I am an attorney and I know that if a death row inmate (someone who has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death) decides to give up further appeals and let the sentence be carried out, the courts have ruled that it can't be done unless a judge determines that the inmate is competent to make that decision. If necessary, psychiatric examinations must be conducted in order to ensure that the inmate is making a rational choice.
I guess that is why I'm so concerned that Mr. Schiavo's recollections of what Terri said are being allowed to control the outcome of her life. That kind of evidence would be laughed out of court if it were the only evidence that a condemned prisoner wished to be executed.
I'm also very troubled by many postings on this forum who appear to have equated the starvation and dehydration of Terri with the dying process of someone who is terminally ill with cancer, for whom no treatment is possible. Despite all the morphine and other pain-killing drugs, my mother was not spared the pain of her death. Her doctor at the hospice told me that some of the pain was from her cancer, but that the pain was exacerbated by the drying out of her membranes and tissues as a result of dehydration and starvation. They weren't being cruel to her by denying hydration, it was just that her body couldn't accept it. Terri, on the other hand, does not have a terminal illness that prevents her body from accepting food and hydration. So, to me, starvation and dehydration is a very cruel way for her life to end, and I don't see how anyone who claims to have ever loved her can watch her die that way.
We agree. I haven't posted much on these threads until today mostly because I didn't know much about this case. Until I read a little about it, and I still obviously am far from knowledgeable and may be wrong in some assumpptions I make.
What so disturbs me is the public is in a huge debate, unless of course I am just seeing a few noisy people. The facts are not clear, for every post saying one thing there is a post refuting it.
It seems to me that it should be clear to everyone by now what her state is, who is actiing in her interest, why there was no criminal investigation of Sciavo, if it is true or not that Terry is responsive.
All of that is muddy and when things are muddy, people ought not to die.
And nobody should starve and die the way she is dying. Nobody. Even a cancer victim is given morphine to hasten and as much as is needed for paiin. They refuse intake because dying people do. But they do it in the process of dying which is inevitable. It is not inevitable for this woman.
Things ought to be clear to everyone. And not even remotely clear is the question if this husband is acting in her interests. I think he isn't.
Terri has fewer rights in our legal system than a convicted murder. Even a rabid dog in a pound is given pain relief and put to sleep instead of starved to death.
God bless you. My Mom died of cancer, too, but at least nobody was trying to hurry up her demise. They tried to make her as comfortable as possible. My Mom was very stoic. I miss her.
Two things bother me a great deal in this situation.
First, from personal experience only last year I am stunned at the medical profession's iron grip on 'patient's right to choose to die'. If they don't think there is a good trade off between treatment and death they'll take every statement or hesitance as a request to be shuffled off to hospice or just cut off.
I have known persons to rationally elect to stop treatment but I also had to fight the doctors who had [probably erroneously] diagnosed Alzheimer's but wanted to accept a "No" response to the smallest element of treatment as coming from a rational person.
Second, this judge interprets marriage, obviously not a good marriage, as irrevocably severing the wife's connection with her blood relatives. I wonder if he'd be upset if a woman separated from an abusive husband and moved back in with her folks, and who he would grant control over her treatment in the event she fell ill after wards?
The thought that 'our' courts would honor an alleged statement to a husband now working on his second family, one who has failed to carry out the basic treatment and therapy he was charged with overseeing, over the parent's simple desire to attempt rehabilitation chills me down to the bone. We are fighting a belief system in the middle east that gives the husband total rights over his wife's being - that's one of the things held up as being wrong with islam; but an American judge is doing precisely the same thing today in Florida?