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Haleigh was diagnosed in what is routinely called “PVS”, a “Persistent Vegetative State”. She now communicates through hand signals and a computer keyboard.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - Haleigh Poutre was born on February 24, 1994 and adopted by her maternal aunt Holli and Jason Strickland in 2001. In September 2005 she was admitted to the hospital with life threatening brain injuries. Her brain was bleeding. Violent trauma to her head had caused a sheared brain stem. The treating physicians said the results of the beating she had endured constituted "irreparable damage". Haleigh was diagnosed in what is now routinely called “PVS”, an acronym for a “Persistent Vegetative State”. Those who are so diagnosed were once simply referred to as being in a “coma”.

The injuries were allegedly inflicted upon Haleigh by a baseball bat wielded by her own stepfather. The Department of Social Services obtained legal custody of Haleigh once these allegations surfaced. However, her story went from bad to worse. After all of this horror, the authorities later found Holli Strickland, the stepmother, dead, alongside Haleigh’s dead grandmother. It appeared to be a murder/suicide.

Haleigh was being given food and water through a feeding and hydration tube. A year later, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services filed a legal motion to remove it. They cited the medical finding of “PVS”. Her stepfather then sued to prevent the removal of the assistance. There was speculation in some sources that he did this to avoid criminal charges for murder. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the assistance could be removed in a controversial ruling.

One day after the ruling, Haleigh surprised all of her caregivers by breathing without the need for assistance and showing signs of communication. The court order was rescinded and the medical team continued to care for Haleigh. That was in 2006. Now, two years later, Haleigh may be called as a witness in the retrial of her stepfather’s case. He is on trial for assault and battery on a child with a dangerous weapon. Haleigh continues to recover. She now communicates through hand signals and a computer keyboard. She loves to brush her hair.

The diagnosis of “PVS” is the subject of increasing scrutiny by some medical professionals and concerned moral theologians. One study from the British Medical Journal found that 43% of those so diagnosed were actually misdiagnosed. Among that number some had been in this “PVS state” for over a year. The context within which such end of life decisions are being made should cause all Pro-Life persons deep concern. This is a culture that fails to respect human life as a primary good and human relationships as constitutive of human being.

The word compassion in its etymology means “to suffer with”. We have little tolerance for suffering these days. We also have bought the lie of a culture of death, a counterfeit notion of human freedom that is founded upon autonomy and production as the greatest value. The increased diagnosis of “PVS” and the resulting growth in State sponsored interventions to stop giving food and water to people in medical need is frightening. Haleigh Poutre’s story demonstrates that it demands serious review.

I have friends whose adult son celebrated St. Patrick's Day dinner with his family several years ago. The celebration involved a bit of libation. Between midnight and one in the afternoon of the next day, while asleep on his back, the young man vomited into his lungs causing oxygen deprivation to the cerebral cortex of his brain. By the time he was found and taken by ambulance at the hospital he had suffered a serious heart attack and renal failure. He had also developed double-pneumonia. His parents were told that he was in an irreversible coma. The Emergency room physicians spoke these words: "we are so sorry to tell you that this is gravely serious...."

Brain scans and other diagnostic tests showed that he had suffered grave damage to his cerebral cortex, the area which affects cognition; thinking, language, and memory. The Doctors told his grieving, frightened parents that this damage was severe and irreversible. Further, that a feeding tube would only needlessly “…prolong his agony.” This young mans parents are faithful Catholic Christians. They prayed and reached out for moral, pastoral and theological advice. Then, against the advice of doctors, they insisted that a feeding tube be inserted into their sons’ stomach. The ongoing dialogue between the doctors and the parents was painful but not unusual, at least in such dire circumstances. They were told he would never come out of the coma or, in the alternative, that, if he did, he would return as a “vegetable or worse, something horrific".

The situation did not quickly improve. Though remaining in a coma, his sons’ pneumonia began to clear. His parents, consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church, removed what they were advised actually were extraordinary means of life support. However, they still insisted, ...