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.
This man's writing moves me so much. Where is the diversity? Where is the tolerance? WE all struggle to live... our humaness, our birthright is to live free.
That is as I understand it also. Yet, in each case, they chose to die, someone didn't choose it for them. And that, correctly, is the profound difference that FairOpinion was addressing.
The issue you speak of is today's issue. The issue I spoke of will be tomorrow's. Once society gets comfortable with allowing one incapacitate and innocent human to die, it'll make it that much easier the next time, and the next time...
I don't think we need to worry about Society being comfortable about starving an innocent woman to death, we are already there.....But don't you dare compare them to Nazi though.......Like this makes it alright for what they are.....
Matthew 25:44-45
44 Then they also [in their turn] will answer, Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?
45 And He will reply to them, Solemnly I declare to you, in so far as you failed to do it for the least [in the estimation of men] of these, you failed to do it for Me.
"I'm a disabled veteran. I guess I should be exterminated since I am no more use to my country."
NO - we need to suck your mind dry of your experiences that may save other soldiers lives - then let you go ...
Thank you for your service to our country - the system is fu*ked - and we elect the @ss holes who f*ck us -
Thanks again for your service and effort.
Nam 66-70
Remember this,....HCFA (medicare) spends the majority of the money on the last 75 days of life. If they can shorten that (or eliminate) medicare will be solvent for many more years to come otherwise. Do not deceive yourself that there are not those in congress who will present these actuaries to promote the agenda of euthenasia, but only at the appointed time.
"HCFA (medicare) spends the majority of the money on the last 75 days of life."
Data - link please
Baby Boomers should be very worried!!!
Why would his mother have had anything to do with it if he was married or did his wife defer to her?
I suppose he had something to say about it.
.
Michael will become a martyr for the Right to Die.
You won't be safe in a sick bed. The entire concept of human care and compassion is dying by legalities. Watch your back. Every step of your life. Some freedom. Eh?
It doesn't just look that way.
Thank you for posting this article.
"I'm a disabled veteran. I guess I should be exterminated since I am no more use to my country."
Your post sent chills down my spine.
We are sending young men and women into harm's way, many of them are coming back severely wounded.
And yet we can't promise them that if they need a feeding tube, that it won't be pulled if their care becomes inconvenient for their families.
By the way, thank you for your service, Made in USA. And thank you for pointing out this aspect, of the wounded vets coming home. That in itself is a service.
I agree, we only loose if we let this end here.
FNC has all these leftist reporters on TV trying to spin this as non-partisan. Utter BS. Republicans were united, Democrats were divided.
FNC has a woman from the boston herald whose face is an obvious liar.
The are saying the same thing they said two weeks ago before the Palm sunday compromise. Congress has said they intend to hold hearings on this. No time yet.
When the hacks see democrats divided they say divided nation, they disregard republican unity.
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.