In June 2020, 24-year-old Margo Naranjo sustained a severe brain injury after she was involved in a multi-vehicle auto accident. Although the doctor’s prognosis was poor, her parents’ love for her and their strong Catholic faith provided the hope they needed. Leaning on their faith, they used social media to request prayers for strength and […]
The post Margo Naranjo Will Not be Starved to Death After Her Family Tried to Deny Her Food and Water appeared first on LifeNews.com.
In June 2020, 24-year-old Margo Naranjo sustained a severe brain injury after she was involved in a multi-vehicle auto accident. Although the doctor’s prognosis was poor, her parents’ love for her and their strong Catholic faith provided the hope they needed. Leaning on their faith, they used social media to request prayers for strength and for their daughter’s recovery.
Shortly after Margo’s accident, her father, Mike Naranjo, posted how his daughter’s disabled condition was spiritually impacting others through their Facebook page: “Something in Margo and her story and who she is has touched them in a way that has brought them closer to God.”
However, over time, the resolve and commitment Margo needed overwhelmed her parents to the point where their hope for her recovery was abandoned, and they no longer wanted to provide care for her.
They turned to the same social media where they once asked for prayers but instead announced that they planned to remove Margo’s feeding tube. Margo’s parents also revealed that a Catholic funeral Mass was scheduled for August 2, anticipating her death.
It is heartbreaking to think parents would consider denying basic care for their children—and others felt the same. Margo’s parents’ intention drew outrage, especially from faithful Catholics who understood that it was a grave wrongdoing to withdraw her feeding tube.
Fortunately, Margo’s home health care workers intervened, asserting that Margo had communicated her wish for the continuation of her food and water. As of this writing, Mike Naranjo reported that a court order had removed him and his wife as their daughter’s guardians and that Margo was still receiving food and hydration.
REACH PRO-LIFE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE! Advertise with LifeNews to reach hundreds of thousands of pro-life readers every week. Contact us today.
Intentionally dehydrating and starving an animal to death would likely send any of us to prison. However, doing the same to an innocent disabled person—even going as far as announcing it on social media—is perfectly legal.
If not for the courage of Margo’s care workers interceding, her parents would have removed Margo’s feeding tube, witnessing their daughter suffer a slow and inhumane death by starvation and dehydration.
The “legal” denial of food through feeding tubes did not happen overnight. Indeed, many of the changes occurring in our nation’s healthcare are a consequence of secular humanists controlling the field of bioethics and their influence on medical ethics, law, and public policy, which are directly connected to a patient’s treatment protocols.
Bioethicist Daniel Callahan, co-founder of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute and think tank, stated in the 1980s, “The denial of nutrition may become the only effective way to make certain that a large number of biologically tenacious patients actually die.”
Callahan considered feeding tubes as the critical obstacle to ending the lives of the medically dependent who were “living too long.” In other words, he argued that a revision was needed so that the medical community (or surrogates) could deny or withdraw feeding tubes.
Not long after Callahan made this statement, feeding tubes were reclassified as “medical treatment” rather than a basic requirement for life, paving the way for medically defenseless patients’ lives to be ended prematurely.
In many cases, changes to medical procedures are driven by a desire to cut healthcare and administrative costs. These changes, while advantageous to hospitals and insurance companies, often result in the denial of life-sustaining care for medically vulnerable patients to avoid the expense of prolonged treatment.
However, as routine as it is today to remove or deny a person a feeding tube, Catholic teaching has never changed: removing or denying a person’s feeding tube to impose death is a grave sin.
But as in the case of Margo Naranjo and as was with my sister, Terri Schiavo, a misunderstanding of Church teaching regarding the removal of feeding tubes exists, causing widespread confusion, death, and sin.
It certainly does not help that Catholic leadership offers little instruction on this issue. From the beginning of my sister’s legal battle, when Terri’s estranged husband, Michael Schiavo, requested her feeding tube be removed, Robert N. Lynch, bishop of the Diocese of St. Petersburg (Terri’s bishop at the time), authorized Fr. Gerard Murphy to testify that removing her feeding tube was consistent with Catholic teaching.
Bishop Lynch never corrected (nor condemned) the erroneous testimony of Fr. Murphy, bringing scandal to my sister’s situation as it pertains to Church teaching on this issue and other similar situations where it would be illicit to remove a person’s feeding tube.
It is the reason Pope St. John Paul II issued an allocution (a teaching statement) in March 2004 that explicitly addressed Terri’s situation, clarifying—not changing—Catholic teaching on the moral necessity of providing food and water as a simple requirement of ordinary care for those who are not dying and need only a feeding tube to live.
Still, the continuing abdication of our clergy’s pastoral duty regarding feeding tubes continues. Too many priests ignore the weight of John Paul II’s 2004 allocution. Instead, they turn to moral theologians and Pope Pius XII’s 1957 statement to the International Congress of Anesthesiologists entitled “Prolonging Life” to support their position.
They suggest that maintaining a feeding tube is “medical treatment” and not “ordinary care” unless there is “hope of improved health.” Thus, they argue, if a physician claims there is no hope of improvement, the care is not “ordinary,” and there is no moral obligation to provide these people with food and water.
The Catholic Church has extraordinary influence, and its faithful seek and deserve moral clarity—particularly regarding those who are targeted because of their brain injuries, physical disabilities, or elderly condition. We turn to our leaders for direction regarding unfamiliar or complex ethical healthcare situations and treatment choices on matters of life and death.
Nonetheless, because of the pro-death media’s never-ending propaganda that forced dehydration is a “peaceful” death, it is worth reminding us of the injustice and the brutal nature of my sister’s 13-day death and what is permitted in the rooms of hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices every day across this country:
Forever seared into my memory, after almost two weeks without food or water, my sister’s lips were horribly cracked, to the point where they were blistering. Her skin became jaundiced, with areas that turned different shades of blue. Her skin became markedly dehydrated from the lack of water. Terri’s breathing became rapid and uncontrollable as if she was outside sprinting. Her moaning, at times, was loud, raucous, which indicated the insufferable pain she was experiencing. Terri’s face became skeletal, with blood pooling in her deeply sunken eyes and her front teeth protruding forward. I can never accurately describe the nightmare of having to watch my sister die this way and the look of utter horror on her face when my family visited her just after she died.
We live in an expanding godless and pagan nation, especially in today’s healthcare system. We need to pray for the conversion of our clergy so they teach and follow proper medical ethics effectively and so that all may see the Shepherds of the Church faithfully guarding the flock of the Lord.
Without change, thousands of Terris and Margos will remain targets for death, denied the unconditional love and compassion of God’s beloved children.
Bobby Schindler and his family work as patient advocates, establishing the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network in honor of his sister, Terri. Protect yourself and your loved ones today by identifying a healthcare agent to speak for you if you cannot. Click here to learn more.
The post Margo Naranjo Will Not be Starved to Death After Her Family Tried to Deny Her Food and Water appeared first on LifeNews.com.
