When was this magical time? Was it when were slaughting Native Americans, or was it when we were enslaving and/or lynching African Americans?
When was this magical time? Was it when were slaughting Native Americans, or was it when we were enslaving and/or lynching African Americans?[/quote]
It was right between those two times, when we only imprisoned over 100,000 asians during WW2.
Those were magical days, weren’t they? “Our Greatest Generation” indeed.
Somehow, I can’t really see conservative religious folk in the 40s and 50s agreeing with the parents. I think the idea that someone wants to use artificial means to keep what is effectively a dead person alive with most of their brain gone would horrify them with images of frankenstein science gone horribly wrong.
Congress continues to grandstand in this, but this quote is curious:
“We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican. “This is giving the Schindlers the opportunity to get into federal court and have a federal judge look at this, based on the merits of the case.”
I wonder if DeLay feels his state of Texas does this with every single person its executed, and whether all of those be turned into federal cases.
And for the love of god, people are trying to get food and water to her.
From AP:
"Four protesters were arrested after they symbolically tried to smuggle bread and water to Schiavo, and her mother pleaded for the 41-year-old woman’s life.
“We laugh together, we cry together, we smile together, we talk together,” Mary Schindler told reporters as supporters maintained a vigil outside the hospice where her daughter is cared for. “Please, please, please save my little girl.” "
They believe she’s aware of her environment.
I read most of the OP, but not all of it. What I can’t understand is why can’t the mother just take her home and set her up in the living room or something? Does the husband/state need to have her dead? If she is in a vegative state and has no idea of her surroundings, why not just let the parents have her and care for her?
Ok, so it appears her parents are insane.
Tim, if you signed a do not resusticate order and were turned into a vegetable, would you think it was no big deal if your parents overrode it? Alternatively, if you hadn’t signed one and wanted to go in the situtation & your parents wanted to shut you off?
Court found she wouldn’t have wanted to go on like this, court is implementing her decision.
Because everyone who knew the woman except her parents has testified in court that Terri would not want that outcome. This is not about what her husband wants or what her parents want. It is about what Terri herself wanted.
To me, the worst thing about this case is how they’d kill her in a painful, agonizing way - fucking starving her to death. Maybe she’s a veggie, but as long as she has neurons capable of sparking, it’s not going to be pleasant. If you want to help her with “assisted suicide”, why the hell don’t they just put her to sleep with drugs? Or get a giant Indian to put a pillow over her head, or something.
If a tree falls in the woods… If there is no one there to feel the pain, there is no one there to feel it.
The won’t do it with drugs because it’s not legal to humanely end human suffering.
Bub covered that above; she’ll dehydrate before starving, and it would be a relatively painless death even if she was capable of feeling anything.
Jason, if I was in that situation, I would hope like hell I had no sense of anything that was going on around me. And if that were the case, I wouldn’t give a shit what you did with my body, no matter what I had signed or said during my waking life.
It’s probably financially prohibitive or somehow else impractical for the parents to set her up at their home. Or maybe the husband is looking for an insurance pay out? Principal only goes so far. There is a bottom line somewhere in all of this.
The husband has no say on whether they should remove the feeding tube or not anymore.
Tim, you’re rather an exception then. Most people are extraordinarily touchy about their wishes in cases like this.
Which is why I find the few libertarian types lining up on “the state should intervene and override her wishes” so hilarious…
Tim, if your wife expressed a desire not to be kept alive under certain conditions, how much money would you spend in court trying to honor her wishes?
What I find particularly strange on the political angle (I can’t believe we have to discuss polling on this goddamn case):
But others, including Democrats and outside congressional scholars, said Republicans had overstepped their authority and could risk political backlash. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted March 10-13, an overwhelming majority of the 1,001 adults polled — 87 percent — said they would not want to be kept alive if they were in Schiavo’s condition.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002212825_schiavolegal19.html
Um, so Desslock and everyone professing horror at this, why do you think this is bad? You think she’s not brain-dead? Think the court got her wishes wrong? Think all people on life support should stay there, regardless of living will? I don’t get it.
Jason, people are only touchy about this when they are alive. The fact of the matter is that when you are dead–or in a vegative state–you haven’t got much to say one way or the other.
There’s an another angle on the issue of horror and suffering: if Terri in fact has some capacity to “feel” and could experience suffering during starvation how do you think she’s felt for the last 15 years? For the last 15 years shes been trapped in a hospital bed, unable to walk or speak, unable to communicate, unable to sit up, unable to write, unable to care for herself, unable to wipe her own body, forced to live in a diaper 24/7, with strangers washing her as needed, forced to undergo forced stretching and physical therapy (to delay atrophy and prevent bedsores), unable to chew, unable to swallow, with a medical tube inserted down her throat into her stomach the only thing keeping her alive.
If Terri in fact has any capacity to feel pain or suffering she’s been suffering a living hell and brutal nightmare for the last 15 years. The time it takes her to expire now is around 10 days. She’s already experienced 5,000 days of suffering (assuming she is capable of experiencing suffering at all). And before you say “but starvation is much worse” think about this: an adult women forced to wear a diaper 24/7 lying in a bed in her own feces and urine for portions of each day until the nurses come to change her. A feeding tube down her throat 24/7 for 15 years. Periodic catheterization to remove urine. For 15 years.
Let it end. This is a travesty.
As to Desslock’s question, the answer is the limitations of American law and politics: it is not legal to painlessly euthanize someone in this situation: the most we can do is withhold “life prolonging measures”. Keep in mind that if nature had been allowed to take its course, Terri would have been dead for the last 15 years. Her last 15 years of existence have been due to artificial intervention.
Also, Desslock, the President you supported for reasons of foreign policy is going to sign into law the next intrustion in this woman’s life (there’s a new deal in Congress being worked on right now). The federal courts are going to assert jurisdiction and issue a stay and grant new hearings. The President who keeps insisting that he is all about promoting freedom and democracy in the rest of the world doesn’t want to allow Terri Schiavo the freedom to make her own decisions.
One more comment: at the end of this, either the US Supremes are going to throw out the Congressional action as a joke of unconstitutional overreaching or the federal courts are going to end up supporting the original court decision. The facts in the case are just too damn strong. Terri doesn’t have a cerebral cortex. Her cognition and human intellect have been dead for 15 years. No amount of faith, emotion or political power can change that fact. And if this does go to the federal courts on the facts, it is nearly certain they will rule the same way.