SOLVING THE MEDICAL ETHICS MAZE
When helping parishioners with tough ethical decisions, the easy way is not always the best.
Richard C. Eyer
April 1, 1986
I could hardly blame the pastor. He meant well. The nurse called my office and said, "Mrs. Lavo is quite upset since her minister left. Could you see her? Mrs. Lavo and I had already spent several hours talking about her upcoming therapeutic abortion. The time was not spent making a decision, however. The options seemed clear: If she had the surgery, she would live; if she did not, she would die. Our hours together had focused on the sadness and understandable yet debilitating guilt that plagued her. After much time spent reassuring her of God's grace and the sad necessity of this surgery, I left, planning to see her the next day. That night her minister bustled in, and after hurriedly checking out the legitimacy of the abortion, left her with the words "Well, it's a good thing this is a therapeutic abortion. Otherwise it would be murder." He left, she panicked, and I was called. Mrs. Lavo's pastor and I share at least one thing in common: We both are sometimes more attentive to the issues than to the person experiencing them. I remember the time a frightened young patient said to me, "What do you think of this chemotherapy stuff?" After launching into a generic response, it occurred to me that possibly he was really asking, "Is it wrong to refuse treatment and die?" I was duped by the subject and didn't listen to the patient. There are ways to help, or hinder, parishioners when faced with what has come to be called "an ethical dilemma." Some of these dilemmas are ethical, and some are not. Some situations begin as an apparent medical ethics dilemma, but when the issues are clarified, end up as something else. The pastor's task is to help parishioners sort out what is and is not a moral issue, and help them through the maze of ...
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