End Of Life Directives Essay

This paper will argue that end of life directives should not be honored in Catholic hospitals against Directive 58 as imposed on Catholic Hospitals, as well as that End of life directives themselves are unethical as viewed through the ethical principle of Autonomy. Patients with directives that lead to a termination of their lives under chronic illnesses and states, conflict with Catholic teachings to sustain life. Therefore in catholic hospitals such directives may be ignored for the benefit of the patient until such time that it seems no longer beneficial to the patient. Many people create End of life directives to prevent themselves from living in a “compromised” state or from fear of experiencing pain or indignity. In the Catholic ideology the sanctity of life is paramount to all other …show more content…
The bottom line is that in Catholic hospitals the directives imposed by the Catholic leadership favor the preservation of life as long as its beneficial to the patient over the patient’s pre decided decision to end their lives. In order to show that Catholic health institutions should be allowed to follow the catholic directives over End of life directives of patients we will look at the following case study. In the following case study it mentions natural death laws and as such requires a definition. A natural death law is a law that states that it is legally alright for a physician or patient to opt out of life sustaining treatments, thus letting nature take its course. An example of which is the Washington state natural death act. This act legalizes physician assisted suicide and the rights of the patient to return home to pass away. (Gardner,