Posted on 01/06/2007 5:52:57 PM PST by wagglebee
I don't think even Missouri bothered to check. They dumped her like Florida did to Terri.
With this new testimony, the case concludes and Nancy's PEG tube is removed. She dies after 11 days of agony. But a few days before the end, this occurred:
>> "Sheriff Doug Seneker guarded Cruzan's room" -- from anyone trying to save her life! -- "at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center. Lawrence County Sheriff Doug Seneker was a deputy sheriff at the time. He questions whether Nancy Cruzan was in a persistent vegetative state. His opinion is based, in part, on her reactions three days before her death when he went into her room to check on her.
>> "[Nancy] turned and looked at me and stared at me with a panicky look, sweating profusely, and the thought I had was, she was thinking, ‘Oh, here’s a policeman, he’ll help me.’
>> "But we weren’t allowed to do that,” said Seneker.
Yeap. Isn't that what friends are for? Sounds to me like they were friends of the people wanted Nancy dead. I don't know of any other way to look at it.
Maybe friends of the people who wanted Nancy dead, or if not, they were almost certainly sought out and contacted by the death activists. That might be Colby the death lawyer's office, or volunteers working for the local Society to Negate Useful Food Functions (S.N.U.F.F.).
Whatever the case t'wit, even our moral opponents here on FreeRepbulic would not stoop so low for their friends, voluntarily.
Let's step back a few paces. This entry sheds some light on the doctrine of "informed consent."
>> Legal struggle to remove feeding tube
>> Cruzan's family's pursuit of that court order to have the feeding tube removed turned into a three-year, widely publicized struggle. The trial court allowed the parents to discontinue tubal feeding, based on the testimony of a housemate of Cruzan who relayed that Cruzan would not wish to continue her life on artificial support. The Missouri State Supreme Court reversed, ruling that the lower court did not meet the clear and convincing evidence standard. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the Missouri Supreme Court ruling in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health 497 US 261 (1990) [1].
>> The opinion of the Court states "for purposes of this case, we assume that the United States Constitution would grant a competent person a constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition" (497 US at 279). (The Court noted that "most state courts have based a right to refuse treatment on the common law right to informed consent ... or on both that right and a constitutional privacy right" 497 US at 262). The Court also held that Missouri was able to require a standard of "clear and convincing evidence" with regard to a person's wishes, and that "the State may properly decline to make judgments about the 'quality' of a particular individual's life and simply assert an unqualified interest in the preservation of human life to be weighed against the constitutionally protected interests of the individual" (497 US at 283).
The right to "refuse medical treatment" is thus conferred on a COMPETENT PERSON making an INFORMED CHOICE ("informed consent"). The trouble starts at once, because the patients are incapacitated. They are NOT competent to decide. They do NOT give informed consent. Who WOULD consent to being essentially tortured to death? Who would consent to a court decree denying them medical comfort to relieve their pain, such as ice chips in their mouth? Who would consent to a court decree denying them Holy Communion, as Greer ordered in Terri's case?
It is always surrogates who take over, make the decisions, and make the patients die in agony. But surrogates are not mind readers and do not know what the patient would consent to. Neither do they have authority to overrule the patient's constitutional right to life.
These laws are a sham. They simply cover up murder with a nice legalistic fog.
Elizabeth Bouvia did. The courts believed HER, didn't they?
She consented to die but didn't believe it would be a horrible death. We can figure that out because as soon as she tried it, she said, "Uh oh, this isn't what I thought it would be. This is no fun at all and I QUIT!!!" And they couldn't starve and dehydrate her after that. Could we say that her first directive was "MISinformed consent"?
At last report (at least the last one I've seen), she was still alive. Hooray for Elizabeth.
I am not convinced that she ever wanted to die. Anyway, she did her job.
I didn't smoke that out, but I'll take your word for it. You have had a better look at the case than I. In a general way, I don't think anyone wants to die. That's even true in other species. When the visitors sing their love songs to death, you know right away they are unhinged.
No No. Don't take my word for it. It was JMO.
Sure, but I hadn't read enough even to form an opinion. When you sniff something doesn't smell quite right, that piques my interest! :-)
Opinions are subject to factual correction anyway. No sweat.
> In other words he is out indoctrinating the MSM for future stories like Terri's MURDER.
Good point. Why is a judge doing that -- except to cover up his own prejudiced and unconstitutional rulings that caused Terri's death.
The MSM didn't need much help spinning this one. They were on a kill-Terri rampage from from day one.
bttt
>> "The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers." ---Helen Keller
I often think of Helen Keller when I hear these people talking about "life not worth living." I met someone once who actually knew Helen Keller and she said that when Keller went somewhere the effect on the assembled crowd was incredible, everyone immediately understood that they were in the presence of a truly remarkable human being.
Those "mere impertinences of fate" left Keller without either the sight or sound necessary to learn language. Yet she is far more eloquent than any of the right-to-die advocates who visit here. They are obviously the ones who flunk the "quality of life" test.
I wonder how many of the pro-murder visitors are familiar with Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (I rather doubt any of them would actually read the book, but there are several movies and one is even a cartoon) and if they are familiar with it whether they understand that the French want to torture and kill Quasimodo because he is disabled?
I'd say it's a socialist impulse more than a French one. (Not that there is any great difference between "socialism" and "France" :-) .) The economics of socialism favors killing off the weaker or less productive members of the collective. That is, you get a pay raise if you kill off those who contribute less than average to the common pot. The best pay raise is to be had by killing the sick or disabled who have high medical costs but contribute no wages. The right-to-die people can claim they're acting on principle until they turn purple, but it's a simple pocketbook issue -- so long as you do not believe in human rights.
The RTD folks fancy themselves progressive, but are some of the most luddite, reactionary thinkers alive. In the world of nanotechnology and computerized medical research, radical new treatments and corrections and cures are pouring into being. This should be a time of unprecedented hope for sick and disabled people.
But to the bioethickers, the only thing to do is kill off the sick and disabled. They are too busy with their death-tripping to see that a lot of patients are not hopeless any more. They are the voices of negativism from failed past. They are cold, bleak history and don't know it.
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