Personhood and Palliative Sedation:

A Community of Christ ResponseAndi Chatburn

MA in Bioethics Final ProjectMay 12, 2010

Why Palliative Sedation?

The Hastings Center Report

“Choosing Death: Should medicine’s “last resort” be legal? Vol. 38, No. 5 September-October 2008

Relevance: 20 years since “It’s Over, Debbie”

The Case of Mrs. B: The Patient I will never forget

Residency in Spokane, WA

Why a Community of Christ Perspective?This is my own faith community

A new way of expressing our beliefs:

The Enduring Principles

What is the Community of Christ?

Non-credal Christian faith community

Share a common beginning history with the Latter Day Saint movement

Believe in continuing revelation

Now resonate with peace church movements

Focus on community and value unity in diversity

Enduring PrinciplesGrace and Generosity

Sacredness of Creation

Continuing Revelation

All Are Called

Responsible Choices

Unity in Diversity

Pursuit of Peace

Worth of All Persons

Blessings of Community

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Method: Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Questions on personhood

How ought we ethically care for someone at the end-of-life?

What ought community look like for one at the end-of-life?

How ought we value the worth of one who is dying?

What ought peace/shalom look like for one who is dying?

Blessings in CommunityTrinity: God’s love for Godself

Augustine: The lover, the beloved, the loving

Imago dei

“The Tribe”

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, The Trinity ed. Edmund Hill “Throught the Looking Glass” VIII: 14 (1991 New City Press, Hyde Par, NY).

Blessings of Community

I am loved, therefore I am.

I am part of community, therefore I am.

God exists in community

We were created in the image of God

Were we created to live in community?

Pursuit of Peace

Ira Byock’s Four Things

Please forgive me

I forgive you

Thank you

I love you

Ira Byock, The Four Things That Matter Most: A Book About Living, (2004 Free Press, New York, NY) 12.

Pursuit of Peace

“God’s peace has to do with personhood, not property or comfort or convenience or ambience. It has to do with personhood that recognizes the inestimable worth of each soul and their interconnectivity.”

Danny A. Belrose, Vulnerable to Grace: A Study and Worship Resource Exploring Doctrine and Covenants Section 163, (2008 Community of Christ), 23.

Worth of All PersonsSometimes those who have a terminal illness and are in the last months of life are marginalized.

Solidarity.

Image of community as a round, inclusive table; a circle without a circumference

Community and the Worth of All Persons

Daniel Day Williams:

We either suffer inside of community or outside of community. When a community shares the suffering of one in its midst, the inherent love, which comes from God, can be transformed into something almost sacramental.

Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love,(1968 Harper & Row, New York, NY) 185-190.

Palliative Sedation

How does terminal restlessness impact questions of personhood at the end of life?

In light of this, when is Palliative Sedation an ethical end-of-life option?

What ought community look like at the end-of-life from a Community of Christ perspective

What ought the above community look like in the case of Palliative Sedation?