Posted on 04/03/2005 2:09:33 PM PDT by FairOpinion
The arguments surrounding Terri Schiavo will live on in statehouse debate and new laws if an emerging coalition of disability rights activists and right-to-lifers succeeds in turning the national agony over her case into a re-examination of when and how our lives come to an end.
So far, only a few legislators in a handful of states have sought significant changes to their laws, which define the fundamental elements at stake - how a person can set limits on their medical care, who gets to decide what their wishes are, what evidence is needed to prove it.
None have yet become law and the chances for most, if not all, are slim this year, with some legislatures finished and many far along in their work for this session. But both Republicans and Democrats say the arguments aren't going away.
The debate is an effort to strike a new balance between one stance that argues that medical care and morality mean life must be pursued in nearly all cases, and another stance, crafted over decades of changing views about death, that some may choose to end drastically damaged lives that depend on artificial means.
"I really wanted to make sure we gave a default for life and not for death," said Kansas state Rep. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a Republican who helped revive a measure that would give courts a greater chance to review decisions to end life-sustaining care, lessening the role of guardians or doctors. "Our most vulnerable citizens are in fact in the most danger of losing their life without any recourse."
She was joined in her effort by disability activists, many aligned with liberal causes, and Democrats in the state House. The measure stalled in the Kansas Senate, however, as the session ended for the year last Friday.
"We don't want to get into the politics of the right or the left or whomever," said Michael Donnelly at the Disability Rights Center of Kansas. "This isn't about politics, this is about how we value or don't value the lives people with disabilities have."
His group had been working for years to revisit the issue, and came together with several conservative legislators to move the bill forward. Elsewhere, the National Right to Life Committee has produced model legislation and is working with legislators in several states.
Legislation has also been introduced in Alabama, Hawaii, Louisiana, Minnesota and South Dakota. The Louisiana bill is called the "Human Dignity Act"; Alabama's is the "Starvation and Dehydration Prevention Act."
Many measures predate recent weeks of attention to Schiavo, though some drew their inspiration directly from the agonized public debate over the 41-year-old woman's death - like one in Missouri introduced last Thursday, the day Schiavo died.
"I was gripped by what I was watching and couldn't believe the state of Florida would let this woman die in this manner," said GOP state Rep. Cynthia Davis. Her bill would bar anyone from directing that artificial food and water be withheld or withdrawn without a specific written directive from the patient.
There's also a slew of legislation around living wills and other end-of-life issues that wouldn't further the aims of this emerging group - like a Nevada measure that would let a guardian end life-sustaining measures even if it's against a patient's known wishes, as long as it's in their best interests.
The views of medical care and ending life have shifted over the past 30 years as the country grappled with brain-damaged or coma-bound patients whose families said they shouldn't be forced to live a life they wouldn't want, starting with Karen Ann Quinlan in 1975, then to Nancy Cruzan in 1990 and now to Schiavo.
Critics say the medical community and society have gone too far. "When original advance directives were created, nobody contemplated that hospitals would refuse to treat ... It was usually just the opposite, doctors refusing to pull the feeding tube," said Burke Balch, director of the National Right to Life Committee's medical ethics center.
Now, he says, the presumption in the hospitals, the courts and in too much state legislation, is to go ahead and pull life-sustaining treatment when there is not enough evidence that the patient wanted it.
Doctors and bioethicists say that overwhelmingly, safeguards exist in hospitals and in courts to ensure that patients' and families' wishes and best interests are protected.
"Are they going to go out and undo all the hard work that people have done to make sure they can die without having to go to court?" said Dr. Jean Teno, associate director at Brown University's Gerontology and Health Care Research Center.
Most decisions, unlike the portrayal of critics, are made by doctors and families working together, she said. "My sense is that this approach is working."
Political agendas are hard to discount, as congressional leaders raise dire warnings against judges in Florida and Washington over their Schiavo decisions. That meshes with GOP efforts to put more conservatives in the judiciary.
But political stereotypes fell, too, with traditionally liberal leaders like Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader supporting Terri Schiavo's parents efforts to keep their daughter alive.
Advocates vow that the questions of civil rights and morality are going to win out.
"If there's any doubt, than life trumps death," said Donnelly, in Kansas. "I'm a quadriplegic, been that way for 28 years. I would hate for somebody else to decide my life is not worth living."
and what should be done with anorexia patients like Karen Carpenter, who starve themslves to death?
Not flaming, just real questions.
I doubt those children saw the inside of a police car, much less a jail. Symbolic acts such has those have no purpose except to polarize.
The fact that they violently prevented anyone from feeding her proves that this was all a lie. They wanted her dead and they murdered her.
Joe, here's what I think:
I wanted Terri kept alive. If Terri was truly PVS, she wouldn't have cared. If she weren't, she would have relished the opportunity to live.
I think the Congress and the President of the United States acted to the very limit of their Constitutional powers. Any further action on their part would have been overreaching.
I think Florida law is screwed up and needs to be changed.
I think the Schindlers did themselves and Terri a disservice by surrounding themselves with media whores like Randall Terry, Jay Sekulow, Larry Klayman and *gasp* Jesse Jackson.
Lastly, I think that symbolic acts using children and "made for TV" arrests are disgusting and counter-productive.
So, we agree with what the outcome should have been but I think we would disagree with the means.
You say that like it was bad thing.
It's kinda hard to prosecute the dead.
I think suicide is a basic right. I think it doesn't matter whether you can do it yourself, or have to leave instructions for a friend to help you out in an emergency.
I think any of us ought to have access to the drugs necessary for us or our friends to do the job instantly and painlessly.
The Young British soldier
-- Rudyard Kipling
So9
I am healthy and capable of living on about 75% support for another decade or so. At the point where I require 100% support to live, at the point when nurses must physically remove crap from my bowels, at the point when I would require a communicator to talk if I could type or sign, I wish to die peacefully, with what I have left of my dignity. Who the hell am I?
I have Friedreich's Ataxia that assigns a date for my death about 66% sooner than is normal. Before that point, I will be reduced to a vegetative state similar to that of Mrs. Schiavo. I do not wish to be publicized, do not wish to be put on display for thousands of mocking eyes, do not want the pity of every wannabe who want to be somebody by protesting to have my misery, my torture, my life, prolonged.
Nor do I wish to be starved to death, as evangelicals lobbying for the law which gives more time for a "miracle" to happen requires. What I desire is for my existence to end, when I am thirty, there will likely be no hope for me. I do not want a court battle, I do not want the federal government to infringe on states' rights (as happened when, last week, the feds ruled that the Schiavos be able to appeal to the federal courts) on my behalf. What I want is a quite shot - painless, tearless, and forceless - to end my suffering and save my dignity.
You expressed my concern as well.
Thank you.
To be a bigamist he would had to marry ..shacking-up is NOT marriage...whether you like it or not...
OK, how about adulterous husbands creating conflicts of interest?
Then do it yourself, don't drag anyone else into it.
It's kinda hard to prosecute the dead.
I think suicide is a basic right. I think it doesn't matter whether you can do it yourself, or have to leave instructions for a friend to help you out in an emergency. I think any of us ought to have access to the drugs necessary for us or our friends to do the job instantly and painlessly.
So when Police see someone on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge, should they leave them? Or haul them off to an official suicide facility?
The problem with helping people kill themselves unrestricted, is murder being passed off as suicide.
I do not hold out much hope for this to succeed and it's too late for Terri.
Show me these people who would "make it illegal to refuse treatment, any treatment, either viva voce if concious or via living will if not.
Given half a chance, they will keep the unwilling hooked to tubes by force and in painful useless treatments as long as possible."
Why is it so important to you that Terri Schiavo had to be forbidden nutrition and hydration by *natural* means, under threat of government guns and arrest?
Well, they ought to make sure they aren't gonna land on anyone below, or obstruct traffic, but other than that, leave them alone
The problem with helping people kill themselves unrestricted, is murder being passed off as suicide.
I have no problem with the local authorities monitoring the situation to prevent abuses, as long as it isn't an excuse for regulation or restriction.
The reason for having the drugs made available to the individual or their designated friend is to avoid having Doctors killing their patients.
The body and then the papers are gonna end up at the Medical Examiner's Office and eventually in Probate Court. Plenty of time then to sniff out any murderers after the fact.
We deal with other murderers after the fact, why not any that happen this way.
SO9
You do not have the "right to die." That's like saying you have the right to fall if you jump off a cliff. You will die. You will fall if you jump off a cliff.
Review the US Supreme Court opinions about end of life decisions.
You have the inalienable right to life and liberty, which includes the right not to be assaulted by unwanted intervention and invasion of your body.
What you do not have is the right to call on laws, government guns and regulated technology to cause your death. And no one else has the right to cause your death by forbidding you any nutrition or hydration by natural means or to forbid a caretaker from providing it to you if you have not specifically stated that you would consider such as an assault.
I referenced the article from the Weekly Standard in my post, and two people promptly posted here agreeing with it.
Are you dense or what?
Why is it so important to you that Terri Schiavo had to be forbidden nutrition and hydration by *natural* means, under threat of government guns and arrest?
The question is a complete non sequitur.
So you won't have to look it up, that means it has nothing to do with this thread or with my posts.
So9
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