Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo, listens to debate Tuesday as a Senate committee considers legislation that would limit the withholding of feeding tubes and other life-sustaining sustenance.
Posted on 05/11/2005 7:47:19 PM PDT by Ellesu
Urged by Terry Schiavo's brother, a Louisiana Senate panel Tuesday advanced a proposed law that would require keeping incapacitated people alive unless they previously said or wrote that they don't want feeding tubes. "Every life is sacred, and we should treat it that way," Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, testified.
Opponents said the legislation -- spawned by the national furor over the Schiavo case in Florida -- is government stepping in where families, with physicians, should be making the decisions.
Before approving the measure, the Senate Judiciary A Committee voted 4-3 to require the state to pay medical bills if government laws require keeping the person alive.
"If you are going to say to people what to do, then we ought to at least have the means to pay for it," said Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge.
"We ought not to say to family members, 'You have got to do this,' and we don't support it financially," he said.
The legislation heads to the Senate floor, where it likely will be shipped to the Senate's Finance Committee for another hearing because it could cost the state money.
"I don't know whether they are killer amendments, but they slowed it down," said state Sen. James David Cain, R-Dry Creek, author of Senate Bill 40, said of the changes made by the committee.
Similar House legislation, filed by Rep. Gary Beard, R-Baton Rouge, is scheduled for a House committee hearing today.
Backers of Cain's bill, including Schindler, testified that withholding sustenance is a horrible way to die. They said there is a God-given right to life.
"We should always err on (the side of) saving human life," said Schindler, whose appearance was sponsored and financed by Louisiana Family Forum Action.
Schindler recounted how he watched his sister die after a legal battle ended and a feeding tube was removed from the woman, who had spent years in a coma.
He called the death "barbaric" and said no one would allow it to happen to themselves or others if they had a chance to witness it.
Schindler said his sister didn't have a "living will" spelling out the extent of life-sustaining measures she would want in the event of a terminal illness or irreversible medical condition that incapacitated her.
Both proponents and opponents of the law said more people should be encouraged to sign "living wills." They said that would prevent problems such as Schiavo case.
Cain said he fears a Terri Schiavo situation could crop up in Louisiana.
"We are trying to get that person to make that decision and their families; then we step aside," Cain said.
Family Forum executive director Gene Mills said the issue is moral and ethical.
"The question is not, 'Are we sustaining life beyond a reasonable point, but are we making people die prematurely prior to an appropriate ethical and moral natural time'?" Mills said.
Dennis Blackwell, a Grand Isle minister, said he fears that, without the law, because of financial concerns or inconvenience, someone could decide that people like his disabled daughter should no longer live.
Opponents of the bill included two state senators, nurses and physicians who care for the elderly, and hospital and hospice-care executives.
"If you vote against this bill, you are not voting for a death sentence," said Senate President Don Hines, D-Bunkie, a longtime physician.
"We have a mechanism in place for families to make decisions if you are incapable of making a decision," he said.
Hines said the legislation would take families out of the decision and turn that over to the state.
"I don't think this would be in the best interest of anyone," he said.
Hines said he has always looked at the "qualify of life rather than the quantity."
"We are venturing into something we do not want to go into," said Sen. Tom Schedler, R-Mandeville, a former hospital executive whose wife is in the hospice business.
"Our courts are going to be filled. … We are going to have cases like Terri Schiavo in courtrooms across the state every day."
Katherine Grigsby, executive director of Hospice Baton Rouge, said Louisiana has a good law already.
She called Cain's bill "a knee-jerk response to the terrible, tragic situation in Florida."
Jamey Boudreaux, executive director of Louisiana-Mississippi Hospice, estimated that the legislation would affect about 27,000 families in the next year.
Under current law, the invasive administration of nutrition and hydration are considered life-sustaining procedures just like cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Under Cain's bill, it would no longer be classified as a life-sustaining procedure.
If an individual has not spelled out his or her wishes, the legislation presumes that patients who are legally incapable of making health decisions want health-care providers to provide nutrition or hydration sufficient to sustain life.
Three exceptions are spelled out in the proposed law: if nutrition or hydration is not medically possible, if it would hasten death or make the condition worse, or if it would cause pain or "diminish comfort care."
The nutrition and hydration would have to continue until all legal appeals or reviews have been exhausted.
Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo, listens to debate Tuesday as a Senate committee considers legislation that would limit the withholding of feeding tubes and other life-sustaining sustenance.
There is NO doubt the Culture of Death has infiltrated the medical profession, particularly those medical professionals who care for the elderly and the terminally ill.
Ain't that the truth.
They're going backwards again in their reporting. It is an established fact, admitted by all parties, that Terri was not in a coma when she was killed.
While this battle is raging about who has the right to decide that a patient should be killed, does it ever enter anyone's mind that it should be the patient's choice? If the patient has not signed away their right to life, nobody has the right to take it from them. That would be murder.
I've got a problem with using heresy in condemning a human being to death. Libs would scream bloody murder if heresy was used in the conviction of a repeat pedophile but have no problem using it to kill the innocent.
Throughout man's history we have seen human being's desire to kill the innocent. I don't understand why, as comfortable as we are now, that compulsion still exists. Is it to get even more "comfortable", more self-centered? I'm clueless.
We now have the names of some politicians who like that private killing stuff.
>>>>>Before approving the measure, the Senate Judiciary A Committee voted 4-3 to require the state to pay medical bills if government laws require keeping the person alive. <<<<<
I hate to say this but " I told ya so".
Keeping people on feeding tubes will cost a fortune , It will be the taxpayer who will foot this bill. Call me a member of the death cult all you like, but when the time is up for a person to be taken off the feeding tube someone has to make that decision , not making it only adds to the suffering of all concerned. Yes .01% of the time someone may wake up like the Firefighter but miracles dont happen every day.
Being on feeding tubes for year after year is evil, in many people's minds.
The law requires no OTHER 'treatment'. If the person is declining and going to die, then the person declines and dies, fed or not. But if the person will not die when fed, why kill him.
Not so evil as tying up valuable resources that could be used for patients who may have a chance to live a normal life.
Valuable resources= Doctors-nurses -hospital beds-orderlies-medicines- money.
Medicaid is having a tough time making it now. Imagine hundreds of people lying around only waiting to die at a cost of $6,000 a month or better. People who havent a snowballs chance in hell of even waking up.
I am not saying what was done with Schiavvo was right, I am saying that if a law is passed it will have an effect we can only imagine. Many will not get a feeding tube because once installed that decision cannot be voided. Others will be kept in limbo for perhaps years.
We need to starve and dehydrate people who can't work, in order to feed those who won't.
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