Posted on 03/27/2005 6:35:32 PM PST by FairOpinion
First thing:Terri Schiavo is not terminally ill. She is severely disabled with a brain injury. She is not hooked up to any life-support systems. For 15 years she has relied on a feeding tube for food and water. Her organs function normally.
So why does anyone want to kill her? "Kill" is the correct word here. Removing her feeding tube will cause her death. She will die by starvation and dehydration.
For those of us in the organized disability rights movement, it looks like Schiavo is being put to death for the crime of being disabled.
Disability makes many people uncomfortable. How many times have you said, or heard someone say, "I would never want to live like that." Or, "I would rather be dead than be like that."
People have said that to me. I am severely disabled and use a motorized wheelchair as a result of having polio 55 years ago.
Doctors told my parents to put me into a "home" and forget about me. He will have no life, they said, move on with your own lives.
They ignored the advice. When I went to school, I was teased and made an object of pity. "I would hate to live like you," kids told me. When I went to university, I was told that "at least you still have your mind." When I went to work in the newspaper business, I was expected to remain at an entry level position; when I left to go to graduate school, my work supervisor told a colleague "what else could he ever hope to do?"
People with disabilities are pushed to the ragged edge of our collective consciousness, stereotyped as dependent, unproductive and pitiful. It is not such a long step to considering such persons burdensome and too costly to maintain and finally, and of course regrettably, expendable.
Think of Schiavo for 15 years being held in so-called custodial care in a nursing home along with persons with Alzheimer's disease, other dementia or cognitive disorders or birth defects. She has had a feeding tube and her guardian (her husband) fought for years to have it removed so that she might die, as he claims she would have wanted.
"It's one thing to refuse a feeding tube for ourselves, but it's quite another when someone else makes that decision," says Diane Coleman, head of Not Dead Yet, a U.S. disability-rights group. "Disability groups don't think guardians should have carte blanche to starve and dehydrate people with conditions like brain injury, developmental disabilities — which the public calls birth defects — and Alzheimer's. People have the right not to be deprived of life by guardians who feel that their ward is as good as dead, better off dead or that the guardian should make such judgments in the first place."
The noisy free-for-all surrounding the Schiavo case as it works its way through the courts again has all the earmarks of political haymaking, rallying the troops in the "Right to Life" and "Right to Die" camps. But there is a serious thread that focuses on the real issue at stake: The right to due process and equal treatment under the law.
Coleman's group has called for a national moratorium on the dehydration and starvation of people alleged to be in a "persistent vegetative state" and not having an advance directive or durable power of attorney.
Senator Tom Harkin, a long-time advocate for people with disabilities, said it eloquently last week as Congress stepped into the case.
"There are a lot of people in the shadows, all over this country, who are incapacitated because of a disability. There ought to be a broader type of a proceeding that would apply to people in similar circumstances ... Where someone is incapacitated and their life support can be taken away, it seems to me that it is appropriate — where there is a dispute — that a federal court come in, like we do in habeas corpus situations, and review it and make another determination."
Schiavo has become a tragic figure, and is likely to become a martyr for one group or another. And that itself is a tragedy. We're likely to never really know her own desire in this case. But as individuals and as a society do have a duty here, and that is to face the fact of the brutal way in which we are permitting her to die.
As a person with a severe disability, I am deeply troubled by the Schiavo saga. I will commit my own wishes to a legal document. But will that be enough? Out here on the ragged edge, we're worried.
Oh yes we do.
A good friend of mine is legally blind, has a number of health problems, mostly because her mother did drugs while pregnant. Her mother told her that if it were Germany in the 1930's she would have her sent to the sanitarium to be euthanized.
Well, she wound up getting a PhD in microbiology, is getting papers published and referenced, and is a decent speed skater (competitive). These are the people that the Peter Singer fans would do away with.
The case of Terri Schiavo should indeed be a warning for us all. Terri has pointed out to us all just how cruel humans can be to the disabled, who can not fight for themselves, so they have every right to be concerned. The Terri case has given us a fair warning.
I read an article today that Christopher Reeve's mother was preparing for his plug to be pulled because she just "knew" he wouldn't want to "live like that". She was quite surprised to find out that he DID want to live.
Yep, the corporations who own the old folks homes or their inusurance providers will all start fishing for judges who'll order their patients' plugs pulled to spare them and "society" the expense. Then the states and lawyers of homes for the disabled will get wind of the idea, in order to meet their budgets and spare the taxpayer...
Even the non-disabled should be worried..
And my mom was saying that just having her music would make a world of difference to her because the music she likes is such a part of her. Terri's husband denied her music too. Terri would have wanted it that way. He sucks. I was just saying to my bf on the drive home from Easter dinner, if something happens to me and there is a court battle, please, make sure I am as uncomfortable as possible while you are sorting it out. I mean nothing, no music, no sun, no cold wash cloths to keep my fingers from curling, no pudding, no animals, no air...for God's sakes those bastards will rue the day they tried to keep me alive against my will. Also, don't waste a second, please get involved with another woman ASAP! (Luckily, my bf doesn't really listen to me. :)
Laws better change on Capitol Hill or there will be hell to pay. When most of America sees the truth, it will effect every politician, and the Democrats better not hide. Greer set himself up. He will regret what he did. What a fool. How could a stupid probate judge get so much power.
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Oh, NO we don't have a chance,
...unless we CHANGE the Judiciary
...ASAP in Congress =
...Force-feed the BUSH Judicial Nominess thru Congress NOW.
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"First they came for the brain damaged..."
"I'm a disabled veteran."
My understanding is that Hitler started with disabled German war vets. Particularly disgusting, since they were his own former brothers-in-arms.
I really do want to understand this. Let's see:
" If I'm brain dead, the judge will have me killed.
If the judge is brain dead, the judge will have me killed.
If I kill the judge, I can find another to have me spared."
Is this a great country or what?
I believe those who wish her to be killed are the inheritors of the eugenics movement, the Kervorkianites that weigh humanity with a cash bag and an eye to usefulness.
When these ghouls win the fight for human indignity, it won't be long before Soylent Green is reality and not a Hollywierd nightmare.
What is so tragic, is that Terri's family wanted to take responsibility for her, care for her, and they still put her to death. It's as if she was a slave, that her husband owned.
They don't even put stray animals to death, if there is someone who is willing to give them a home.
- clear delivery of what is the new level, i.e. providing all the details that the average person needs to understand it
- packaging the delivery, to keep the refusal level below the critical mass, during the process of acceptance.
- as soon as the process is completed, the bill can be presented.
So for the average person to understand what the bill is, it only needs to rewrite the delivery as a question.
Apply this against Terri. For a start, some of the packaging:
- the media keeps repeating the official story of a vegetable dying
- "$1 million dollar baby" to present "euthanasia" as good for the victims: Hollywood made it film of the year
- $1 million dollar hoax to present the "husband" as good: the noble husband refused a (hoax) offer of $1 million to keep Terri alive
- $1 million dollar hoax to present mass murder of elder, disabled and sick people as good for the economy: costs for Terri so far $1,1 million
- manufactured "polls", "proving" that the large majority is behind the "husband"
This is not an issue of greedy corporation, this is an issue of greedy, evil family members (husband) and an inhumane judge. How inhumane is to kill Terri, when there is a loving family (her natural, birth family) who wanted, begged to be allowed to take care of her.
Terri had no rights.
Actually Kevorkian would never kill a defenseless person, with no evidence what that person wanted. He didn't kill them. He merely provided the means, for those who really DID want to end their life, to make it easier. And he is in jail.
What Greer did is MURDER: ordered the murder of a defenseless woman, whose wishes were NOT established beyond a reasonable doubt, a person, who was not suffering, was not in pain, had a loving family, who wanted to take care of her. Kevorkian is a saint, in comparison.
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