Religious leaders differ over tug-of-war woman

[phk]

Religious leaders differ over tug-of-war woman    
March 23, 2005

London: The Vatican said that pulling the feeding tube from an American brain-damaged woman interfered with divine providence. Orthodox Jews took the opposite view, saying keeping her alive tampered with the process of death. And Islamic scholars were divided on the ethics of Terri Schiavo's case.

The vastly differing views of spiritual authorities around the world underscored the agonising moral dilemma presented by the tug-of-war over Schiavo's life.

Court-appointed doctors say the 41-year-old woman is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. Her husband says she would not want to be kept alive in that condition, but her parents insist she could recover.

Schiavo's feeding tube was removed last week after her husband sought a court order.

The Vatican condemned the withdrawal of the tube in its newspaper on Monday.

"Who - and on the basis of which criteria - can establish to whom the 'privilege' to live should be given?" L'Osservatore Romano commented. "Who can, before God and humanity, pretend with impunity to claim such a right?"


 

But, according to Rabbi Noam Zohar from the Bar Ilan University in Israel, Orthodox Judaism draws distinctions between letting someone die and causing their death.

"According to mainstream orthodox Jewish law, it is not only permissible but requisite to remove artificial impediments to the death process because it is not permissible to place these there in the first place," Zohar said.

Safwat Hijazy, a prominent Egyptian Islamic cleric, said: "Islamic scholars and scientists have two different opinions - some say ending the life of a person in a hopeless condition is murder, while others say that it could be done if doctors consider the patient is clinically dead.