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."
I think Terri's case will create a backlash. The euthanasia advocates wanted to make her as their posterchild -- that was behind the zeal of Felos -- to make it easier to get rid of inconvenient people, but I think there will be laws enacted -- which the judiciary may or may not feel like recognizing -- to protect the rights of the defenseless.
There are some who are interested in going a lot further than that.
They want to make it illegal to refuse treatment, any treatment, either viva voce if concious or via living will if not.
Given half a chance, they will keep the unwilling hooked to tubes by force and in painful useless treatments as long as possible.
So9
Neither extreme is appropriate.
You are jumping from one extreme to the other.
There was an article posted last week on FR from the "Weekly Standard", hardly a radical publication, calling for exactly that, making 'the right to die' illegal.
SO9
No, afraid not, there are too many ghouls who want only the healthy, elite to breathe earth's air.
When man takes on God's realm, man fails miserably because man is man not a god. Man does not love all, man is not impartial and fair. Man's decisions will seek the lowest denominator because we live in a world of sin - not a world filled with many gods.
I would prefer God make the decisions that belong to God.
You will die. I promise. No one can take that away from you.
Anyone who wants to die is not mentally capable of making their own decisions. By definition, no one can consent to being murdered.
Really?
Get in my way when the time comes and I'll take you with me.
SO9
It's easy to see which of us is reasonable and moral and which is a deranged violent animal who need to be controlled and locked up.
Stupid me! I had always thought the "DUE PROCESS" guarenteed in the 14th amendment, mean that a person had to be found guilty of a crime to be sentenced to death. But, I guess if property can be taken away under an 'eminent domain' clause, so can life.
This is so totally ridiculous. Has anyone, ever, been able to prevent death? The way this doctor puts it, it sounds like legislatures are making enforceable laws against dying, and people who are eager to die will now have to go get a judge's permission to do it! As if any of us had a choice about the matter!
You threaten to Interfere in my life and I promise to kill you.
No one has any right to decide how soon to end my life but me, whether they want to take it against my will, or extend it against my will.
SO9
For one thing, bigamists husbands should be required to SHUT UP.
Your deranged and violent mental illness precludes you from being allowed to make decsions for yourself.
Sure Joe, anything you say Joe. Just sterp away from the bottle and calm down.
After all, which of us has the screen name of a certified alcoholic and psychotic?
SO9
"No one has any right to decide how soon to end my life but me, whether they want to take it against my will, or extend it against my will."
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I certainly agree with this. The tragic point in Terri's case is that they DID take her life against her will and in a most torturous, brutal way, and they did it all "legally."
I agree totally, every day Terri lied there starving to death the more damage that was done to the euthanasia movement. We don't starve pets to death and we shouldn't do that to humans either, no matter how little pain medical professionals say they are in. The euthanasia movement would have been better off if the doctors would have shot her up with something or if her husband would walked into the room and stuck a pillow over her face.
It was perfectly fine in your mind for someone else to make Terri Schiavo's decisions for her, but then that's because you wanted her to die. You are just fine with the state deciding to kill people, just not with saving them.
Oh, and McCarthy was right, pinko.
there should be a law that negates the "spouse's" influence if he or she is shacked up with another person.
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