We are not under moral obligation to take extreme measures to extend life if it is ending. To fail to do so, and a person dies naturally, is not a sin.
However, I wouldn't classify something like providing nourishment and fluids as "extreme measures".
A forced breathing machine could be.
My mother suffered multiple brain hemorrhages in an automobile accident in 2001 which put her into a coma. Initially, she was on a breathing machine, without which she would have died...rather, I'd say in hindsight, her body would have died.
I was the legal decision maker, but the doctors never actually put the matter into explicit terms of "there is nothing more to be done but to take her off life support, her sisters (my aunts) would have had nothing to do with that, and I don't think it was legal in Oklahoma anyway. At any rate, removing her from life support at what was then a week or so from the accident was not under consideration.
The body heals itself as best as it can. After a couple more weeks, her brain healed itself well enough to recover autonomic functions--she could be taken off life support, but was otherwise unresponsive and had no frontal lobe activity. According to the doctors, "Her frontal lobes are nothing but scar tissue."
My mother's body survived under the tender care of one of my aunts for another eight years. During that time, her care was essentially that of a newborn baby, although she continued to be completely unresponsive, except for autonomic activity--poke her with a needle, and her arm would finch.
Two of my aunts were convinced she was still conscious in there. But my mother had been an exceedingly vivacious, outgoing, evocative woman. She had run a barbershop, primarily because she liked talking to different people coming in. When I closed down her business affairs, different suppliers around town--simple business acquaintances--men and women-- literally broke into tears hearing of her accident. If if that woman were conscious in that unresponsive body, she was in hell.
But I didn't believe her brain was active. What I was not sure of then, and not sure of now: Where was her spirit? Paul wasn't contemplating such a situation when he said, "to live is Christ and to die is gain." In Paul's time, there was no medical life support, people in that situation merely died.
When her body began to shut down in 2009, it was as much from basic old age as anything else. When she finally died, I could come to a conclusion of where her spirit then was.
If I had the ability to do it again, I'd prefer to choose that she not have been put on life support in the first place or have taken her off quickly, if the extent of brain damage could have been determined soon enough. If God intended to save her, He would, and His glory would be that much brighter having done His miracle without the aid of machines.
Once, however, her body had healed enough to continue functioning on its own, when care was no more extreme than that of a newborn, we were not going to
kill her.
Lord, I don't know. Maybe her body still enjoyed the sunlight, like a plant.
