This is the nub of this case.
I am very familiar with these issues, personally and professionally.
Although food and water are indeed basic necessities, the use of feeding tubes or other devices to deliver them is sometimes undesirable. Removing a feeding tube (or, usually, asking for it not to be re-inserted after trauma or infection) is not per se homicide.
Referring to this case as "forced starvation" is not exactly correct.
Take a person dying naturally at the end of their life. First, they don't get up. Then, they don't eat. Next, they don't drink. Then, they don't wake up. Finally, they don't breathe.
This process does not become "forced starvation" because a feeding tube has not been used, does it?
Now, there's little question that Terri Schiavo would have entered these stages of death many years ago but for the use of tube feeding. Her death would have resulted from her injuries, just as the deaths of many other brain-injured persons so result.
What's bad about this case is the result vis-a-vis her so-called "husband". This appears by commonsense to be wrong-that he, or anyone, should gain immediately and directly by her death has the decisionmaking capacity to bring it about.
But this scenario is quite common-feeding tube refusers or removers (designated decision-makers) almost all benefit in some way from their surrogate decision, sometimes very dramatically.
The use of so-called "living wills" was society's well-meaning effort out of the basic dilemma. The problem is, most people who have expressed the wish not to live if sick when healthy change their minds. We only kill the ones who are unable to express that change, because their illness affects their brain.
You are all right that an injustice is being done in Florida. But I think you are wrong that it is a murder.
If it's a murder, all the "living wills" in America are void (you cannot consent to be murdered), and we'll have to go back to the old way.
The old way was much, much better, but we've moved on and we aren't going back there.
Take comfort if possible that Terri is going to a much better place, and unquestionably will never have to see Michael again.
The ethics of forced starvation is one nub in this case. The other nub is a reasonable doubt exists that Terri would order her caretakers to cease all care, even if forced starvation was ethical.
Agreed. The process is supposed to resemble a patient choosing to go on hunger strike the the point of death. No person is supposed to be denied control of their own body, so yes, technically, there is supposed to be nothing "forced" about it.
Take a person dying naturally at the end of their life. First, they don't get up. Then, they don't eat. Next, they don't drink. Then, they don't wake up. Finally, they don't breathe.
I'd like to substitute, "dying from causes other than lack of food and water" for "dying naturally," then certainly what you say here is true.
This process does not become "forced starvation" because a feeding tube has not been used, does it?
Well, dying from causes other than starvation is not relevant to the case at hand. The question of "forced starvation" is answered simply by finding out if the patient wishes to be starved to death. If the patient's answer is "no," then the starvation is forced.
Not so. She can eat and drink by mouth according affidavits of nurses who took care of her. She might need to be retrained, however, because of M.S.'s refusal of any sustenance by mouth.
Greer's order doesn't mention a feeding tube. He simply ordered, acting both as judge and surrogate decision-maker, the removal of nutrition and hydration.
So the pivotal question in this case, at least imho, is whether or not a state judge, acting as proxy for an incompetent ward, has the authority to order that a citizen of the United States be starved to death. This question is just one of the pivotal issues that the District Court and the Appellate court did not even address in in its self-characterized "de novo review"
Cordially,