A Halachic Ethic of Care for the Terminally Ill
It is precisely when faced with this autonomy over the advice of our physician that we need the direction of our faith and law. Far from the halakhah being a constraint, it serves as an anchor at a time of bewildering choices. In this context, our tradition counsels an uncompromising regard for and pursuit of life. It asks that as patients, or as counselors to patients, or as surrogates for patients, we seek to maximize life by choosing the best endurable treatment we can find. We may choose to avoid fear, risk and pain, when we do so in the interests of the remaining moments of life. We may not do so in an attempt to attain release, to annul our final moments and travel a short route to oblivion. Withal, we are not to stand in the breach to ward off death in its time. Thus where medicine yields to technology we may assume the law of the goses, one whose death process has begun, and withhold or withdraw such procedures in the interests of God’s natural order.
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Excerpted from a teshuva by Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, a leading voice on biomedical ethics for the Conservative Movement. This teshuva was accepted by the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards in 1990. On the same day, a teshuva with a different approach to the topic, written by Rabbi Elliott Dorff entitled “A Jewish Approach to End-Stage Medical Care”, was also accepted by the CJLS.
