This is why we so desperately need SOTUS. This is religious fanatacism at its ugliest, most desperate and most terrifying. It’s pure, unthinking hatred, it’s villagers with pitchforks, it’s a lynch mob, it’s rampaging, idiot rabble, and it’s all being enthusiastically fanned and exploited by powerful politicians who know that playing to hate is the most dependable political strategy ever devised.
The only thing that’s saving us is the one branch of government which has not yet been corrupted by theocrats but it’s only a matter of time.
Look well on these good Christians making death threats against judges and trying to blow up court houses when they can’t get their way and thank the founding fathers for that wall of separation. It may not last much longer.
I think that’s a bit harsh. They have for years successfully gained a stay every time they’ve filed a new action. Now that the system has decided enough is enough, they are understandably having a hard time coming to grips with that.
I do believe that their belief in Mrs. Schiavo’s eventual recovery is delusional, if not pathological, but still…
I only hope that they can come to grips with this in time to spend loving moments with the body that used to be their daughter, and bid her farewell, goodbye, and godspeed.
I was correcting something in my previous post when I accidentally typed the acronym “SOTUS” instead of SOCAS (Separation of Church and State). “SOTUS,” of course, stands for nothing.
I’ve been following this case for the past few days with great relief that the 15 year limbo Terri Schiavo has been subjected to is finally nearing its end. I’m not surprised at all so much controversy is swirling around this case, but it is depressing nonetheless. I can’t understand why so many people are so willing to allow her to linger for so long. 15 years is such a long time. Hope is grand and all, but there comes a time when you just have to face reality and move on.
I do feel for Terri’s parents but I think they seriously need therapy. They’ve been in active denial for 15 years and have not given themselves the opportunity to grieve the loss of their daughter. The one that actually had a life at one point. She is not even in that shell of person anymore. She will never be able to stand in front of her parents and tell them what she wants. They’re desperately grasping at straws as evidenced by the recent audio of Terri and comments made by them and their lawyer. A vast conspiracy to hasten her death? After 15 years and a decade of legal wrangling??? So sad.
And her husband. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to live everyday seeing my spouse in such a horrifying situation and being completely helpless to do what I thought was right by him. To be unable to let go and unwilling to walk away and move on. To be villified by my in-laws and too many strangers who don’t even know me though they are so quick to judge me. To watch my spouse paraded out by family angling for sympathetic press, caretakers with an axe to grind, and politicians looking to win points from the woefully misinformed.
My heart hurts. I’m not a religious person, but I do hope there is eventually some peace to be had by this unfortunate woman and her family. Godspeed, Terri.
It’s been on Fox News. They’ve had to clear the court house (and ironically prolong the time it will take for the judge to make a decision) because of a “suspicious package” found at the building.
In any case, I forgot to posit a question that I’ve been mulling over.
I can understand that withdrawing the feeding tube is not likely to cause Terri any pain given her lacking most of her cortex (and as evidenced by her unresponsiveness to pain stimuli, I would hope?) However, on the off-chance that it did cause her discomfort and to relieve the concerns of her family that she might suffer, wouldn’t it be prudent to go the morphine route as a method of passive euthanasia? If she were injected with large doses of morphine, it would prevent any suffering at all and likely depress respiration likely hastening her death in a painless manner. The family would then be spared the longer process of death by starvation/dehydration. Would that not feel a little less icky to some people?
Well,at this point, it would probably kill her immediately. But I assume they didn’t because A. they were only to stop doing anything active for her to live, not
B. Give her something that would activiely kill her. Wouldn’t it?
It’s not legal for physicians to administer a lethal dose or to actively cause the death of a patient. We have the religious right to thank for the fact that we are forced to let people die slowly of natural causes rather than making the dying process quick and painless and dignified.
CNN broke into the tail-end of Larry King with it.
They said that a backpack was left against a wall, that two blocks around the building had been evacuated, and that on-the-scene tests by bomb disposal people registered positive for ‘dangerous material.’
They said there’d be more information forthcoming
So far, I can only find one mention of it online, in The Guardian
When they said that a two block area had been evacuated, I assumed that it included the courthouse itself.
As far as Terri’s EEG showing brain activity, I once read a book about medical oddities (yes, I know that doesn’t make me an expert; I’m just saying). Someone or a team of someones wanted to prove that “minimal” brain activity on an EEG didn’t mean much. To this end, they hooked up the graph to a lump of jello* the approximate weight and density of a human brain. Results: Minimal brain activity. The “activity” was attributed to sound waves and so forth. I mean, there’s always going to be people walking around and talking in a hospital, and the jello absorbed that.
*The words “lime flavored” were added in parentheses. Because I’m sure the editor/author knew that everyone reading it was going to think, “I wonder what flavor it was?”
This is not quite true. It is perfectly acceptable to give morphine in whatever doses are necessary to maintain a patient’s comfort, even if you know that such doses are likely to hasten the patient’s death. We refer to this as “comfort care”, and it is standard operating procedure in good end-of-life care.
This seems to be at odds with our prohibition against active euthanasia, but the guiding principle here is the “double effect” principle:
This concept is also applied to civilian casualties in wartime; if civilians die as a result of an attack on a legitimate military target, or as part of a legitimate and ultimately beneficial military strategy, it generally isn’t considered immoral. However, if your clear purpose is to kill a bunch of civilians, it isn’t moral.
There is no real reason for anyone to die in discomfort. All evidence is that Schiavo does not have the capacity to experience such things as “discomfort”, but if she did, an escalating morphine drip would be very appropriate. I am not certain if she is getting one or not.
