Now, with that perspective, you may see how it works with feeding tubes. For all those years, we resisted feeding tubes for our son, even removed them ourselves, when a facility put them in without asking. It highlights the darker side of why Terri was on feeding tubes.
First, they are not necessarily for the good of the patient, but are time savers for the medical staff. It takes far less time to feed them that way than to feed the patient by hand. In our case it always took one to two hours or longer each meal to feed our son. We could speed that up of course, as could the medical staff, but nothing is faster than the tubes.
Second, they are a habit difficult to break. Once a patient is “hooked”, it is more difficult by the day to retrain. Unused muscles and functions atrophy naturally. After a period, it would be very difficult to restart feeding. But one cannot ignore or underestimate the resiliance of the handicapped. Terri like our son, could have handled jello anyway. It has the dual ability to provide nourishment and hydration, as “solid water”.
So hooking up Terri to feeding tubes accomplished more than the perps even knew, I would suppose. And as a bonusto them, taking away a spoon is obvious cruel denial, but taking out a tube is almost seen as gentle.
Mexicans marched on Sunday against plans to legalize abortion in Mexico City, a move that has split opinion in the world's second-largest Roman Catholic country and drawn fire from the Pope.
The bells of Mexico City's vast cathedral welcomed some 1,000 Roman Catholics, including families dressed in white, who packed it for Mass after carrying anti-abortion placards and images of the revered Virgin of Guadalupe through the streets.
Mexico City's local legislature, controlled by the leftist opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, is expected to approve a bill on Tuesday allowing abortions in the capital during the first three months of pregnancy.
Mexican Catholics protest plan to legalize abortion
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True, true, and not a bad thing at all! To a degree, it's good for patients, for it allows very precise feeding. But of course, that was before the evil-minded took PEG tubes away to kill patients.
In Terri's case, the change of law to make PEG tubes "life-prolonging" and "extraordinary" care was, of course, for the sole purpose of killing inconvenient patients. There is no other reason for this law. It is not, strictly speaking, an "ex post facto" law, but it had the effect of one in Terri's case. If the law had actually been observed for Terri, she could not possibly have given informed consent to removal of the PEG tube. Consent has to be specific to the situation, not just a patient refusing further care. It must be INFORMED consent. She had to know in advance that she would dehydrated to death before she could consent to it.
How the higher courts let this go by is beyond imagining.
You were wise. Few would see this. Some would not look. They would focus, instead, on their own burden and never find the love and compassion to care for a precious child.