Posted on 05/12/2015 9:58:30 PM PDT by Politicalkiddo
I am doing a paper for my college health class about Euthanasia and the right to die, and I am supposed to discuss Terri Schiavo's situation. My textbook doesn't give much information and the information that is given paints her parents as horrible for wanting to keep her alive "against her wishes".
While I was pretty young when this situation occurred, I have heard snippets here and there over the years and the whole situation seems fishy. I tried Googling information, and all I come up with Wikipedia and MSM articles talking about her "right to die". Does someone have any good links that explain the whole situation?
Does anyone know why the insurance company didn’t go after Michael? He testified in the law suit he needed the money to take care of Terri for the rest of her life.
My textbook did mention that information. It said that her husband claimed that it was her wish to not be kept on life support, but she had no will or health care directive.
I hope you'll seek and tell the truth.
I notice it wasn't too many posts before the "Jeb stood by and let it happen" business started. Maybe you could pay extra special attention to that. He was acting within the bounds of the law; he was, after all, governor, not god. Could/should he have reasonable done more? An honest vetting of that question might be very useful indeed but be warned, if it disagrees with "Jeb stood by and let it happen", you'll be punished.
Salvation;Wagglebee;Llittle Jeremiah: Do any of you have a Terri Schiavo thread compilation you could paste in here?
Politicalkiddo: you can do a keyword search on “schiavo” for threads on here referencing Terri Schiavo.
Such decisions are generally made when a consensus is reached among the relevant members of the family, in discussion with the doctor(s), pastor/priest/rabbi, and any other close associates with whom they wish to consult. The group that makes the decision is usually informal, but generally consists of the closest adult relatives and family elders, plus advisors.
Consensus is sometimes difficult. There may be a weepy Aunt Mildred who can't let go, long after every other sensible person has given up. There may be a greedy Uncle Fred who can't wait to get his hands on the inheritance. People come along at different speeds.
What makes the Terri Schaivo case unique, and troubling, is that the inner circle consensus for pulling the plug was never reached. On the contrary, the consensus for life held strong for years, and was broken only when the husband defected. The parents, siblings, other close relatives, caregivers, etc. were all unwilling to pull the plug. And the husband stood with them, for years, UNTIL after he had met and taken up with another woman, and wanted to move on with his life. So:
Again, generally end of life decisions are made when a consensus, or at least a near consensus, has emerged that it is time to pull the plug. That did not happen in Terri's case.
Conflicts of interest need to be recognized and discounted. Terri's husband, after his change of mind, was the only member of the inner circle who wanted her dead. And he was the conflicted party. That should be a red flag.
Terri's family begged the husband to move on, divorce her, and get on with his life if that was his choice. He refused, and campaigned for years for her death. That is freakish, and should be squarely addressed.
In long-term cases of severe incapacity, whoever is paying the bills should have a say. I don't know how Terri's expenses were met; I have always supposed Medicaid, but that is a speculation. If that's correct, it is important that the State of Florida sided with those in Terri's family who wanted her to live.
You must also be careful not to misrepresent Terri's condition. She went through waking and sleeping cycles. She responded physically to light and touch. She was spoon fed and swallowed her food until late in the game, when the husband got her into a hospice that was committed to engineering her death, and she was hooked up to tubes. Her conscious mental functions were missing, but she was not simply comatose, lying inert, and sustained intravenously.
In the end, since there was no living will, the decision for death was driven unilaterally by a husband with a conflict of interest. This was imposed against the wishes of the rest of the family, on the basis of an alleged memory of Terri's statement that she wouldn't want to live under such conditions. The courts accepted that recollection, despite the fact that the alleged memory was recovered years after it should have been raised, and only after the husband had developed his conflict of interest. That the courts sided with the outlier against the consensus of the rest of the inner circle, supported by the financially responsible party (if I'm correct about Medicaid), is troubling. That's not how these decisions usually go down. When there is division, we generally err on the side of life. In Terri's case, the courts imposed an active preference for death.
Dont expect a very good grade, coming here and cheating like this.
Jeb Bush, as required by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, swore a sacred oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which, in two Amendments, absolutely requires the equal protection of the right to life of every innocent person. He also swore to support and defend the Constitution of the State of Florida, which also explicitly requires the equal protection of every innocent person's life. It even explicitly includes the disabled among those persons so protected.
He did NOT swear an oath to follow the arbitrary whims of a lawless, murderous, tinpot probate judge when he issued a literal death warrant, via torture, on an innocent person.
The supreme law of our land doesn't even allow cruel and unusual punishment to be administered again the most heinous convicted criminals.
So, Bush was not, as you claim, "acting within the bounds of the law." He was standing by as the supreme law of the land, and the supreme law of Florida, was trampled into the dust, along with the body of Terri Schindler Schiavo.
So, either prove me wrong, or change your tune, if you're an honest person.
interesting links, but may not be suitable for a paper...
From the Deepest Coma, New Brain Activity Found
http://www.livescience.com/39761-brain-activity-deep-coma.html
New Brain Activity State Exists In ‘Flat Line’ Coma Patients, Scans Suggest
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/brain-activity-coma_n_3953473.html
of course those who practice genocide, make money on organ transplants, or want to keep the budget down won’t be using this test and sure as hell won’t tell families.
1. Do not use Wikipedia as a source. It is not considered to be an authentic academic source.
5. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/30/frank-pavone-terri-schiavos-inconvenient-life/
6. http://www.miami.edu/index.php/ethics/projects/schiavo (Choose carefully)
8. Pope John Paul II’s March 20, 2004, address to World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and Pontifical Academy for Life congress on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas.” http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2004/march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040320_congress-fiamc.html
9. Terri Schiavo’s Final Hours: An Eyewitness Account: http://www.priestsforlife.org/euthanasia/terrisfinalhours.htm
10. The Case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo http://www.priestsforlife.org/terri
No, nothing, but if you look back at her case, it was alleged early on by one of her best friends. Her husband put on a great show of caring for her after he beat her, to ease his guilty conscience. Her beating took place years before fatal domestic abuse became something society even looked at or noticed, as the OJ Simpson case brought to national attention.
There have been some great suggestions here about Priests for Life and American Life League.
Most of the good stuff on FR can be found on these keywords:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/terridailies/index?tab=articles
http://freerepublic.com/tag/whiterose/index?tab=articles
You can also contact the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, they are usually pretty good about responding very quickly.
http://terrisfight.org/
Let me know if you need more.
As for being "brain dead", she was given Tylenol for menstrual cramps. That doesn't sound like "brain death".
One correction. You keep saying “pull the plug”. There was no “plug” to pull. Terri was only using a feeding tube and nothing else so it’s rather misleading to use “pull the plug”.
Watch out for their constant misuse of terms.
Terri Shaivo was not dying until they starved her to death. Food and water do not constitute "life support" in the sense of being exclusively medical treatment because they are necessary for any human being, whether a person is sick or healthy.
Cordially,
I just want you to be aware that most information you might get from any mainstream media source will likely be sharing the same intentional misinformation like your textbook. Make sure you know and state that Terri was not actively dying, she wasn’t brain dead, and she wasn’t hooked up to any machines. Her feeding tube was a gadget, not a machine. It was a portal to her stomach, which when hooked up to the feeding tube, provided nutrition.
Terri was able to swallow her own saliva without choking, so she could have been taught how to swallow better if she had been given therapy, but her “husband” denied her that therapy. In fact, she had been given therapy until she started speaking and forming words, then Michael put a quick end to helping her get any further.
What most Americans don’t know is the back story, only a bunch of falsehoods told by his lawyer and regurgitated by the MSM. It’s disgusting what was done to Terri. All to make the euthanasia movement move forward.
Unfortunately, Terri’s parents made a critical legal error from the very first time the case was seen by the court, and that was to agree that she was PVS. In my opinion, she was misdiagnosed, as the Minimally Conscious diagnosis hadn’t been defined at that point. That change in terminology might have won her life as far as legalities were concerned.
Let’s put it this way. There’s something very wrong with a system, where your husband can almost kill you, but you’re revived, only to have him and the courts do it legally 15+ years later, by the most cruel and barbaric method possible.
Ditto to what Diamond wrote. You will find there is a constant misuse of terms. Constant. If the American public really had any idea of how much misinformation they were given, I hope and pray that they would truly be sick to their stomachs over what happened.
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