Posted on 03/21/2005 4:05:17 PM PST by goldstategop
RUSH: Here's Gary in Champaign, Illinois. Gary, welcome to the program. It's nice to have you on with us.
CALLER: Thank you. Rush?
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I'm a Republican. I voted for Bush, all that stuff like in your commercials, but I have to disagree with everybody on this one, and let me tell you why.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Six years ago my mother had a brain aneurysm, went through a surgery to repair it, had another operation, procedure and a few other things. Finally the neurosurgeon, the neurologist came and told us she was in a chronic or permanent vegetative state. And for nine months I convinced my five siblings to withdraw the tube feeding her and let her die naturally. We did not kill our mother, we let her die naturally. Now, I've seen film of this lady, I've seen the news reports, doctors have said she is in a chronic or permanent vegetative state. What that means is, you have very, very basic brain function. The part of your brain that makes you breathe still works, you may have some response to pain or other minor basic stimuli but they have absolutely zero cognitive function. That lady has no idea what's going on around her. She doesn't know the difference from night to day. She doesn't know who people are. She doesn't feel anything at all. The right thing for her to do is what her husband wants to do, and that is pull the plug on her and let her die a natural death.
RUSH: Okay. You've told a personal story.
CALLER: I've been there.
RUSH: Well, so have I. And I'm going to tell you a personal story.
CALLER: I do not think that I killed my mother. I let her die naturally.
RUSH: I know you don't want to think that. You let her die. You had the doctors remove the feeding tube so you didn't even do it. She died a natural death, starvation, on the basis that she couldn't feed herself, so she starved. I'm just going to go back to the first hour, and, you know, the New York Times ran a brilliant story on Sunday that starvation is painless, it's a very dignified way to go. We could rid the world of poverty by letting them all starve. They may not all be in a vegetative state, but they soon will end up in one after they don't eat or drink long enough. Just gonna let 'em die.
Let me tell you my own personal story. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother. To give you the short, down-and-dirty of this, she had a stroke and was sent to the hospital, and the doctors said, "We don't know how long she's going to live like this." She was not in a coma but she was not quite there. The doctors said, "We don't know how long she's going to live like this, but we're going to give you 48 hours, you've got to make up your mind what you want to do, pull the tube or send her to a nursing home and pay for it because we need the bed." So my mother, my father had passed away, my mother talked to my brother and I about it and she wanted to pull the tube. And I said, "Mother, you really want the burden of having killed your mother? You really want that?" Before the 48 hours had passed a decision had to be made, my grandmother had another stroke while nobody was there and passed away in the hospital. At least that was the story. I've always doubted it. Given that we were given 48 hours to move her out of there, I've often wondered. Nobody will ever know, so it's just speculation on my part. I don't know how many patients are actually killed already on the basis that they don't know what's going on, it's better for them, we need the bed, insurance isn't going to cover this, blah, blah, all these decisions.
Now, I know, Gary, that you don't want to think that you killed your mom, and this sort of thing, but the argument about this woman exists because I think your scenario of her circumstances doesn't jibe with what some family members are saying. Some family members are saying she does respond to stimuli, that she does know when her dad and mom walk in the room, this sort of thing. So I think that the way you have to understand this -- well, you, the audience, the way you, the audience, have to understand, because everybody -- well, 90% of the people on the phones waiting to talk to me disagree with me on this, and I think the culture of death is very seductive. We can tell ourselves that we're doing the best thing for the person that's going to die. And we do that to hide the fact that we don't want to be inconvenienced ourselves in some way, either financially or personally or a combination of the two or what have you. And individual case, okay, so Gary's mom died the way she did, that's not going to wreck society, a single instance, it's not going to, you know, sow the seed, fabric of destruction. However, when a culture of death overtakes a society, and we have one now, you know, we've gotten to a point where it's permissible and even heroic to abort babies.
In order to make that argument we've now started calling pregnancy a disease. Pregnancy is a disease, it's not a natural state for women say some abortion rights activists. Then on the tail end of the life spectrum we decide, "Well, this person wouldn't want to live this way." Even though they may never have said that they don't want to live this way we assume it for them because we project. We don't think we would want to live that way. "I don't want to see my family member suffer," or what have you. And I realize that each one of you that have been in this situation do not think that you have contributed anything but love and the goodness of your wishes to your family member in taking this action. But there are societal ramifications for all of these particularly as they accumulate and the cumulative effect of the culture of death is one of the things that takes us to where we are at now. And that is that we literally have divided up sides in this argument that perplex me, and they give me pause. There's an actual energized enthusiasm for this woman's death out there, and there's an actual energized enthusiasm to save her life. I can understand the energized effort and enthusiasm to save life. We're oriented toward that in so many areas of our society. Sadly, we're also oriented on the side of ending life, and there are a lot of people-- I hear all this talk, Democrats have all these accusations, Republicans have ideological attached to this. Let me tell you something, if you want to argue who's more ideologically at risk here by losing this, take a look at the left.
They've got two things they're going to lose on, if the judge here -- and he's a Clinton-appointed judge, and I have no idea what's going to happen in this case -- but if the left loses it, they lost twice. They're going to have lost because the Congress has exercised Article 3 and is exercising its authority over the judiciary. They can't stand that because that's going to send a bad signal over their filibuster of Bush judges. The second thing they're going to lose on is their base, the pro-abort, feminist base. I mean, they're as actively involved in this as -- "Well, Rush, this has nothing to do with abortion." -- no, it doesn't have anything to do with abortion. It has to do with the rights of individuals under the so-called declaration of privacy or what have you to terminate a life they'd rather not deal with. Which is what abortion is. That's all it is. I want to kill this baby, I don't want to deal with it. You come up with other excuses, "I don't want it born to poverty, oh, it's a sorry circumstances," da-da-da-da-da-da, but boil it down, that's what it is, and if they lose both of these -- and that's why they're panicked. They've got two ideological battles that they're fighting in this little battle here over Terri Schiavo, and they're afraid to lose both of them. But don't think they don't have an ideological stake here, either.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
When my father, my aunt, my grandmother, my mother in law, died, they were terminal. They were elderly. They were allowed to die only when the doctors AND the immediate family ALL AGREED that it was the end, there was no hope. None of them opened their eyes or made a sound. Terry opens here eyes, she tries to speak. She is NOT in a coma. My beloved family members were in a coma, as if in a permanent sleep, eyes CLOSED.
I watched my Dad die slowly from Alzhiemers/Dementia, and there was no way I was going to smother him with a pillow/slip him a toxic cocktail/shoot him to make him die earlier just because he wasn't going to get better.
At the worst, we would have sedated him to die painless from whatever was killing him at the moment. He was on a DNR from the day he went in anyways, we knew he was never going to get better, so, letting him die from whatever was killing him was bad enough.
But to actually create some situation where we would be the source and control of what would eventually kill him, that would be murder.
He was not some flame thrower victim in combat who would not survive the trip to sick bay because of 100% burns, he was not injured with all limbs broken and bleeding profusely 100 miles from civilization and putting him out of his misery, he was in a nursing home/hospital.
So is Terry Schiavo.
Taking out the feeding tube is murder, and her husband plans to profit from it. I am privately convinced he has movie deals, book deals already in the works detailing "his" pain and suffering.
And that is all this is. HIS suffering he is worried about. I know it personnaly, I was relieved my father died last August because it meant I would not have to go see him like that and it meant my Mother would not have to go and see him die every day she went and did his laundry and feed him and bathe him like she did. It took away her pain of seeing him suffer. And that means more to me than my Dad's suffering because he was going to die, she is quite well and alive and has to carry on without him. I pitied her and was thankful he died so she didn't have to suffer watching him die.
JEB Bush needs to declare a state emergency, activate the National Guard and go inside that hospice and take her out and give her to her parents.
If she dies later, naturally, it would still be the right thing to do.
Your family members may have had a better chance of recovery than Terri Shiavo, whose cerebral cortex has been completely destroyed.
ping
Yes, Terri has the potential (longshot) to recover, speak, love, and live for decades.
People who say starvation is 'natural' and a 'kind' death are full of it! A lady in the nursing home my grandmother was in basically starved to death. She was pretty much in a sleep state most of the time. She hadn't had anything to eat since around Thanksgiving and she went about 3 weeks without something of substance to drink. By january she was down to 80# in weight and when she died around the first part of Feb, she weighed around 65# I think I heard. It doesn't take much to keep someone going who is doing nothing but lying in bed. She moaned and cried out all the time. Her daughter told her it was time to go, but she hung on and hung on! It was loooong, drawn out and sad!!
Little by little, the clinical criteria used to determine whether organ donors are "brain dead" will change to include other levels of brain damage now considered off limits.
After my mother had her stroke, I had to make so many tough decisions. I was the only decision-maker. I believe if you pray to the Heavenly Father for guidance, the right thing will be done. It's a heavy responsibility, to watch over the end of someone's life but, IMO, not the right of any human being to hasten another human being's end in a case such as this where life support is not in effect. I feel somewhat better that I chose for life, but it is still tough to reflect on.
BTW, when my mother was pregnant with me (a LONG time ago), since my father left her, it was suggested she abort. But here I am. So I like to think now we did the same favor for each other. Fern B., rest in peace.
"Your family members may have had a better chance of recovery than Terri Shiavo, whose cerebral cortex has been completely destroyed."
How do you know?
I was 16 when my mother had brain aneurysm at the age of 47. She was on a respirator. The last time I saw her before she passed, there was no response, and her eyes were closed.
Later that night, she had another leakage. The doctors told us that they would know within 48 hours if she would make it or not. They did brain scans and found she had no brain waves.
She passed 48 hours after the first aneurysm. An autopsy was performed and they found her brain was compressed due to all the blood.
My mother was brain dead and never would of been able to survive on her own.
I view her situation very different from Terri's. Terri can breath on her own, she can open her eyes and it appears she is aware of her family member.
This is a standard line used by Libs calling into Rush's show. Heard it all the time during the campaign, especially that ending, "and let me tell you why".
bttt
Ping.
I couldn't stand the stress, at first, of being the sole family caregiver in my mother's case, but our doctor's secretary said to me, "Why should you be spared?" I recognized the truth and wisdom in that. Indeed, why should I be spared? And, from then, I had the strength and felt it was an honor. Although, as you say, it's horrific to see your beloved in a deteriorated condition. At least, we can witness with them while they go through the valley.
Exactly.
(Sorry for your loss.)
if starving is natural and beautiful, Sally Struthers should be asking we take all the food away from the people
on whose behalf she begs for.
Aw, jeez, now you're in for it. What were you thinking, bringing cold hard facts to an emotional argument? Next thing you know you'll be arguing it's unconstitutional, when we know the Right Thing To Do® is to let her live so Congress can create jurisdiction for the federal courts based on public outcry.
I hardly even want to open myself up for the attacks by replying to or bumping your post, but I will. What's the point of replying to these people? All they want to do is vilify you for taking a second to think about the case, instead of simply emoting about it and how awful the courts are and how someone oughta pass a law, instead of agitating for the impeachment of the Florida judges who are at fault! If Republicans TRULY want this problem solved, they cannot solve it by taking the liberal route, passing more laws for more judges to misinterpret. They should be removing those judges in the FLORIDA legislature, which they are certainly not about to do.
These laws are a complete waste of time, padding lawyer pocketbooks and merely postponing the inevitable. We are under judicial rule, and until that is fixed, the killings will continue.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.