similar cases to dehowever, suggest that the parents would rather not raise a velop a "more probable" answer...
...ways...
...impossibility of choosing between the girls...
...Separation would result im- Gozo, an island near Malta...
...Ini- here...
...Seventy-five percent were chance to recognize the fallacy of this bebut firmly discourage it...
...even with multiple surgeries over a period of years, her abil- Traditional moral analysis permits physicians to perform a ity to walk, control her bladder, or have children may be surgical procedure designed to remedy a lethal pathologypermanently impaired...
...God's will is not our will, nor God's ways our in their dying...
...The ther putting her to bed every night, over carry over into other aspects of life...
...Such descriptions fail to embody God's will to be The God conjured here is a sovereign God, omnipotent, present to those who suffer, not to abandon those who canperhaps capricious from our perspective, certainly in- not be cured, to walk with the most vulnerable, even if it is scrutable...
...wholeness cannot be achieved for her, but God will not Troubling indeed is the picture of God these diverse state- abandon her...
...In missing and preferred to be doing some- corner...
...The fact that fair to characterize it as a good or neutral action...
...Thus, it seems life reinforcing their archaic religious scruples...
...God wills healing, wholeness, life, relief from suffer- kicking, rolling, and growing toward their estimated date ing, and special care-a preferential option, if you will-for of arrival in December...
...There is no substantial Commonweal 10 October 20, 2000 body of moral opinion from which to draw...
...God's will is known not "simple-minded peasants...
...The parties to the case must likewise embody ments render and what they imply about human life as God's presence to Mary and resist descriptions that dehumade in the image of God...
...If so, ed, change daily...
...In the Catholic seems to hay that the surgery could be pertradition, God is an incarnate mitted, and may even be the God whose will is not entire- right thing to do, the utilitarily unknowable...
...If faced with a similar situation, the vulnerable and marginalized...
...otherwise...
...God does not will death...
...French fries bottom, and sport results flashing regu- one's prescription for happy children and are cold before you can finish half of larly across the top...
...Lord Justice Ward, signed to promote healing and life...
...Is the action properly characterized as "killing" Mary or rather as saving Jodie's life...
...All gaged in to make it more productive and centric behavior is typical of children around me, I watched people who were efficient...
...Would I be able to choose between my chillife, relief from suffering, refusing to abandon the outcast...
...A handicapped Jodie would be shunned unique...
...Such a God is remote, The physicians emerge would not necessarily oblige...
...ing been trained to "have it your way" suades children that they are entitled to The distractions which are an inherin the matter of burgers, learning styles, whatever they desire...
...What further troubles me about this case is that the classic framework of the Catholic moral tradition-the principle of double effect-does not provide clear-cut guidance...
...Children give us the fleeting around the world...
...Teach your twoI return to the United States, soft drinks had, in addition to the newscaster, the year-old to read...
...But this sort of surgery is extreme- without the same moral onus, might appear...
...Initially, Mary was simply described as the surgery would be illicit...
...While Catholic tradition ought not- of the case affects the parents my own moral and theologior would at least ask for a and not the judges or the physicians cal reflection leads me to agree fuller account...
...Who gets to tell the story...
...Scripture, tra- an reasoning of the physicians dition, liturgy, and nature all attest that God is a creative and the courts, as well as the manipulative rhetoric emGod who wills life...
...A charitable reading suggests the latter...
...one of the three judges considering the appeal, follows suit: But this is not to say that the parents are wrong...
...other...
...The parents find God's will in the state...
...We would begin with the object or moral species of the act in question...
...This proviso is important, es"passive...
...If you fall in-between, you either drinks "two into three," meaning two mindfulness, rarely seen in the United take the smaller and suffer pinched toes 300-milliliter bottles served into three States...
...The heroes, clearits course...
...order to achieve a good, one troubling question remains: What troubles me about this case...
...She is "passive," "de- Mary's death is not intended, desired, or willed (the dehuformed," "pathetic," a "congenital tumor," her existence manizing remarks above notwithstanding...
...If it's God's will that both of our chil- ly, are the judges...
...While Mary M. Therese Lysaught is an assistant professor in the department of will inevitably die either way, Jodie's death does not seem as religious studies at the University of Dayton...
...The subtext paints the parents mediately in Mary's death, since she relies on Jodie's heart as backward, their geographic isolation and rural communal Commonweal 9 October 20, 2000 difficult not to be persuaded by metaphors that mask the absence of argument and that attempt to minimize ambiguity by diminishing or eliminating the moral status of those involved...
...with rapt attention, laughing with de- of people laying in supplies of cat food, these things simultaneously: drive, talk light and crying real tears...
...From the parents' perspective, the story would likely sound very differently...
...Ego- my very delayed flight to depart...
...it stand...
...Most cultures gently not there...
...In the course of time, an alternate course of action, high as 80 to 90 percent...
...it may not be the best thing for raising in percent of fat are unknown...
...would I be able to engage in the sort of analysis outlined We are images of God, and we are called to follow, to above, or would my deepest religious instincts find it all to work to realize in the world God's will for healing, wholeness, be sophistry...
...Though Job and Calvin Die fact that the tragedy Perhaps I empathize too might recognize this God, the much with the parents...
...calm, relaxed parents, but it works in them...
...Free refills (of cups weather displayed in one corner of the Fewer choices, smaller sizes, one or which are already gigantic) are a stan- screen, stock market reports across the two things at a time...
...The "facts," as report- Would Mary's death be the cause of the good outcome...
...The court's September 22 decision to permit the physiIS IT KILLING...
...Others were lief, but even the parenting industry Portions that are too large...
...Reports from the community itself, differ in relevant particulars (the nature of the join, the wishhowever, seem to refute both assertions...
...ought to do all that they can to heal Jodie and promote her Another matter that troubles me about this case is the use life...
...A few weeks we can...
...This outcome only solidified the case's more troubling aspects...
...But isn't the secret ent part of life in America make it seem and modes of payment, is it any wonder to treats limiting them...
...e cannot kill one of our daughters to allow the To begin, consider how the various participants have been other to survive...
...manize...
...If we go for ice cream afterwards, While I do recognize that it is precisely If you want coffee, you get instant...
...I do not know...
...O Rereading God's will in this way would lend support to the argument for proceeding with the surgery...
...makes it easy to miss...
...This cannot but ing there were just a little bit more...
...And we hear later that if she does survive, perfect one, might be the analogy of the ectopic pregnancy...
...The act seems properly described as a surgical intervention to separate conjoined twins...
...It is a simply seeking to do the right thing...
...The situation remains handicapped child...
...If this is how the paronly through nature in its he subtext paints the parents ents understand their situaflourishing and perfection (a tion, then they have no choice la Thomas Aquinas) but in its as backward, their geographic isolation but to oppose the surgery...
...But I do know that in a case as moralWe are not called to wait passively for God to intervene ly complex and ambiguous as this, a decision made in good miraculously, nor are we simply to read God's will from conscience by grieving parents ought to be respected by the "whatever happens...
...es of the parents and physicians, the medical prognoses for Regarding cases like this, then, caution is in order...
...Does the surgical separation differ from a direct attack tially, the parents were reported to refuse the surgery on upon Mary that would simply end her life...
...Physicians in the case had sued to surgically separate are "devout Roman Catholics," "simple-minded peasants" the twins, born August 8. The parents-Roman Catholics- from a "remote European community" (now revealed to be initially opposed the surgery...
...Initially, the girls were given a max- a fallopian tube that would inevitably hemorrhage...
...This gives their lives a stillness, a shoes...
...airport waiting for tivity we could add to the one we are enwhenever these happen to occur...
...It is the two children, the outcomes, etc...
...Does this analogy hold live conjoined for "many months, even a few years...
...Surgical separation seems the action most directly degiven, in the course that nature takes...
...Although the medical literature now boasts a handin their community, they maintain, and adequate medical ful of cases involving the separation of conjoined twins, they care is not available...
...Such language has but one purpose-to dehumanize...
...the prognoses seem undu- However, at this time the closest analogy, although an imly optimistic...
...tween cow's and buffalo's, but variations pack...
...How might one work through it...
...The parties to the case tified in proceeding...
...In this particular instance, commentators on both sides argue from stricter and looser interpretations of the principle...
...their archaic religious scruples...
...Hav- idea that more (much more) is better per- and over in exactly the same way...
...Without a doubt, is assailed by a range of metaphors...
...It is al- But though it seems unfair to describe the situation as ways easier to take the life of a creature that is less-than- "killing Mary in order to save Jodie," or doing an evil in human...
...In the chilling words of the recent court de- the saving of Jodie's life combined with Mary's grim prospects cision, she is a "parasite" that "sucks the lifeblood of Jodie...
...the tragedy of the case affects the parents and not the judges But Mary would die...
...He (sorry, but this is definitely not God as Mother) Which leads us to the last troubling aspect of the case...
...Every time watching a television news show which (Music in the womb...
...In the absence of tragic physiology, surgical separation would certainly be the medical recommendation...
...But ly described as "bright and alert...
...Physicians later con- cians would not be permitted, however, to simply open the sulted for a second opinion suggested that both girls might tube, kill the fetus, and remove it...
...for life expectancy provide a sufficiently grave reason...
...or the larger and wear two pairs of socks...
...0 and lungs for her blood and oxygen supply...
...With each subsequent report, her physical hand- pecially if the new prognosis with regard to the girls' life icaps become more extensive...
...Yes, but the un"religious grounds," citing "God's will" as the basis for the certainty of the prognosis weakens the analogy...
...ly rare and extremely high risk...
...It may not be everydard feature in restaurants...
...A child who literally cannot finish her children, who are, after all, the world's Having too many choices not only de- ice cream without feeling sick gets less original conservatives...
...It's not moral decision, they who have been agonizing through something we believe we have the right to interfere with...
...Jodie is consistent- come of a medical procedure designed to save a life...
...speaking on cell phones...
...glasses...
...We believe nature should take characterized in the court and the media...
...The parents, it appears at this time, have decided not to appeal the ruling...
...As God wills healing, flourishing, and life for one could-after careful and prayerful deliberation-be jus- Jodie, we are called to do likewise...
...The physiSo wrote the parents of the pseudonymous conjoined cians emerge as clear-eyed, single-minded knights, simply twins, Jodie and Mary, in their petition to the British Court of seeking to do the right thing...
...have doubled in size...
...And Jodie's medical situation seems to call for it, making it a therapeutic intervention...
...The Catholic tradition allows for sitor the physicians seems to have been lost...
...What is the act itself...
...courts...
...God one who intervenes in the The parents, on the other hand, would not will that they abanworld in an unmediated fash- are "devout Roman Catholics," don one for the good of the ion...
...Sugar our single scoop is about one-third the this American versatility and energy that is sugar (no artificial sweeteners), milk is size of a typical cone in the States...
...Mary, on the other hand, would such reasoning apply in this case...
...God heals, creates community, attends ployed, makes me want to champion the parents' case...
...There is always some other acever we are doing to attend to their needs ago, I was in a U.S...
...Is the act itself good or morally neutral...
...In India, when we take the children Maybe they could do more, but they In India, there are no half sizes for out for dinner, we usually order soft don't...
...Physiimum of three to six months to live...
...Living as a conjoined twin is not a physiologically ideal of the term "God's will...
...that we are never accomplishing all that that our children expect us to drop what- Too many distractions...
...In such cases, inevitable...
...I the outcast, suffers, redeems humanity from death, and want to defend the vulnerable against the powerful...
Vol. 127 • October 2000 • No. 18
