Another reminder about ‘advance directives’
This case has already been very interesting, and I was going to pass it along anyway, but the fact that a recent Associated Press article on it has suddenly disappeared from online availability makes it more intriguing.
Here’s the news release I received from Wisconsin Right to Life, which tells the story.
Yesterday, Wisconsin Right to Life and Joleen Stratman, the LaCrosse County Chairperson of Wisconsin Right to Life filed a motion in the Circuit Court of LaCrosse County to intervene on behalf of an incapacitated LaCrosse woman whose guardian has requested the withdrawl of nutrition and hydration.
The woman, named Marilyn, is believed not to be terminally ill and is not dying. Newspaper stories report she has had several strokes and has dementia. Marilyn is currently a patient at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center where she is being kept under sedation and is fed through the use of a feeding tube. Marilyn has left no advance directive or instructions or otherwise indicated her wishes with respect to the withdrawal of life-preserving nutrition and hydration.
In the motion filed today, Wisconsin Right to Life Attorneys Rick Esenberg and Terry Allen Davis told the court, “This should be the end of the matter. Under controlling law, it is not possible for Marilyn’s guardian or this court to order the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration.”
But the story didn’t end there. Attorneys for the guardian of this woman abruptly withdrew the request to stop her life-sustaining care. So, it’s over…for now.
This is another case that should prompt family discussions about care for the incapacitated and the dying. Our collective conscience seems to have forgotten what we learned from Terri Schindler Schiavo’s family ordeal. And we never got to the point of collectively understanding the grossly misunderstood term “persistent vegitative state.” Even with Pope John Paul II’s intervention, in an emergency teaching moment.
Good to learn that before it becomes our own emergency.