A Fate Worse Than Death in Florida

Business Week ^ | October 27, 2003 | Howard Gleckman

[Dave S]

Sometime in the third week of October, Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who's at the center of a nasty battle over the right to die, ceased to be a person. She has instead become a political symbol, which may be a fate worse than death.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

the courts can resolve the matter. That's not a great option. But do we really want politicians -- with their own agendas and ambitions -- deciding who lives and who dies?

Yeah, like judges don't have agendas and ambitions...

[Always Right]

Her life -- what there is of it -- has become a prop in an especially grotesque bit of public theater. Right-to-lifers have made her a poster child for their belief that Big Government, not families and their doctors, should resolve painful questions of life and death.

What a crook of crap. Her family wants her to live. Its only the slimeball alledged abusive husband who has squandered away hundreds of thousands of dollars that was supposed to be for Terri and who now has a new honey, who wants to kill Terri. Until Terri can speak for herself, it should be her loved ones who make the decision, not some guy who is motivated to get Terri out of the picture.

[JulieRNR21]

You forgot the (BARF ALERT).

Gleckman just doesn't 'get it'......there is no evidence that Terri wants to die....she has demonstrated a strong will to live...she survived 6 days of dehydration & starvation!

Even liberal Lawyer Alan Dershowitz says the court erred & she should be allowed to live & given to her family's care!

[GovernmentShrinker]

A yawning ethical, legal, and theological gulf exists between allowing someone to die and acting to hasten their death, a la Dr. Kevorkian.

Indeed. The latter is far more humane than slow starvation/dehydration.

[tallhappy]

The bigots come out on issues like this and can't help showing their bigotry.

The visceral hatred for people who respect life is out there and held by a lot of people. Usually they are able to hide their bigotry and seething hatred. But issues like this bring it out.

[JesseHousman]

Gleckman is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau.

Gleckman is one of many reasons I stopped reading BW years ago. They have an agenda other than business.

[Cicero]

Deliberately starving someone by court order isn't the same as "letting them die." Especially when the husband has forbidden the nursing home to make any effort to rehabilitate Terri or get her to swallow food.

That's presumably one reason why the husband's lawyer refused to let the priest give her Holy Communion when it looked as if she were on the point of death.

[Budge]

Schiavo is merely this week's photo op. And she'll be forgotten by her new allies as soon as they move on to their next battle.

You've obviously neever heard of FReepersorFreePrayers Howarrd Glickman.

The Schiavo case is not, as some critics suggest, about state-sponsored killing. A yawning ethical, legal, and theological gulf exists between allowing someone to die and acting to hasten their death, a la Dr. Kevorkian.

Oh yes it IS, sir! It's about wether we become a nation of DEATH, like the U.S.S.R. under Stalin who murdered 26 MILLION of his own people (how many babies have been murdered in their wombs?), or if we regain what this nation, a CHRISTIAN nation once was, where LIFE was valued, not death!

[pollywog]

Oh yes it IS, sir! It's about wether we become a nation of DEATH, like the U.S.S.R. under Stalin who murdered 26 MILLION of his own people (how many babies have been murdered in their wombs?), or if we regain what this nation, a CHRISTIAN nation once was, where LIFE was valued, not death

WELL SAID!!!!!!

[MeekOneGOP]

[Budge]

Thank you, Pollywog. If you want to use that in a letter to Business Week or anywhere eles, help yourself!

(I'm having e-mail problems.)

[ODDITHER]

"But that part of her brain that controls feeling, thinking, and most motor functions has been destroyed"

The point is that no one knows if the above statement is true or false. No therapy has ever been tried. In fact all therapy has been withheld. The smallest therapy - putting a washcloth in her hand so that her muscles don't atrophy has been denied.

if she can't feel or think, the whole reasoning that the Husband is using to kill her is not relevant. If Terri is in no pain, and if she is unable to think, then why would it matter to husband, if the parents tried everything they could to help Terri improve before he pulled the plug?

Oh yea - there is that pesky little matter of money isn't there? He would have to wait years for the life insurance money and what money is left in the fund would be used for therapy.

How arrogant the right to murder crowd is. They presume to know that people such as Terri do not want to live. They define quality of life on mere physical terms. If Terri is allowed to be murdered, simply on the basis that she is brain damaged and can't feed herself, I submit to you that millions of people's lives are in jeopardy.

Had Michael tried every type of therapy and this was the way Terri was at the end of exhausting every medical means known to man, I think you would not see the anger, passion and outrage that exits.

Terri has something that can't be given or withheld by Michael, it is the will to live.

[Tribune7]

There is no living will as to what she wants done. The parents want here alive. The husband wants her dead. If all who loved her agreed as to what's best we would never have heard about her.

Reports that have come out that she was denied therapy, that was denied last rites etc. have made her look sympathetic and have raised suspicions in many -- including me -- that those who want to do her in are motivated by wish for a convenient end rather than concern for her best interest.

Those who accuse Terri's defenders of having a "political agenda" should look at themselves first.

[longtermmemmory]

If I had been the court appointed attorney ad litem I would have a real issue over therpy not having even been tried while the case works its way through the system.

There should have also been a visitation schedule set up by agreement of the parties and signed off by the judge as a matter of family harmony.

[longtermmemmory]

this raises a good point. They should do last rites now that they have a chance.

[netmilsmom]

>>People get very sick. And after agonizing talks with doctors and friends, often after prayer, families make the painful decision about whether to continue artificial means to keep a loved one alive<<

This is the difference. If one takes the normal case of "no code" or "no heroics", and left with a feeding tube, that person will still die. Terri would not.

I heard the doctor who was nominated for a Nobel on with ManCow when he was subbing for Savage. Although Mancow continually interupted him, trying to be funny or cute (geez), the doctor still got the point across that Terri is NOT sick. Pulling that tube is the only thing that will kill her.

[Darnright]

>A yawning ethical, legal, and theological gulf exists between allowing someone to die and acting to hasten their death, a la Dr. Kevorkian.

Yes, it does. However, allowing someone to die, does not include withholding food and water from the patient. Starvation and dehydration are deliberate acts which cause the death of the person. I love the way the Culture of Death is trying to brainwash the general public into an acceptance of the above-mentioned deliberate murder as a passive act.

[Held_to_Ransom]

However, allowing someone to die, does not include withholding food and water from the patient.

Not with a feeding tube though.

On the other hand, with sufficient therapy, Terri might very well learn to feed herself, and that's another matter altogether. I have seen it done with what were considered hopeless parapalegics, and I understand it has not been tried for Terri.

[kaylar]

I think MS and Felos' decision to deny Terri the last rites (supposedly because if she took the wafer and the wine properly, it would prove her swallowing reflex was intact, thereby negating the very grounds used to condemn her to death) will prove in retrospect the turning point in this sordid case.

Till then, many who bothered to glance at Terri's case merely assumed she was so pitiable she'd be better off dead, and that a caring husband was being put through hell by parents unable to let go. But the sheer callousness and cruelty of denying her the attentions of a priest angered many people, and many who had simply accepted the media's presentation of the case took a closer look. I believe that the decision to keep Terri from the last rites created enough revulsion in the public mind that Jeb and the legislature were emboldened to act. If Terri is saved, it'll be thanks to MS's and Felos' miscalculation. That's one good thing about sociopaths : They are so different from you and I emotionally that even when they are fine actors capable of presenting a good fascade of normality (like Ted Bundy), they often thoughtlessly commit some act that revolts people-usually something small but telling-that gets people's "spider sense" tingling. I am reminded of the case in which a man injected his wife with an animal tranquilizer, causing her death by suffocation-he passed it off as a fall from a horse. His action in proposing a toast to his wife at the post funeral memorial dinner, and the insensitive phrasing he used, is what first made friends, family, and neighbors wonder if his MIL's suspicions were justified. That killer was ultimately convicted, after a number of years hiding out abroad. He killed her to collect life insurance.