Wausau - The defense has rested its case without calling any witnesses in the trial of a rural Weston woman who prayed instead of getting medical care for her dying daughter.
The charge was second degree reckless homicide. The daughter died of untreated diabetes.
None of us gets out of this world alive.
As great as the human person is, we can not create life, or prevent death. We can only postpone it.
And why should postponing death be considered a higher value?
I have witnessed someone I love go through a lot of pain and sufferring while modern medicine took all of its medical care of him at one of the most well-know and respected medical facilities in the country. He was finally brought home to die...and did so less than a week later.
I'm the daughter of a man who, when learning what the next step in treatment of his disease would be, said no. No more. Enough. He died several months later, at home, in hospice care.
Allowing someone to die as they wish, allowing them measures that take the pain away, and allowing their body to take its inevitable course. The quality, not the quantity, of life matters more.
And the mother chose to use prayer to help her daughter. Perhaps she was a Christian Science practitioner or maybe that was her church of choice. Prayer has helped many. Will it heal and prevent death? Will modern medicine?
Just because a condition is given a label, a name, and called a 'disease' and is something the medical community has some treatments and drugs to use for it, is that reason enough to compel or require a mother to use those?
My answer: No.
If it comes to courts and medicine and drug companies over-ruling our right to die of natural causes...or requiring 'medical' practices for conditions they put a label on and create treatments and drugs for...we have a much more serious issue. Our health freedom to make choices, to handle our conditions as we deem most appropriate for ourselves and those we are responsible for.
We each have the most vested interest in our own well being.
No one else does...
Resources:
Living Will and Medical Power of Attorney
Other healthy body stuff
