The Right Decision in Kim Ok-kyung's "Death With Dignity" Case

News of "a landmark ruling" from South Korea's Supreme Court yesterday — Comatose Grandma Allowed to Die. The decision "allow[s] a family to remove life-support equipment from a comatose patient with no chance of recovery."

Another report clarifies that the ruling states that "a patient should have the 'right to die with dignity' if he or she can breathe only with the help of a respirator, has no possibility of recovery, and has explicitly asked for a stop to all treatment" — Supreme Court Upholds Terminal Patient`s Right to Die. This report quotes a statement from the Protestant Severance Hospital, founded by American missionaries: "Immediately after the ruling is officially announced, we’ll decide to stop life support for the patient after reflecting the opinions of her family and the hospital`s ethics committee."

Another report quotes a statement from the family, reading, "This was a lawsuit about the right to choose medical care, not to actively demand the right to die" — Top court upholds ‘die with dignity’ right. The same article quotes the family's lawyer as saying, "The ruling is very meaningful because it showed that a patient can be the main decision maker for the medical treatment that he or she is receiving."

This story has appeared on the pages before — Kim Ok-kyung Is Not a Korean Terri Schiavo / Kim Ok-kyung and Catholic Teaching on Euthanasia / Korean Protestants on Euthanasia, and Catholic Teaching on the Same / An Update on the Korean "Euthanasia" Case. From the last post:

According to local Catholic bioethics experts, the lower court's ruling is not contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Father Remigio Lee Dong-ik explained to UCA News Dec. 3 that if a medical procedure falls short of expectations, stopping such a procedure "with a patient's consent" can be considered "an acceptance of the human condition," as noted in Declaration on Euthanasia, a document the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued on May 5, 1980.

Chapter IV of the Vatican document states: "When inevitable death is imminent in spite of the means used, it is permitted in conscience to take the decision to refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted."

The Ordinary/Extraordinary Means distinction is all-important here; feeding is an ordinary means, and can neither be rejected nor denied, while artificial ventilation is an extraordinary means, and its withdrawal must be judged on a case by case basis.

May God rest Kim Ok-kyung's soul.