I've had a grandmother and great-grandmother who each died of stomach cancer. Both reached a point where they couldn't eat or drink. I don't know how they cared for my great-grandmother. For grandmother, her children kept her somewhat hydrated by keeping little chips of ice in a bowl by her bed. As she felt thirsty, she would put a chip of ice on her tongue to melt. That's how she lived the last two and half months of her life. Maybe she could have lived an extra few months if we'd taken her to a hospital and forced her to take nourishment from a tube, but she didn't want that. Maybe if we'd tried to do that, she'd have died a month earlier of a broken heart from feeling betrayed. Nothing about the decisions the family made was easy. There was consolation in knowing that grandmother was still in her right mind and that we were just doing what she wanted, but it was still hard. It was also none of anyone else's business.
The Terri Schindler S. situation was a travesty because Michael Schiavo should not have been making Terri's decisions once he had moved on with his life. We give the spouse those decisions in most cases on the assumption that spouses have a unique relationship to one another and have one another's best interests at heart. Michael Schiavo no longer had that relationship with Terri, and the courts should not have assumed that he had her best interests at heart.
Conservatives are making a mistake when they try to decide for everyone what the outcomes of all of these situations should be. Every situation is different, and the loved ones dealing with each situation are different. Rather than trying to impose a "one size fits all" decision on everyone, we should work to ensure that the right people make the decisions in every case regardless of what that decision is.
Bill
There are those that believe no one has a right to request that they be starved or dehydrated to death if they are in a PVS. It's that right to life thing. This has been hashed over many times during Terri's killing. There is a definite difference of opinion within the pro-life movement regarding this issue.
Ultimately it is God who is in control.
As mere mortals it is NOT our decision to make. While they are still with us we are not to starve them to death when they are still able to eat or dehydrate them when they are still able to drink. Anything other than that, IS playing God.
When people say things like this, I wonder if they first considered that Terri Schiavo did not instantly go from being perfectly healthy to the state she was in just before they killed her. When people gradually degrade they tend to change their minds about the "quality of life" thing and begin to be happy just to be alive, see their family at their side, see their smiles and 'interact' with them as best they can.
In any case, it's a very dangerous thing to give the power of life and death to some judge who will be only too happy to assume the role of Ceasar and give thumbs up or down. The issue of life and death as it pertains to "quality of life" should always err on the side of life when there is any question, or even a microscopic shred of doubt about what the person wants.