Flutterby™! : Schiavo case 2005-03-22 22:48:45.609319+00

Schiavo case

2005-03-22 22:48:45.609319+00 by Dan Lyke 11 comments

I've been watching with horror as the Terri Schiavo case unfolds. I'm not sure I can add anything to this, most of you know that I consider the state taking away the right of a citizen to die of their own choosing to be precedent towards the state taking all decisions away from that citizen, and the courts have found convincingly that Terri Schiavo did not want to be kept alive in this state.

But here are some resources to add to the debate.

Abstract Appeal has an information page on the Schiavo case, including links to the various legal decisions (like the one above).
Here's the Texas State Law that allows a provider to withdraw treatment that many people are mentioning, note that it specifies that the physician making the decision to remove treatment must be backed up by a review committee. Note too that a Texan in a persistent vegetative state died on Thursday after his health care provider pulled the plug.
Given reasonable editing and enough video tape, I could probably get you to believe that a plant was responsive to attention. Legislators who are using videos as evidence rather than relying on the overwhelming consensus among those who've interacted with Terry Schiavo should be ashamed, and then voted out of office.
Everyone should check their local state laws and make sure that they have the appropriate "living will", "durable power of attorney", or "advance directive" prepared as appropriate, lest they become trapped in an incapacitated body and used as a political tool without their consent. An SFGate.com article provides a bunch of links for Californians.
A decade plus of life support is damned expensive, and came mainly out of our tax dollars.
And, yes, political hay is being made of this, and innumeracy will be taken advantage of.

[Edit: Changed "Terry" to "Terri"]

#Comment Re: made: 2005-03-23 01:02:27.677414+00 by: mvandewettering

I find myself in an position which has not been clearly expressed in the media. I think that it is positively cruel that people in such a condition have to shuffle off this mortal coil by being starved to death. Holy crap people, we would never consider such a course of action for a pet which was suffering from an incurable disease: why does the law not provide for a kinder exit for our friends and love ones?

Reading the court records which Dan linked above, one is left with one certainty: that the reality of this tragedy is much more complex than any simple 30 second blurb you are hearing on the news.

I was under the distinct impression that it was illegal, perhaps even unconstitutional, to make law for the benefit of one person. Is this not so? Do some definitions of graft work that way?

I couldn't agree more with you Dan, and totally agree with the comments made so far. Utterly disgusting! I often wonder if my abhorrence of Bush can sink any lower, but he keeps drilling.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-03-23 04:47:47.116985+00 by: BC [edit history]

Regardless of how one feels personally, this is a states' rights issue. The decision should reside with the state. Secondly, the point made above that this is cruel and unusual, something most of us would not do to our pet, obviously did not read the court findings posted above by Dan. The conclusion was that Terri Schiavo would feel no pain. Her brain has essentially been replaced with spinal fluid.

Laws for the benfit of one person take place all the time. You will find the Congressional Record stuffed with what are called "private bills", small laws passed to fix some individual problem. An example might be granting citizenship to some deserving person who has run afoul of the immigration laws, or ordering the Veterans Administration to add somebody to the pension rolls. Winston Churchill and Rauol Wallenburg were granted US citizenship by such private bills.

I remember that there was some pork bill that provided several tens of millions of dollars in funding for "all universities with campuses in such-and-such city with a name starting with a W" or something similar. Well, turned out there was a tiny little university in that city that also met the qualifications, and when someone pointed it out, they wound up having a huge amount of cash dropped on them...

#Comment Re: made: 2005-03-23 21:41:35.321224+00 by: mvandewettering

Even if it isn't cruel to the Terri herself, it's an ugly way to die. I'm glad that I don't have to watch.

The delicious irony of the whole thing, for me, was that she had the precipitating heart attack, reportedly (though not often enough) due to an *eating disorder*.

(After watching last week's House MD, I suspect it was ipecac abuse, but don't have enough detail...)

The other thing I love is that Bush flew back from vacation (which he's never done before, even for the tsunami) to sign the bill Congress passed about her... and the federal judiciary has shut him down at every step.

I was very happy to see, though, that the public a) sees through the legislative grandstanding (70%) and thinks Terri ought to be allowed to go her own way (60ish%).

Yeah, we ought not be giving this political football any more attention. Here we have a person with a mental state roughly the equivalent of an eggplant and the nation is entranced, pouring their collective hearts out, while serial rapists, child molesters and murdereres are being psychoanalyzed to determine what went wrong in their upbringing. "Get a grip" is what needs to be communicated to most of these bleeding heart conservatives, in this case. In a few more decades, when our population reaches unmanageable levels, we will handle these cases like China does today - pragmatically, not emotionally. Chairman Mao's buddies would pull the plug and "disappear" some of these miscreants. We ought to do the same - today.