“I want to die trying to live,” ST told a psychiatrist evaluating her. “We have to try everything.”
The two psychiatrists the hospital tasked with assessing ST ruled that she is free from mental health issues and has the mental capacity to decide for herself, the Telegraph reported.
In an Aug. 25 court judgment, Justice Jennifer Roberts of the High Court of England and Wales ruled that ST lacks the capacity to instruct her lawyers and said that the Protective Court should decide on her best interests. In Roberts’ view, ST “is unable to make a decision for herself in relation to her future medical treatment, including the proposed move to palliative care, because she does not believe the information she has been given by her doctors.”
Citing the evidence presented before the court, the judge ruled it probable that ST shows a “complete inability to accept the medical reality of her position, or to contemplate the possibility that her doctors may be giving her accurate information,” due to “the result of an impairment of, or a disturbance in the functioning of, her mind and brain.”
In November 2022, the woman granted conditional power of attorney to her parents to allow them to make decisions on her behalf if she became mentally incapacitated. In February, however, the hospital asked the Court of Protection to waive the document, arguing that she did not have the mental capacity to sign it.
“This has been a year of continuous torture for the family,” the woman’s family said in their statement. “Not only are we anxious about our beloved daughter’s fight for survival, but we have also been cruelly gagged from being able to speak about her situation.”
“It is a matter of life and death for our daughter to raise money for treatment in Canada, so these arbitrary reporting restrictions are literally killing her,” they said.
Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, said the case is “profoundly disturbing” and shows the “urgent need” to overhaul how the NHS and the courts handle end-of-life decisions.
“We have been calling upon the government for some time now to urgently set up a public inquiry into the practices of the Court of Protection and the Family Division surrounding end-of-life cases after a series of disturbing and upsetting cases,” she said.
The U.S.-based National Catholic Bioethics Center on its website summarizes Catholic teaching on end-of-life issues. A patient may forgo “extraordinary means” of preserving life that does not offer a reasonable hope of benefit, may entail an “excessive burden,” or impose “excessive expense” on the family or community. At the same time, Catholic teaching stresses that the patient or his or her proxies are responsible for the decision to withdraw treatment. Catholicism does not reject the pursuit of experimental treatments.
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