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NEW YORK - As a series of American courts struggled with the issue of whether to reconnect Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, Jewish scholars turned to Halachah, or Jewish religious law, for guidance on the issue.
Schiavo, the severely braindamaged Florida woman whose parents and husband battled in state and then federal courts for more than a decade, became the insensate centre of a swirl of emotion and legal action.
Religious leaders also got involved: Terri Schiavo and her parents, Mary and Robert Schindler, are Roman Catholic, and many of their most fervent supporters are fundamentalist Protestants.
The Schindlers wanted to keep their daughter's feeding tube in, while Terry's husband, Michael Schiavo, wanted it removed so his wife can die a natural death.
Jews, like others caught up in the debate, have a range of beliefs, and their understanding of how to apply Halachah varies according. Virtually all the rabbis interviewed, though, told JTA that they did not agree with attempts by some conservative Christians to tie Schiavo's case to the public debate about abortion.
At the traditional end of the spectrum, Rabbi Avi Shafran of the Agudath Israel of America said the Schiavo case is "straightforward from pa Jewish perspective: The most important point from a halachic standpoint is that a compromised life is still a life."
"In the Schiavo case, you're not dealing with a patient in extremis," he said, noting that until her feeding tube was removed, Schiavo was not dying.
In Halachah, there is a category for a person at the edge of death; the rules for such a person, called a goses, are complicated.
"There are times when certain medical intervention is halachically contraindicated," Rabbi Shafran said. "There may be times when it's OK not to shock a heart back into beating, not to administer certain drugs. You do not prolong the act of dying."
But Schiavo was not a...