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."
So, you were upset about the children - where you upset about the murder of Terri?
A little misdirection going on?
If you want to know what I think, read post #46.
Oh, and one other thing: Trying to bait people with non-sequiturs is also polarizing.
The right to kill advocates keep saying we're wrong to compare them to Nazis, but in the same breath they brag about how many people are killed regularly every week. (I think they've said it's in the hundreds, haven't they?)
I think they've set their agenda way back by killing Terri. People are now aware of what they're doing, and won't be so easily tricked into allowing the murder of their loved ones as they have in the past.
True Clancy- the caller had a very hard time describing this to Rush.
People who heroically state "If I was like Terri I'd WANT them to PULL the FEEDING TUBE!" should get a better idea of what they are signing up for, and what their loved ones will go through and carry for the rest of their days. I have never thought of suicide (which is what many folks seem to be thinking of using living wills to dictate) as noble or unselfish because it just passes the pain to someone else to deal with.
How very thoughtful and very selfish of you. If you want to die, you will find a way. Let the rest of us live our lives without the fear that the ghouls are hanging around figuring the best way to "off" us.
You know I didn't say that.
I want laws permitting each person to choose to live or die as they wish and circumstances dictate.
Not to mention that you are wanting laws that have the state/government committing murder on U.S. citizens ....
I never asked for any law that would have the government do anything to anyone.
...... and you are having man break one of the Ten Commandments.
When Christianity or Judaism become the State Religion of the United States you might have a point. Until then, you don't.
You don't want much do you?
No, actually, I don't.
I want the government to butt out and let each of us choose as we will.
SO9
I will agree with "sociopath," if that is your preference. I would have said unimaginative and therefore, without empathy, and totally unsympathetic.
In fact, the Supreme Court decisions in the Washington State "right to die" cases of Glucksurg and Compassion in Dying are my sources for the statement that you will be presumed to be mentally incompetent if you are found to be suicidal.
Your right to life, or not to be killed, is unalienable. You may not infringe that right without penalty anymore than anyone else. You have no right to any public assistance or the use of regulated medical technology, personnel, or pharmaceutical in any attempt to kill yourself. Those who aide you, with the exception of Oregon physicians pending the upcoming USSC ruling, will be prosecuted. And, if you survive, you will most likely be prosecuted for anyone harmed in your attempt, unless you *are* found to be incompetent.
Do not forget that your liberty is limited by the right to life and liberty - the right not to be killed - of others.
However, your biopsychosocial designation has nothing to do with the case in question (which is therefore not a non sequitor), which is that Terri Schiavo, as is typical for a 27 year old woman, did not post her desire to die on a public forum or anywhere else that was reliable. Even if she did make a comment about "machines," that had nothing to do with a feeding tube or natural means of hydration and nutrition. It had nothing to do with 15 years of systematic torture of Terri and her family. I'm certain that Terri had no idea that her mother would be threatened with jail for applying chapstick to her lips or that a judge would forbid anyone to give her sips of water or bits of ice in her last days.
Terris Schiavo died a long time ago. All that was left was a psychical shell. Removing the feeding tube simply served to turn off that shell. Her family saw what they wanted to see, but their emotionally charged beliefs are not based in objective medical reality.
Did you read the deposition about Terri's reactions, filed with the court by her attorney, Barbara Weller, who was with Terri when the men came to pull her feeding tube? About Terri's anguished efforts to speak the sentence "I Want to LIVE"...about Terri's tears? About her efforts to speak? About how Terri brightened and laughed and tried to speak at the name "Jesus" when the attorney blessed her and left her to die.......perjury by the lawyer?
I'd be very curious to see that deposition. And, AFAIK, TS did not have her own lawyer since Michael was her legal guardian.
Doubtful. For pain to register, there has to be some sort of functional brain involved.
Why did they give her morphine if she didn't care or didn't know anything?
To prevent seizures and convulsions as she dehydrated. Morphine is given to all hospice patients as they pass away, no matter what their mental state.
Why were they playing music?
Don't know. Ask the nurses. Probably standard procedure.
Why did they give her a stuffed animal?
Probably to make everyone else in the room feel better.
You have to believe Terri was not a human being or else you could not justify killing her in such a heinous fashion.
For all intents and purposes, TS died 15 years ago. All that was left was a physical shell. If there had been any evidence that she had anything more than just autonomic brain functions, I would have been opposed to removing the feeding tube. But there wasn't.
I make my decisions rationally, not on the basis of feelings.
That often seems 'sociopathic' or without empathy to people too influenced by Disney movies. They make me cry too, but what has that to do with reason or facts? A person or animal suffering is unbearably painful, but it is also irrelevant to decision making.
Your right to life, or not to be killed, is unalienable. You may not infringe that right without penalty anymore than anyone else.
My right to die is unalienable as well, and when the time comes, anyone who tries to interfere, I will take with me.
What part of "Leave me the Hell Alone" is so hard to understand?
I and my loved ones will do as we always have. We will die when we are ready, we will help each other at need. We will not be trifled with by government in this most personal matter.
As for Terri Schiavo
Our judicial system works most of the time for most people.
It's the best man has ever devised.
Teri Schiavo might very well have suffered an injustice.
People have their lives destroyed all the time by bad decisions in our system. It's the nature of a manmade system.
The Loonies that supported her were ready to tear down our entire judicial system to save her.
I decided that the American System of jurisprudence was of greater value than the life of Terri Schiavo.
Yes, I ignore the judicial system when I disagree with it.
If supporters of Terri Schiavo had staged a commando raid on the Hospice and carried her away to safety, that would have been acceptable. That would be a simple crime that did not damage the fabric of our society, just as my suicide will be.
Persuading our government to intervene, if they had done so successfully, would have destroyed all certainty of every verdict rendered by the courts in the future.
So9
TS died 15 years ago. All that was left was an empty shell.
No, she did not die 15 years ago. She has been living, breathing, eating, moving, attempting to communicate, and responding to those that love her.
....There is nothing there but an empty shell......
Just how much time have you spent with Terri to make that judgement?
Judgement.....Exactly who gave you the authority to judge whether Terri is an empty shell or not - I thought that was God's realm.
Other than the breathing on her own and maintaining the mechanical aspects of life, she has not done any of these things (other than in a purely autonomic manner).
Judgement.....Exactly who gave you the authority to judge whether Terri is an empty shell or not - I thought that was God's realm.
I had no authority in the case. The people of Florida, through their elected legislators and judges, implemented a legal system that gave Judge Greer the authority to make that determination. If they do not like how this case turned out, they are free to change the law.
At the end of the day, the pro-TS forces are protesting a legal decision on no grounds other than the fact that they aren't happy with it. Well, too bad.
Yes, it is too bad, a woman's constitutional rights were violated by the fact that a panel created laws that would allow it and the judiciary did not defend her rights to life, liberty, etc.
We do intend to correct this.
Guess you just don't care as long as a useless eater was done away with.
So, you are in agreement with the fact that any man can have two wives and have life and death decisions on both.
You are in agreement that, even though loving parents are willing to care for an unwanted useless eater that a estranged husband wants to do away with, the law and the government have the right to tell those parents they cannot take care of that unwanted woman.
You are in agreement that even though murder is being committed, that the laws must be upheld and no decision of right or wrong is valid. As long as someone can sneak in the laws they wish, they are free to commit murder on U.S. citizens.
You are in agreement that a lower court judge has the authority to ignore a federal subpoena, ignore a law passed by the federal government and to stop a governor from executing his executive powers.
And, thanks to you, nothing will ever be done about any of this. Life as normal. All the while, behind the scenes, laws are being put in place to murder U.S. citizens because they are disabled and some do not think they worthy to live.
Thanks to you. The out-of-control judiciary will take over all power in this land and make laws, withhold the ones they choose and ignore others. We will have a dictatorship by those who are able to manipulate the laws behind the scenes for removal of the weak and they will be supported by like members of the judiciary that can be bought, are cohorts in their efforts, or just want the power over all.
Just why do you even bother posting on a conservative website?
Opps, uphold the ones they choose (not withhold)
I never called TS a "useless eater." Do not put words in my mouth.
So, you are in agreement with the fact that any man can have two wives and have life and death decisions on both.
Legally, MS only has one wife. He is not a bigamist. He would not be appointed as guardian to the mother of his two children if she slipped into a PVS.
You are in agreement that, even though loving parents are willing to care for an unwanted useless eater that a estranged husband wants to do away with, the law and the government have the right to tell those parents they cannot take care of that unwanted woman.
Under Florida law, a spouse is the default legal guardian of an incapacitated person. The rest of your statement is irrelevant.
You are in agreement that even though murder is being committed, that the laws must be upheld and no decision of right or wrong is valid. As long as someone can sneak in the laws they wish, they are free to commit murder on U.S. citizens.
I do not consider what happened to TS to be murder, so the rest of your statement is irrelevant.
You are in agreement that a lower court judge has the authority to ignore a federal subpoena, ignore a law passed by the federal government and to stop a governor from executing his executive powers.
In order: Congress could have enforced their subpoena, but chose not to. This leads me to conclude that they too knew the subpoena was bogus. This was a state law issue and the federal law was political grandstanding. The governor has no legal power to violate a legal court order.
And, thanks to you, nothing will ever be done about any of this.
Thanks to me? I didn't realize I had that much power.
Just why do you even bother posting on a conservative website?
Because, IMHO, "conservatives" who are in favor of government (especially the federal government) getting more-and-more involved in the private sphere are not real conservatives.
Your own emotional penchant for self-controlled death would destroy our entire system - all three branches - because you consider what you *want* to be priority over the life of a human being.
Without the right not to be killed, and if that right can be infringed by the very systems which are only legitimate if they function to protect life, there is no freedom, there is no ownership of property and what you want is irrelevant if it conflicts with the wants of someone with the power to kill you.
Government is illegitimate when it infringes the inalienable right not to be killed except to protect life. Terri's case, has opened conversations such as this one, with your statement that Terri's life was not worth overturning Greer who forbid natural feeding and so acted completely outside Florida law, other's statements that more humane and instant ways should have been used to kill her, and the assumption that unless someone with a disability is going to improve their life is not worth living. There is also the judicial usurping of executive power and ignoring or challenging the Constitutional power of Congress to limit and direct the Courts. And it is now case law.
We have just had our own version of the fictional martyr in pre-WWII movie, "J'Accuse!" The question is whether the citizenry can learn from the history of euthanasia in Nazi Germany and whether we can wrest back control of our courts.
Our courts are already a joke. I remember serving on a jury just after that man, Mr. Clinton's, perjury. Many of us snickered or outright laughed when the oath was explained. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the Federal Courts in Texas are mandating law-making to the State Legislatures. Every law is now written with the idea that it will be tested in the courts.
The founding fathers did not set up the system so that law on important issues was to be made by the judiciary, and the Legislature and Executive Branches would only decide on the unimportant issues.
Greer killed Terri Schiavo as surely as if he had shot her. Nominally, it was in support of Michael's opinion as to what Terri would have wanted. But, Greer went too far. Whittemore rejected a Constitutional mandate of the US Congress. And the 11th Circuit told us why they decided to write a criticism of Congress rather than look at the records of Terri's case. Greer proved that he could enforce his rulings with guns and prison, over riding a Governor and the Congress of the United States.
We are in a state of judicial anarchy. The only way that Jeb Bush could have followed through with the DCF action would have been to order State police to draw their guns on local police. The only way that Congress could have enforced their supoenas against Greer's highhandedness would have been to send in Federal Marshalls.
Greer killed our judicial system, as surely as he killed Terri.
Great post.
Thank you.
Here's another thread on the judges - evidently Dick Cheney is coming out against any action against the judges who usurped the power of the Executive and Legislative Branches.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1377053/posts
Weller is an attorney, not a doctor. She is no more qualified to determine TS's mental state than any other non-medical layperson.
Dr Cheshire Affidavit
Here is part of the Mayo Clinic's view on Dr. Chesire's conclusions:
Dr. William Cheshire was asked by the Florida Department of Children and Families to share his expertise related to potentially vulnerable adults. As part of this commitment, he was asked to render his professional opinion for the state of Florida in the case of Terri Schiavo. He observed the patient at her bedside and conducted a review of her medical history but did not conduct an examination.
Mayo Clinic recognizes that the standard of care for the evaluation of a comatose patient includes a detailed review of the patient’s history and previous evaluations as well as the performance of a comprehensive neurological examination. In some instances, electrophysiological and imaging studies may be used to establish a diagnosis.
So, Dr. Chesire did not do a medical examination that passes muster. Oh, and in his own affidavit admits that he himself did not see any evidence the TS was anyting other than in a PVS (though he does seem to be claiming psychic powers, bolded below):
Although Terri did not demonstrate during our 90-minute visit compelling evidence of verbalization, conscious awareness or volitional behavior, yet the visitor has the distinct sense of the presence of a living human being who seems at some level to be aware of some things around her"
Are those really the two best affidavits available? If so, this is a weak case.
If we ever see the autopsy reports we may see how much morphine Felos' hospice staff were forced to push into Terri's body to calm her down as she died...unless they limited pain meds and let her suffer so there would not be a chemical trail of evidence showing the extent of pain she suffered.
So, if there is evidence of lots of morphine, that is proof of a cover-up. However, if there is evidence of no morphine, that is also proof of a cover-up. Got it.
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