Posted on 04/03/2005 2:09:33 PM PDT by FairOpinion
The arguments surrounding Terri Schiavo will live on in statehouse debate and new laws if an emerging coalition of disability rights activists and right-to-lifers succeeds in turning the national agony over her case into a re-examination of when and how our lives come to an end.
So far, only a few legislators in a handful of states have sought significant changes to their laws, which define the fundamental elements at stake - how a person can set limits on their medical care, who gets to decide what their wishes are, what evidence is needed to prove it.
None have yet become law and the chances for most, if not all, are slim this year, with some legislatures finished and many far along in their work for this session. But both Republicans and Democrats say the arguments aren't going away.
The debate is an effort to strike a new balance between one stance that argues that medical care and morality mean life must be pursued in nearly all cases, and another stance, crafted over decades of changing views about death, that some may choose to end drastically damaged lives that depend on artificial means.
"I really wanted to make sure we gave a default for life and not for death," said Kansas state Rep. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a Republican who helped revive a measure that would give courts a greater chance to review decisions to end life-sustaining care, lessening the role of guardians or doctors. "Our most vulnerable citizens are in fact in the most danger of losing their life without any recourse."
She was joined in her effort by disability activists, many aligned with liberal causes, and Democrats in the state House. The measure stalled in the Kansas Senate, however, as the session ended for the year last Friday.
"We don't want to get into the politics of the right or the left or whomever," said Michael Donnelly at the Disability Rights Center of Kansas. "This isn't about politics, this is about how we value or don't value the lives people with disabilities have."
His group had been working for years to revisit the issue, and came together with several conservative legislators to move the bill forward. Elsewhere, the National Right to Life Committee has produced model legislation and is working with legislators in several states.
Legislation has also been introduced in Alabama, Hawaii, Louisiana, Minnesota and South Dakota. The Louisiana bill is called the "Human Dignity Act"; Alabama's is the "Starvation and Dehydration Prevention Act."
Many measures predate recent weeks of attention to Schiavo, though some drew their inspiration directly from the agonized public debate over the 41-year-old woman's death - like one in Missouri introduced last Thursday, the day Schiavo died.
"I was gripped by what I was watching and couldn't believe the state of Florida would let this woman die in this manner," said GOP state Rep. Cynthia Davis. Her bill would bar anyone from directing that artificial food and water be withheld or withdrawn without a specific written directive from the patient.
There's also a slew of legislation around living wills and other end-of-life issues that wouldn't further the aims of this emerging group - like a Nevada measure that would let a guardian end life-sustaining measures even if it's against a patient's known wishes, as long as it's in their best interests.
The views of medical care and ending life have shifted over the past 30 years as the country grappled with brain-damaged or coma-bound patients whose families said they shouldn't be forced to live a life they wouldn't want, starting with Karen Ann Quinlan in 1975, then to Nancy Cruzan in 1990 and now to Schiavo.
Critics say the medical community and society have gone too far. "When original advance directives were created, nobody contemplated that hospitals would refuse to treat ... It was usually just the opposite, doctors refusing to pull the feeding tube," said Burke Balch, director of the National Right to Life Committee's medical ethics center.
Now, he says, the presumption in the hospitals, the courts and in too much state legislation, is to go ahead and pull life-sustaining treatment when there is not enough evidence that the patient wanted it.
Doctors and bioethicists say that overwhelmingly, safeguards exist in hospitals and in courts to ensure that patients' and families' wishes and best interests are protected.
"Are they going to go out and undo all the hard work that people have done to make sure they can die without having to go to court?" said Dr. Jean Teno, associate director at Brown University's Gerontology and Health Care Research Center.
Most decisions, unlike the portrayal of critics, are made by doctors and families working together, she said. "My sense is that this approach is working."
Political agendas are hard to discount, as congressional leaders raise dire warnings against judges in Florida and Washington over their Schiavo decisions. That meshes with GOP efforts to put more conservatives in the judiciary.
But political stereotypes fell, too, with traditionally liberal leaders like Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader supporting Terri Schiavo's parents efforts to keep their daughter alive.
Advocates vow that the questions of civil rights and morality are going to win out.
"If there's any doubt, than life trumps death," said Donnelly, in Kansas. "I'm a quadriplegic, been that way for 28 years. I would hate for somebody else to decide my life is not worth living."
Do you think it is murder if the respirator of a brain-dead person is turned off? I don't. And do you think that people who are of sound mind can put their wishes in writing in the event that some accident or medical event like a massive heart attack or stroke causes massive, irreparable and irreversible brain damage, resulting in being on a ventilator? Imagine that is the case, there is no brain activity, the cerebrum is basically gone, and said hypothetical patient can't breathe without a machine. Is it murder to turn off the respirator in such cases? Is it not reasonable for people, like me, for instance, to direct in advance that if I end up in such a circumstance, that I want the electricity turned off? And since I wouldn't want to be kept "alive" in such a circumstance, does that make me not "in my right mind"?
Terri Schiavo was not brain dead.
"Do you think it is murder if the respirator of a brain-dead person is turned off? "
Terri was NOT on a respirator and she was NOT braindead.
Do you think people whose diagnosis has a 40% chance of being wrong, who left no instructions, where there is no clear evidence as to their wishes, should be denied food and water, even by mouth, i.e. summarily murdered?
"Persistent Vegetative Status" discussion ping for all interested
Thanks!
I never mentioned Mrs. Schiavo. I never suggested she was brain dead. I was speaking hypothetically. I guess that's not allowed.
So why don't you answer my specific question?
Do you think people whose diagnosis has a 40% chance of being wrong, who left no instructions, where there is no clear evidence as to their wishes, should be denied food and water, even by mouth, i.e. summarily murdered?
Terri was a real person, who was murdered, using exactly your hypothetical claims of cases, which had no relevance.
I'm sure that makes your family happy.
The only thing that might make you of questionable mind, would be to let a doctor (or several doctors) who spend less than 30 minutes "assessing" you, decide from an cat scan that they know your cognitive status, prognosis, and worthiness to live....better than the people who love you and have known you for much of your life, and who ALL sense that "you" are still there....and who all sense or know innately that "you" want help to live....and that "you" are wanted and will be cared for by them, even if your disabilities are severe.
In fact, that wasn't my hypothetical, but oh well. You'll do as you please. I don't where you got the 40% number as a chance of a diagnosis being wrong. Is that a hypothetical? However, I don't think it is ethical to withhold food or water from someone if their wishes aren't known in advance.
Multiple medical journals mention that the diagnosis of PVS is something like 35-43% inaccurate.
"However, I don't think it is ethical to withhold food or water from someone if their wishes aren't known in advance."
Now we are getting somewhere -- but do you think, it's "legal"?
Apparently, it is legal in several states, including California, not that I think it is ethical. That's why, in a previous post a whole lotta days ago, I dared suggest that we check to see what the laws are in our respective states, and work to change them(and I got soundly blasted for such a revolutionary concept). I also believe we need to understand what the current thoughts of ethicists are, because they have a lot of influence. We need to look long and hard at what the bioethicists have proclaimed as "ethical". For example, bioethicsts believe that it is not ethical to withhold a heart transplant from a prisoner on death row if his medical condition is such that he might need one. We are looking at a major cultural change (that's a news flash, eh?).
It's also why we need to have an advance medical directive, make it as specific as possible, and review it every now and again. It's also a good idea to have a durable power of attorney in place to allow a trusted loved one to make those difficult medical decisions for you should you be incapacitated. In my case, I don't want to be starved and dehydrated to death, but if I've suffered major brain damage, neither do I want a feeding tube installed so that I can be mainted for 20 or 30 years. No thanks.
Medical science has advanced greatly over the past decades to the point where people who would have died can now be rescucitated and/or maintained. That includes people who have had no pulse for many minutes, and have suffered serious, irreversible brain damage. Medical technology can get the heart going again in many cases, but I question whether or not that is always wise. I know that if I've been without a pulse for 10 minutes or so, I don't want anyone anywhere near me with those jumper cables. After 5 or 6 minutes w/o O2, the brain cells start to die, and they aren't going to grow back. If my cerebrum is gone, then I'm gone, never mind if some hotshot EMT gets my heart going again.
This horrific chapter has shined light on the fundamental fissure that divides mankind: is man God, or is God God?
If the former, then the chief and highest end is an Epicurean pursuit of pleasure. Any incapacitation against that end, and the purpose of life is gone: "Pull the tube!"
If God is God, and is the God Who gave Moses two tablets of stone on which were written the words that form the basis for all civil law, then the chief and highest end is the glorification of God, and His glorification through honoring all people by reason of their creation in the Divine image.
I believe it really is that simple at the archon, the most fundamental level: Cain and Abel, the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman; evil and good. To divide by liberal/conservative would be naive.
It's not perfectly fine with me for the State to make decisions about Schiavo.
It is perfectly fine with me for her husband to make decisions for her when she couldn't.
She obviously didn't care much about her own wellfare, so why should I?
She failed to make out a living will and durable power of atty, and married a creep, well, that's Evolution in Action.
So9
Regarding your point about brain cells: Each organ has unique properties. The liver, for example, has a remarkable ability to regenerate. Only the skin shares this special property. A young, healthy person can even donate half his liver to a biological match, recover, and lead a full and normal life. The lungs, too, while completely formed at birth (all bronchi are present), can heal after years of abusive smoking and toxicant inhalation.
One of the important features of the brain is its functional plasticity. It was once thought that functions were restricted to specific regions of the brain. We now know that this is not true. Taken in light of the fact that we only use about 10% of our brains, this makes sense.
While ultimately only you can express in an advance directive your wishes for treatment in a tragedy like you described, I would urge you to consider these facts. Your life is valuable, and you, along with all of us, have special meaning and purpose. I would not want this view to become the default, however, in the absense of a written directive; life is too precious, and this decision too important to err on the side of the irreversible.
No you are perfectly fine with the state deciding that it was her husband's decision and then enforcing that decision with all the violent power of the state even to the extent of imprisoning children.
Well it's perfectly fine to me for someone else to make decisions for you since you care so little for your own life and your mental illness makes you unable to decide what's best for you.
No you are perfectly fine with the state deciding that it was her husband's decision and then enforcing that decision with all the violent power of the state even to the extent of imprisoning children.
I think the parents of those children who were shoved forward to "take water to Terri" should be prosecuted for child abuse for putting their kids in Juvenile Hall for the night in order to make a political point they were too cowardly to make themselves.
I notice that one of the fathers is already a registered child molester.
SO9
If you knew or cared the first thing about loyalty, you would know that.
You want the state to enforce decisions made for other people. You would have wanted adults who tried to feed Terri against the wishes of the violent and oppressive state to be arrested just as the children were.
You are fine with the state enforcing decisions on the behalf of others as long as it fulfill your political agenda to MURDER the innocent and defenseless. After all what good are they? That's evolution right?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.