I believe he was pitted when this first came out, but since it was shoved back in his face I thought another quick pitting might be in order. His false sincerity in the article just really annoyed me. If you really cared for the family you wouldnt have stuck your nose where it didnt belong. This poor woman should be at her eternal rest now, not sitting in a bed with a freaking feeding tube down her throat!
I mean 14yrs of living like this!! Why would you prolong that for anyone? Because God said so? Do you think having her in that bed for 14yrs is really God’s plan? What God do you believe in?
So a rousing fuck you to Bush, and the womans parents!! I hope that lady finds peace soon!
I’m with you on Bush, but I have some sympathy for the parents: I think their inability to accept that Terri is gone is understandable, and I can see how a parent would irrationally cling to hope. Ironically, living wills exist partially to prevent irrational people like that from calling the shots. And they’d work, too, if not for meddling douchebag governors.
Question-how does this case qualify as “euthanasia”, or “taking an innocent life?”
Isn’t this really more of a DNR type thing? You’re not actually killing her, just taking her off of life support and letting nature take its course.
I made my parents promise me that if I were in that situation, they’d pull the plug. (At least I don’t think I’d have to worry-my dad thinks she should never have gotten into this situation in the first place-he’d make sure I didn’t end up like that). Her parents are in serious need of therapy-it’s been FOURTEEN YEARS. And she hasn’t gotten any better. They need to learn to let go.
I was under the impression that she doesn’t need machines to breathe/circulate blood/whatever for her, but that she needs to eat via a feeding tube. So it’s not so much ‘pull the plug and wait a few minutes’ but ‘stop the feedings and wait a week, give or take a number of days.’
That being said, I’d hope my husband would do the same for me.
True. Still, it wouldn’t exactly be killing her, directly, so much as just leaving her to die. Callous sounding, maybe, but I still do not see this as euthanasia.
Working in a stroke ward I see shorter term cases like this all the time. In about an hour I’m going to work where we have at the moment a 77 year old lady who has had a massive stroke. She’s just about completely unresponsive, she breathes through a tracheostomy, eats through a nasogastric tube, pees through a catheter and shits in a diaper. She’s never going to get better – most of her upper brain is dead. Her family refuse to sign an NFR order and are quite angry that we’re not hoisting her out of bed to shower her or giving her physiotherapy.
Letting a loved one who is unresponsive and stuck in a badly malfunctioning body die must be one of the hardest decisions to make. It sickens me to read about a politician getting on the side of a grieving family, bolstering their false hope that their daughter will come back.
They’re understandably though irrationally hoping she’ll come back. He’s scum of the worst order.
Oddly enough, today I had the chance to meet the lead lawyer for the family of Nancy Cruzan, a woman who was in a similar situation in the 1980s. I asked him where he thought this case was going (well before I knew that the court was making its decision today), and he said there was almost no reasonable argument to be made that this law was constitutional, and that it would be struck down.
Then again, he also said that the law in Florida couldn’t be more clear on the fact that your husband is your health care proxy if you can’t make decisions for yourself, then any adult children, and then your parents. That being the case, I’m not sure why it got this far.
His prediction was that she would finally be allowed to die sometime this fall, amid a sea of protestors. His hope (and mine) is that the publicity will at least lead people to discuss these issues with their families. Remember, this is not really theoretical for anyone anymore. The days of “letting nature take its course” are over; the vast majority of the people reading this will die as a result of someone making a decision to withhold or withdraw care. That can’t be made easy, but it can certainly be made a lot less hard.
I think the parents’ hearts are in the right place, but they’re woefully misguided about Terri’s prognosis, and the publicity has brought them into contact with some quacks who will back them up.
Oh, and let us not forget that our President said he believes his brother is in exactly the right place on this issue. So fuck you, Jeb, fuck you, George, and fuck you, majority of the Fla. legislature. If you ever turn my comatose, brain-dead carcass into a political football, you’d better hope I don’t wake up, and that there’s no afterlife.
Reasonable people cannot disagree on the issue of euthenasia. There is only one true and proper position to take. Anyone who disagrees with that position is a moron and, if his last name is Bush, is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil.
No. By using the word euthanasia, I can only assume that you are completely ignorant of the history adn the facts of the Schiavo case. Please do your research.
The issue here is that the Schindlers do not have the legal standing to make the decision to withhold care. Michael Schiavo (who, as Terri’s spouse, has that standing) made that decision based on a conversation he apparently had with his wife before she suffered the heart attack that put her in this vegetative state. Given that that conversation was between the two of them, without benefit of a witness or tape recording, the Schindlers (and Bush) are arguing that Terri would not have wanted care to be withheld, and that care should not be withheld.
Bush comes into it because he actively intervened on behalf of the Schindlers. The Florida Supreme Court decided that Bush overstepped his legal bounds as governor when he intervened. I have no doubt that Gov. Bush is sincere in his beliefs that Terri’s care should be continued, but the publicity surrounding this case can’t hurt his standing with social conservatives who oppose the right to die without medical intervention.
No one is claiming Jeb Bush is eeeeeeeeeeevil because he’s a Bush, but rather, that he had no business entering the debate, at least not in any official capacity.
Jeb isn’t a douche because of his opinion on euthanasia–reasonable people can certainly disagree on that subject.
He’s a douche because he’s adopted an attitude very similiar to the one you’re ridiculing in your post! He didn’t just disagree with Terry’s husband, he used the power of his office and his influence over the state legislature to intervene in a deeply personal civil matter. He went out of his way to enact legislation that he would have known was constitutionally sketchy–ultimately, it was just a trite political gesture that would have no effect other then rallying his political base.
The parents do not have standing to make decisions regarding their daughter’s care.. Terri is still legally married, and as such, her husband has the standing to make decisions about his wife’s care. What the parents think is irrelevant, as long as Michael Schiavo is still married to Terri.
The parents are not the legally responsible parties. Nor is Gov. Bush, nor are the members of the Florida legislature. The husband is the only party with a legally valid position on the matter. In your rush to defend anybody named Bush, you forgot that this case should have been none of his business.
Out of curiousity, do you consider stopping life support of any type to be euthanasia? Do you consider obeying a DNR order to be euthanasia?
John Mace, I just wanted to pop in and ask a couple of questions, if I may.
As memory serves, you are somewhat to the Right politically. My reading of your posts seems to be that you are, in fact, OK with the State stepping in here. Am I right?
Assuming that for a moment this is true, is this one of those cases where values (I assume this would be some right to life thing) trump political philosophy?
I’ve never actually been in this position, and I hope I never am, but when I look inside myself, I feel the opposite is true. Actively intervening in order to permit a skin-bag of nerves and organs with only a superficial physical resemblance to a loved one continue to suck air and nutrient-enriched saline would be impossibly difficult for me.
Life may be sacred, but life with dignity is more sacred still.
There is only one true and proper position to take, and it aint this:
from Gov. Bush
This isnt about Bush’s moral reasons, he shouldnt have shit to do with the process. If he had morals he would have left this up to the person with the LEGAL right…her Husband! This quote alone makes me feel like he his pushing his beliefs on this poor couple. He didnt make his decision based on any law, well it was a hastily passed law anyway, and it is not a law anymore.
This guy has watched his wife for 14yrs lying in a bed eating from a food tube with no signs of any recovery, and no hope there will be one. For making him endure ANOTHER year of this toture based on his “moral reasons” does kinda make him eeevvvvviiillll…and a bit of a dick.
I just wanted to jump in one more time to say that I have had to make that decision, and it was one of the hardest I’ve ever had to make. It’s hard enough to make it without some idiot with the next election on his mind pandering to a constituency.
Terri Schiavo is a human being. She has family who love her and who want what’s best for her. The sad reality is, she may never recover. Death may very well be what’s best for her. However, while it is easy to let this devolve in a philosophical debate, let us not forget that at the core of that debate is a person.