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.
Or simply stated: turn up the heat slowly on the frog in the water, it will never notice it's being cooked.
But you are describing indeed the clever evil details of how they do it.
Trust me, we are!!!
The issue is "do we kill people with healthy bodies but damaged brains"?
It has nothing to do with what Michael may or may not have done. It has nothing to do with how Terri came to be in that state. It has nothing to do with how far she could have been brought back.
These are the issues that every one keeps talking about but they have nothing to do with the core issue. Do we want to kill the disabled?
This issue transcends Terri.
No adult regardless of physical status has the right to force another to work for his benifit. If you don't want strangers deciding wether you live or die then get you hands out of thier pockets.
"This issue transcends Terri."
EXACTLY!!!!
considering how we drug children who merely act up and then label them into "disabled" it should not be surprising. EVERYONE is a victim. EVERYONE is entitled to a gov handout. Everyone now has WHINE to go with government issued cheese.
which means it is even MORE IMPORTANT for conservatives to be voting and ACTIVE in elections.
My Fellow Freepers WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN 2006?
There is a story that Kevorkian finished off a woman who changed her mind at the last minute.
"Ironically if the U.S. Supreme Court had sided with Kevorkian, we might not be having this debate now over Terri Schiavo."
Yes we would. There is a PROFOUND difference between providing the means and allowing people to decide for themselves that they want to die (as Kevorkian did), versus KILLING people, who are unable to defend themselves ( as Greer did)
I don't know all the stories to be sure. There were even stories that some of the people may not have had a terminal illness.
Bears repeating.
Excellent article.
Too bad you had to immediately soil it with an inane worn-out Nazi reference that we've heard for the 1000th time. We got it, ok?
Perhaps, the Dr. Singer would be a better example?
I almost pray, no I do pray that you are engaging in sarcasm. But I fear that you are not. Your suggestion is so repulsive it staggers the mind. There are worse defects than physical or mental disabilities and that is a defect of the heart. Our value as persons does not lie in having a pure and perfect genetic code. It lies in the great love God has for us. It lies in His incarnation and His resurrection. Both which affirmed the dignity of human life. Body, soul and mind. Perhaps you do not care for an argument centered on Christian teaching. Then think of some of the people that you would have tossed on the dung heap of history. Helen Keller, Alexendar Graham Bell, Beethoven, Stephen Hawkings, Ray Charles, and so many others who have contributed so much to this world.
I feel sorry for you, for if you are serious your heart is as disabled as any so called defective.
Remember, if you don't have a health care directive on file, just vote Democrat - they'll be sure to pull the feeding tube when you can't get up to pull the lever anymore...
Actually Kovorkin killed several people who were not terminally ill and at least one that was not ill at all.
Just an observation: I seem to note a dearth of the evo crowd on threads such as this. Certainly they have an opinion on the matter. And in the words of a certain Freeper, " Everybody be nice. "
Do you derive any benefit from paved roads?
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