Food and Water
The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network advocates that food and water be classified as “basic and ordinary” care. Food and water, delivered by means of intubation through a feeding tube, is treated in most parts of America as a form of extraordinary care or “medical treatment” rather than a basic and ordinary form of care.
Worse, food and water by means of feeding tubes are often treated as an “end of life” issue, yet millions of Americans each year rely on feeding tubes on either a temporary or prolonged basis who are not at the end of their lives or actively dying.
As Saint John Paul II clearly articulated in his March 2004 allocution on nutrition and hydration, food and water are fundamental human rights owed to every person.
- Address of John Paul II: Life-Sustaining Treatments and the Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Response to U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops Concerning Artificial Nutrition and Hydration
- National Catholic Bioethics Center: Nutrition and Hydration
- U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services
- Revision of Directive 58 of Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services