The new duty to die.

How much is Terri Schiavo’s life worth?

Although the most important immediate concern is Terri’s life, much more is at stake. Ominously, belief in a “duty to die” seems to be increasing in the United States, as well as Europe.

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff warns of a “growing conviction among American doctors, bioethicists, and hospital ethics committees that it is ‘futile’ to try to treat certain patients, and therefore, medical professionals should have the power to decide – even against the wishes of the family – when to allow these valueless lives to end.”

It is easy to look at Terri Schiavo and ask, who wants to live like that? But David Jayne, who survives only through use of a ventilator, says that “I’m very passionate about the Terri Schindler-Schiavo issue, because I live it.”

He explains that before contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, he couldn’t have imagined living under such circumstances, but that I “still find meaning in life.” He warns: “It is incredibly wrong for society to decide who lives or dies based on their opinions of what level of quality of life is worth living.”

What is Terri’s opinion? We may never know.

But we do know that we don’t know enough to assume that she would prefer to be dead. We must treat life as sacred and worth preserving. Nothing has been presented in Terri’s case to overcome that presumption of life.

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