Terri Schiavo’s Body in Medicine and Religion
Dixon Sutherland, PhD, Stetson University
During 2005 in Florida, Terri Schiavo’s body stood at the center of a national controversy over her fate. The definitions of life and death used by those Christians who fought to keep Schiavo alive were tied directly to their beliefs about the biological functions of her body. In making their case, they publicly articulated views about “the sanctity of life” and “image of God” (imago dei) in terms of the human body, as if they were normative Christian beliefs.
This paper argues that the medical view about the status of Schiavo’s body relative to keeping her alive or not is more consistent with the interpretations of these two concepts within Christianity historically than the views of those Christians who fought to keep her alive. The mistake of the latter was that they did not accept the limits of the body medically and thus missed the possibility of “the body” theologically. In Schiavo’s case, medicine came much closer to accepting that possibility than religion.
During 2005 in Florida, Terri Schiavo’s body stood at the center of a national controversy over her fate. The definitions of life and death used by those Christians who fought to keep Schiavo alive were tied directly to their beliefs about the biological functions of her body. In making their case, they publicly articulated views about “the sanctity of life” and “image of God” (imago dei) in terms of the human body, as if they were normative Christian beliefs.
This paper argues that the medical view about the status of Schiavo’s body relative to keeping her alive or not is more consistent with the interpretations of these two concepts within Christianity historically than the views of those Christians who fought to keep her alive. The mistake of the latter was that they did not accept the limits of the body medically and thus missed the possibility of “the body” theologically. In Schiavo’s case, medicine came much closer to accepting that possibility than religion.