Virginia court allows removal of feeding tube

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 16, 1998

A day after a feeding tube was removed from a Virginia man believed to be in a persistent vegetative state, Gov. Jim Gilmore unsuccessfully appealed to Virginia's highest court to help keep him alive.

With the ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court Oct. 2, the legal battle over Hugh Finn's right to die came to an end. The court ruled that withholding nutrition from the 44-year-old man only allows the natural process of dying and is not a mercy killing, which would be against Virginia law.

Some activists strongly criticized Finn's wife, who sought removal of the feeding tube, but she received strong support from Louisville, Ky., Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly. The Supreme Court ruling came a day after a tube through which Finn had received water and food was removed. Finn's wife, Michele, had requested that the tube be removed and waged a legal battle with relatives over her decision.

In his appeal, the governor disagreed with a lower-court ruling that taking out the feeding tube would not be euthanasia. "Assuming ... that Hugh Finn is in a persistent vegetative state, he is nevertheless not dying," Gilmore said in the appeal. "On the contrary, the manifest purpose and effect of denying him food and water is to initiate a dying process not previously present."

After the Virginia Supreme Court decision, the governor's office said it would not pursue the case any longer.

Finn, a former television anchorman in Louisville, suffered severe brain damage in an auto accident in 1995. He has been at Annaburg Manor Nursing Home in Manassas, Va., since 1996.

Initially Hugh Finn's parents and five brothers opposed Michele Finn's decision to terminate life support, but after a family meeting at the end of September, feelings changed. Hugh Finn's brother, Edward, said the family determined that "even if we kept Hugh alive, we don't think his quality of life would ever be anything to speak of."

American Life League President Judie Brown expressed disappointment at the Virginia Supreme Court ruling, saying: "This is not a natural process .... Depriving a human being of food and water is no different than using a pistol or lethal injection."

Fr. Richard Welch, president of Human Life International, praised Gilmore's efforts to stop the removal of the feeding tube. "We thank the governor for his timely intervention to halt the starvation and dehydration death sentence given to Mr. Finn," Welch said. "To do otherwise might compel us as a nation to apologize to the Nazis for condemning their atrocities at Nuremberg."

However, Michele Finn, who continues to live in Louisville, was supported by the Louisville archbishop. "Her decision is within the church's realm of acceptable moral decisions," Kelly said Sept. 23.

"When Michele came to this decision and was pretty badly opposed by the family and the church in Virginia, I wrote her a letter," he said. "I said the responsibility was hers ... and we, the Catholic family here in Louisville, would support her decision."