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Why Schiavo case worries the disabled
Toronto Star ^ | Mar. 25, 2005 | WILLIAM G. STOTHERS

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: cary; disability; schiavo; terri; terrischiavo
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To: Diddle E. Squat
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?

Getting it and not wanting to hear it are two very different things.

81 posted on 03/28/2005 9:49:47 AM PST by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard (Ghoul Power!)
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To: FairOpinion

bttt


82 posted on 03/28/2005 9:52:32 AM PST by tutstar ( <{{--->< Impeach Judge Greer http://www.petitiononline.com/ijg520/petition.html)
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To: FairOpinion
I think most people who've been coming to these threads know where I stand. I said from day one, that although I wouldn't want to be kept alive this way, in absence of written consent, I thought she should go to the parents providing they took care of her in their home on their dime.

What I didn't like here on FR was the villianization of Michael Schiavo, the encouragement of government intervention and the fanaticism of those who didn't even know the simplest of facts.

There is one more thing that keeps ringing through my head. Believe it or not it was something Alan Dershowitz said. He said, "You have eternity to be dead, you just have a short chance at life." If I'm being honest, and I always try to be honest, that line keeps ringing in my head.

83 posted on 03/28/2005 9:57:11 AM PST by Hildy
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To: narses

A lot of families with severely handicapped have shown up at the gates in front of the hospice. Being in that situation with our own son, I appreciate the courage they have, but they are happily surprised that their little treasures are welcomed by most of the crowd.


84 posted on 03/28/2005 10:48:56 AM PST by 8mmMauser ( www.ChristtheKingMaine.com Vade satana!)
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To: narses

A lot of families with severely handicapped have shown up at the gates in front of the hospice. Being in that situation with our own son, I appreciate the courage they have, but they are happily surprised that their little treasures are welcomed by most of the crowd.

Those who witness see that life and joy abounds in these, the least of us.


85 posted on 03/28/2005 10:51:25 AM PST by 8mmMauser ( www.ChristtheKingMaine.com Vade satana!)
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To: Hildy

I heartily agree with you that Terri should have been at home and cared for by her family, on their dime.

As an eyewitness on the scene for a couple weeks now, I have seen the different sides and have seen the volumes of evidence that rarely clears the media here. To come to other conclusions is as ridiculous as looking out at night and trying to sell the idea the sun is out.

Villainization of Michael Shiavo is just too mild for us who are eyewitness to the evil he visits and continues with daily cruelties.

He is finishing the murder of a healthy human being who does not want to die and is hanging on by dear life as I write.

The evidence is there, abundant, valid, and conclusive if any other than the evil judge here would deign to look.

He will soon have the evidence immediately destroyed and removed from the crime scene. She is to be cremated immediately with not the slightest chance of autopsy which would confirm the documented evidence from official records.

I am doing a drive by because I have to get back to the hospice crime scene, but will respond later if you have a comment.

The simple facts are that the tin pot judge overrides the gov and the president at will and the only copy of the Constitution he has any use for is on a roll in his private toilet.


86 posted on 03/28/2005 11:02:43 AM PST by 8mmMauser ( www.ChristtheKingMaine.com Vade satana!)
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To: Hildy
What I didn't like here on FR was the villianization of Michael Schiavo, the encouragement of government intervention ...

The "no government intervention" argument is completely bogus. The government intervenes all the time in what some would call "family matters". Things like child abuse, spousal abuse, murder (the killing of one family member by another), etc., and rightly so. Would you disallow those interventions on the same basis that you decry the intervention in the case of Terri Schindler?

Here we have a case of spousal abuse of the gravest kind. One spouse is advocating the death of another, and the evidence is conflicted, at best, as to the wishes of the individual being killed. In such cases, in the past, our culture has always erred on the side of caution, that is, actions are taken to assure that an individual is not harmed. Now, the default position is to assume that the individual being harmed would wish to be harmed. Call me old-fashioned, but somehow that doesn't seem right. Maybe it was the way my parents raised me, from the old school, who taught their children that being an insane masochist was not a healthy lifestyle.

87 posted on 03/28/2005 11:24:26 AM PST by chimera
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To: chimera

You're pushing it. He's not murdering her.


88 posted on 03/28/2005 11:25:42 AM PST by Hildy
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To: Hildy

Oh, right, it's a "mercy killing". I forgot.


89 posted on 03/28/2005 11:38:40 AM PST by chimera
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To: Aussie Dasher
Using "precedence", every lawmaker (ie. judge) in the US now has an opening to rid America of those with disabilities.

True. The federal court opinions are useful to advance that agenda.

90 posted on 03/28/2005 11:42:50 AM PST by Cboldt
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To: Hildy
Believe it or not it was something Alan Dershowitz said. He said, "You have eternity to be dead, you just have a short chance at life." If I'm being honest, and I always try to be honest, that line keeps ringing in my head.

I have found it interesting how the pros and antis have fallen out on this one. I have heard a several Christians say "Go ahead and let her dehydrate" and several Atheists say "Hey, wait a minute.."

While the antis have been spun as some "right wing republican religious kooks" it just isn't so.

There are a number of very liberal people who are uneasy with the killing of a woman who was, to all intents and purpose's physically healthy. There are others who, like me, wonder where do we draw the line after this.

One of the questions that must be considered always is "if I am wrong will it cause harm?"

That is what I brought to this case, "If I am wrong and Terri does not know or feel anything am I doing harm by keeping her body alive?"

On the other hand, "If I am wrong and she is feeling everything am I doing harm by mummifying her alive?"

The answer to one is one I can live with. The other is not one that I could.

91 posted on 03/29/2005 6:15:03 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear ( We're all doomed! Who's flying this thing!? Oh right, that would be me. Back to work.)
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To: FairOpinion

The disabled should be worried. This is what abortion on demand has brought us to. You can draw a direct line from one to the other and you can keep on going. The new catch phrase (said with a perfectly straight face), is 'quality of life'! Hello Felos, Nazi Germany, Mengele, etc..


92 posted on 03/29/2005 6:26:14 AM PST by hershey
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To: Tench_Coxe

Ooops, I was going to weigh in about what extremist ecologists think (having misread 'evo' for 'eco'). Well, it's still relevant. In their view, the human race is the root of earth's troubles and should be utterly wiped out.


93 posted on 03/29/2005 6:36:32 AM PST by hershey
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To: Two-Bits

Besides, CNN and the rest of the MSM are already moving on to Michael Jackson's woes. Terri's almost old news. In fact, they're talking about her as if she's already dead. The Pope might go back to the hospital, so the Papal death watch will crank up. Ratings will soar, life is good. (And you're right, it is all about money.)


94 posted on 03/29/2005 6:42:50 AM PST by hershey
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To: hershey

We will not go softly into the night......


95 posted on 03/29/2005 6:57:39 AM PST by Two-Bits (Where there is life, there is hope;Where there is life, there is hope;Where there is life, there is)
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To: jocon307
Nazi euthanasia, like almost every government programme at the time (except planning for war) happened by chance, at the instigation of 1 or more of Hitler's cronies. Hitler himself was probably the laziest leader in history. He had written the party programme, he had dictated his book 'My struggle' but apart from that and making speeches and eventually (when he became Chancellor) planning for war, he did little else.

The people around him were usually the ones conjuring up new policies, which they ran by him when he was in a good mood, and if their policy fit in he would approve it and ask them not to bother him with details. Of course, his cronies knew what his ideology and his thinking was, and theirs was usually the same or similar, and they mainly did what they thought he would do.

There were several offices claiming to represent Hitler when he was Führer. The Reich Chancellery headed by Hans Heinrich Lammers, the Presidential Chancellery headed by Otto Meissner, the Party Chancellery headed by Martin Bormann, the Führer Chancellery headed by Philipp Bouhler. These offices competed with eachother for Hitler's favor and had significantly overlapping tasks. Hitler just sat back to watch the struggle between the offices.

Bouhler of the Führer Chancellery managed to get control of the Führers personal mail. And it was in 1938 or early 1939 that a letter was found in which a father asked Hitler for permission to have his severely disabled child killed. Hitler naturally approved as it was in line with his racial ideology. Hitler also commissioned the same Bouhler to set up a committee to investigate whether such 'mercy killings' could not be 'granted' to all others who were disabled.

Soon the process had begun. The T4 euthanasia programme killed up to 300,000 people until the programme was formally halted in the fall of 1941. Or in reality, it was postponed until after the war, then it was to resume.

In the meanwhile, events in december 1941 prompted Himmler to go and see Hitler, and in a mysterious meeting after the setback in front of Moscow and the declaration of war upon the USA, Hitler and Himmler talked for hours. What they said on that date, december 18 1941 is not entirely clear, but there is little doubt that the course of the war was discussed (privately, Hitler admitted at this stage to confidants that Germany could very well lose). Hitler had originally planned to 'get rid of the Jews' after the war, but as usual, events and ambitious underlings easily convinced him they might well start right away, or they would run the 'risk of losing and not having tackled the 'Jewish question''. Hitler fully approved of Himmlers plans and from january 1942 onwards the process of simply shooting people was replaced with new methods, amongst others gassing and starvation.

We all know what happened next and what price was paid to stop it. The end of the war put paid to Hitlers plans of finishing off all Jews and other 'racial inferiors', and resuming both the euthanasia programme and the attempts to destroy the church, which was to be replaced with a National Socialist faith.

In Europe however, the process has started again (the euthanasia part of it) and some liberals wish to do the same in the USA. When good people do nothing, they might ver well succeed to follow Europe into the depths of the same deprivations.

96 posted on 04/02/2005 6:37:54 AM PST by William of Orange (Hey John Kerry! You're finished! You're through! You're washed up!)
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