Ethical Issues: Reflections on HB 905

Abstract

In times of crisis there are opportunities to grow and learn. With the suffering and demise of Terri Shiavo patients, families, and health care providers again find themselves in doubt as to what to do in the midst of very personal and difficult end of life decisions that may be forced to yield to the exigency of social and political ends. Not unlike Quinlan in the 1970s and Cruzan in the 1980s, the personal freedom and privacy arguments of Shiavo have overcome the socio-political morality of the day, but not without a price.