With all respect, the real problem is that Terry can't make the decision for herself. If she could, she could tap a finger, twitch a toe, blink an eye -- all of those things they always do on TV when under the influence of some mysterious South American paralyzing drug. But she can't. So someone has to make those decisions for her. Whom should it be? The husband, the parents or, now as urged here, the state?
What began as a dispute between two private parties (the husband and the parents) has now become an appeal to the state to create a new right -- a right to a permanent feeding tube for every man, woman and child. This is urged on vague, PETA-like concepts of the importance of physical life.
I'm sorry, folks. The private dispute was fairly decided (the type of thing our courts actually do fairly well). The husband won, the parents lost. The process was carefully reviewed on appeal.
Of all forums in the blogosphere, this should be the last to try to create new rights in the state to trump private decision-making. Today's right to a feeding tube will be tomorrow's right to a heart/lung machine and Saturday's right to chemotherapy, and Monday's right to Hillarycare.
I could not disagree with you more. Today's murder of a young woman because she has become inconvenient to her husband is tomorrow's killing of the elderly because their children want their inheritance or because space in nursing homes is scarce. The murder of this woman represents the complete devaluation of life.
Decision? What decision is that? Why does there always have to be a decision? This woman has been living in this state for years now. What, if Terri continues to live, does God kill a kitten or something?
Frankly I am sick of unethical people passing judgements on other people's lives or the value thereof. It is not acceptable or humanitarian to subject people's lives to a cost-benefit analysis. Because we have seen the bottom of that slope. It is not pretty.
"In 1931, psychiatrists meeting in Bavaria, Germany decried the traditional expressed compassion of the nineteenth century and proposed a more severe response to chronic mental illness. They proposed sterilization and euthanasia. By 1936 the eradication of the unfit was well enough accepted to merit incidental mention in an official German Medical Journal. When Hitler institutionalized the idea, he required all state institutions to report patients who had been ill for five or more years and who were unable to work. They were required to fill out questionnaires giving the name, race, marital status, nationality, next of kin, whether regularly visited and by whom, who bore the financial responsibility and so forth. The decision regarding which patients should be killed was made entirely by expert consultants, most of whom were professors of psychiatry in key universities. These consultants never saw the patients themselves. The thoroughness of their scrutiny can be appraised by the work of one expert, who between November 14 and December 1, 1940, evaluated 2109 questionnaires." (Santa Clara Law Review,1997, 387 International Rights Protection Against Psychiatric Political Abuses, George J. Alexander)
"Today's right to a feeding tube will be tomorrow's right to a heart/lung machine and Saturday's right to chemotherapy, and Monday's right to Hillarycare."
What does that have to do with her parent's right to provide the care? Do they not have the right not to see their cherished family member killed?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
Right to life...except if you are disabled? How about if the governed give their consent that the disabled should be treated at least as well as a homeless cat?
Some people have been pushing for years to get her testing and therapy so she could do precisely that. Some people have been pushing to prevent same.
Which group should be more credible?