Posted on 04/01/2005 8:05:46 PM PST by FairOpinion
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Polls leading up to the death of Terri Schiavo made it appear Americans had formed a consensus in favor of ending her life. However, a new Zogby poll with fairer questions shows the nation clearly supporting Terri and her parents and wanting to protect the lives of other disabled patients.
The Zogby poll found that, if a person becomes incapacitated and has not expressed their preference for medical treatment, as in Terri's case, 43 percent say "the law presume that the person wants to live, even if the person is receiving food and water through a tube" while just 30 percent disagree.
Another Zogby question his directly on Terri's circumstances.
"If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water," the poll asked.
A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes.
"From the very start of this debate, Americans have sat on one of two sides," Concerned Women for America's Lanier Swann said in response to the poll. One side "believes Terri's life has worth and purpose, and the side who saw Michael Schiavo's actions as merciful, and appropriate."
More than three-fourths of Americans agreed, Swann said, "because a person is disabled, that patient should never be denied food and water."
The poll also lent support to members of Congress to who passed legislation seeking to prevent Terri's starvation death and help her parents take their lawsuit to federal courts.
"When there is conflicting evidence on whether or not a patient would want to be on a feeding tube, should elected officials order that a feeding tube be removed or should they order that it remain in place," respondents were asked.
Some 18 percent said the feeding tube should be removed and 42 percent said it should remain in place.
Swann said her group would encourage Congress to adopt legislation that would federal courts to review cases when the medical treatment desire of individuals is not known and the patient's family has a dispute over the care.
"According to these poll results, many Americans do in fact agree with what we're trying to accomplish," she said.
The poll found that 49 percent of Americans believe there should be exceptions to the right of a spouse to act as a guardian for an incapacitated spouse. Only 39 percent disagreed.
When asked directly about Terri's case and told the her estranged husband Michael "has had a girlfriend for 10 years and has two children with her" 56 percent of Americans believed guardianship should have been turned over to Terri's parents while 37 percent disagreed.
That list of rubber stampism is precisely why the U.S. Congress authorized and expected a de novo trial of the case in Whittemore's court. He too turned out to be a member of rubber stamptroopers, ignoring the glaring failure to afford Terri due process ... and just incase you don't understand that phrase, conflicts of interest by Greer and the guardian amount to failed due process if left unaddressed by other courts.
They have heard appeals and such stemming from the case. They have ruled on the process Greer used in the case. That doesn't mean that six courts have "heard the case".
Each one has determined "clear and convincing" evidence exis
I am sure that what happened is that they determined that Greer was within his discretion to determine that "clear and convincing" evidence exists.
That doesn't mean that they all, themselves, re-examined the evidence from scratch and found it just as "clear and convincing" as Greer did.
If there are any who did, then they are morons, just like Greer.
The idea that being in a vegetative state of existence involves NO SUFFERING on ANY LEVEL, that a person is just fine with it..is absolutely absurd.
Not if you actually know the definition of "Persistent/Permanent Vegetative State", which, apparently, you don't. Which makes it extremely odd that you spout off about the subject.
A person in "PVS" by definition cannot be suffering. If a person is "suffering", that is proof that they are not "PVS". It is one or the other. If you are looking at a "PVS" patient and imagining that they must be suffering, you should know that this is a sort of superstition on your part. If she were capable of suffering, she would not have been "PVS". (Or do you subscribe to the "suffering of the soul" metaphysical theories of Luis?)
Perhaps, you should learn about this disability-state that you have decided makes people killable? Just a suggestion.
And you degrade yourself with shameful statements like the "pro-killing faction".
It is merely a factual statement. The faction, that you represent, was in favor of killing Terri Schiavo. What the hell should I call it?
People have to make painful decisions all the time when it comes letting a loved one go
Nobody "had to" make this decision to kill Terri Schiavo. Michael could have walked away and let her family take care of her. There was nothing that prevented him from doing it apart from his own sick, cruel ghoulishness.
it's hard enough without your brand of misguided fanatical name-calling and accusations.
It SHOULD BE hard. It should not be easy as pie to kill a family member because you want them to be dead.
Spouses make life and death decisions when it comes to medical treatment for their partners ALL THE TIME.
Of course they do but that is not what we are discussing. We are discussing a decision to starve someone to death intentionally.
It is the law.
Again, if the law really did allow for what happened to Terri Schiavo and no judges made any mistakes, then the law is an ass. Another option is that a judge or judges made mistakes in interpreting the law.
Whatever the case, the judicial execution of Terri Schiavo was a damn travesty and there's no two ways about it.
The serious problem I have with an advance verbal request, like the one in this case, is that it is so easy for a person, like MS, to have his situation in life and his opinion of his disabled wife change to the point where he profoundly wants her gone. At that point the incentive to fabricate an alleged verbal request can become compelling and the court is basically required to determine the indeterminable.
In other, similar cases involving substantial social and individual interests the law and the courts do not take such a cavalier attitude. The two most instructive are passing property by will and transferring interests in real estate.
Each state has statutes of intestate distribution that prescribe how your property will pass on your death if you do not have a written will. Those statutes are based on the rebuttable assumption that you want your property to pass to your closest relatives. To alter this assumption you are required to execute a written, signed and witnessed will to pass the property to somebody else. Thus, if you're a sailor and own a sextant that you want your yacht club to have after you die, you must execute a proper will passing that instrument to the yacht club; otherwise it goes to your relatives by intestate succession.
The same thing's true with real estate. If you want to be legally bound to agree to sell an interest in a piece of real property you own, each state's statute of frauds requires you to execute a signed agreement to transfer that interest.
In each of the foregoing situations the requirement of a written document forces the potential testator or seller of an interest in real property to think seriously about what he or she is doing and decide, advertently and formally, what to do. Also, the law has developed this way to reduce the chance of fraud, prevent innocent people from having their vital interests affected by essentially unprovable transactions, and avoid testifying contests where it's often impossible for the trier of fact to know what really happened.
The same considerations are equally vital in the advance medical directive situation, something the Florida legislature and "right to die" advocates seem to have ignored. Innocent peoples' lives need to be protected and the law is directed to doing it by going so far as to provide the death penalty for murderers. Indeed, the average person's interest in his or her life is usually a lot greater than his or her interest in the distribution of his or her property on death.
Thus, it is entirely reasonable to establish a rebuttable presumption in favor of life in a disability situation. It would be equivalent to the presumption in favor of intestate distribution of assets on one's death and similarly alterable by a written, signed and witnessed instrument. This requirement would force the individual who wants life support to be terminated to think clearly about the situation and its implications and come up with a fully informed consent. It would also prevent the kind of testifying contest, with its attendant risk of an innocent woman being killed without her consent as a result of perjury, that developed in the Schiavo case.
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from taking life without due process of law. The Federal courts have taken this as allowing them to prescribe extensive due process safeguards surrounding the execution of criminals. Hence, they clearly have the same power to review state statutes that allow the killing of innocent people and apply appropriate due process safeguards, which ought at least to include advance written directives that meet up to the standards of wills.
When asked directly about Terri's case and told the her estranged husband Michael "has had a girlfriend for 10 years and has two children with her" 56 percent of Americans believed guardianship should have been turned over to Terri's parents while 37 percent disagreed.
Additional Question:
Are you a male of female?
Female - 56%
Male - 37%
Sure, that could happen. But wouldn't that come out during cross-examination or the sworn testimony from other witnesses? Wouldn't the judge give it less weight if the husband were the only one she told? Wouldn't an impartial and disinterested judge be the best person to hear the facts, and make a decision?
Who else would you have sort out the "he said, she said" statements? You're condemning the whole process because you don't agree with the outcome of one case. Is that fair?
"In other, similar cases involving substantial social and individual interests the law and the courts do not take such a cavalier attitude."
True. Irrelevant, but true. Actually, it wasn't until the 1990 Cruzan decision (opinion written by Justice Scalia) when the U.S. Supreme Court stated that a person has a "liberty interest" in being able to leave instructions rejecting "artificial" food and hydration. In addition, the Florida 1990 Browning decision requires that oral evidence of oral statements be permitted to count in court.
So this is a fairly recent phenomenon.
As you point out this is a developing area of the law, one of those relatively rare ones, IMHO, where it's appropriate for the courts to make some law and where the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes them to do so. The "he said, she said" situation can only be dealt with partially by cross-examination, which certainly can fail. Hence, the far better approach is to eliminate that problem at its source by requiring an advance written, signed and witnessed directive. The Schiavo case has done a wonderful job of illustrating the current infirmity of the law.
If it has done one thing positive, it is that.
If one spouse has doubts about another, or if it comes out (say at a family Thanksgiving or Christmas gathering) that there may be trouble ahead in this type of situation, a Living Will or Durable Power of Attorney is certainly in order. Especially if there's money at stake.
That said, we still need to address those situations where, for one reason or another, no such documentation exists. We can't just sit back and say, "Too bad. You should have thought of that before."
Without some legal procedure covering verbal requests, these cases will all turn into euthanasia cases where some (interested) third parties are going to be insisting on making the call.
Oh, my gosh.
Says so very much about the men they questioned.
Hope for they're not married.
Still, cannot believe all men feel that way.
There are men out there with more than sex on their minds.
And with morals.
"The second question is so incomplete as to be misleading.
It really should ask;
Would you want to be KEPT in a horrible helpless and hopeless state of existance, from which you could NEVER recover, for years on end and slowly die over God knows how long a period of time..connected to a feeding tube?"
Then there should be a 3rd question; "who kept her in a horrible, helpless and hopeless state of existence, with no light, no music, no therapy, no contact with others, no removal to the outside in a wheelchair, no MRI tests, no PET scans, no speech therapy?
sp
Thanks for posting this.
No permita que la puerta le golpee en el asno.
Well, considering that Zogby is carrying this very article on their website, I would say it IS a Zogby poll and it's been accurately reported.
http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=11131
OR you can go to Zogby's home page:
http://www.zogby.com/
and look on the right hand side, below the Iraq map, at "Zogby polls in the media" and it's the first link.
Only the MSM lies, conservative media, like Life news doesn't. You should know that by now.
Well, O'Reilly and Kondracke LEAD the FoxPack in condemning Terri, although O'R did manage to invent a 'solution' which was not going to happen, thus giving himself an out.
Fox did a better job than all the rest, however.
Well, Luis, you've moved from economic death-wishes to personal death-wish.
You're consistent.
Please read the referent post. Somehow, this is not a surprise...
Actually, J., ONE court made the finding. The others simply reviewed the procedures that ONE court followed.
Remember that the FL legislature was advised by the very same "right to die" advocates when it wrote the legislation.
IOW, the agenda was not only there--it became enshrined, damn near by default.
"Do you want the law demanding Doctors shove tubes down your throat, hook you up to machines or shock you back to life multiple times each day to keep you alive, REGARDLESS of your wishes? I don't !"
What case are you talking about? None of this was done to Terri S. Maybe you are on the wrong thread,,,,,or wrong website? Take your ignorant venom elsewhere.
I was talking about OUR RIGHTS when is comes to accepting OR rejecting end of life measures when it comes to keeping us alive under such circumstances.
It's the LAW.
Maybe you need to actually read threads before you respond to them?
Just a suggestion!
I did read your worthless thread, and silly answers all through here, What you are speaking of above, which I answered, in not relevant in the Terri S case, so what are you ranting about? What do you mean "OUR Rights", that has nothing to do with Terri S, she had no rights, they were usurped by her murderous husband, and you would probably slap him on the back,offer him a drink, where I would kick him......
The way you post, everything just runs together in one big incoherant mess.
Just a suggestion.
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