The Terri Schiavo autopsy report that was made public yesterday has many in the shadow media gloating and some, like myself and a few other secular social conservatives, reflecting on what the fight meant then and what it will mean for the future.
Who was right? Who was wrong?
First, the particulars of the autopsy show that Terri was indeed probably in a persistent vegetative state. While this is something that can’t be determined for certain after death, given the state of her brain (not liquified) and the “loss of neurons”, it seems more than likely that Terri didn’t have either the capacity or potential for rational thought. It appears also that the vision cortex was totally disabled making her blind. And her ability to swallow was extremely limited, thus ruling out the possibility that any food or water could have been administered sans feeding tube.
In addition, the report showed no evidence of abuse by Michael Schiavo. However, it also found no evidence of any eating disorder that would have explained her initial collapse. Nor did the autopsy address the strange deterioration of Terri’s brain over a 3 day period in March of 1990 where she went from being in a coma with near normal brain function to her being in a persistent vegetative state. This is the basis on which Michael Schiavo received his settlement from the doctors, the hospital, and the ambulance service and the autopsy could not determine how her deterioration occurred.
These facts show that hope for any improvement in Terri’s condition was misplaced and that her husband Michael did not abuse her while she was in the hospice. She died of dehydration.
Do I still believe that Terri Schiavo died needlessly? The answer is a qualified yes. I also believe that this debate over what to do about people like Terri is just getting started and I hope we’ve all learned some valuable lessons. I hope we’ve learned how easy it is for this kind of ethical debate to be hijacked by those on both sides of the issue with personal agendas. I hope we’ve learned that if we’re ever going to come to a consensus that we must somehow learn to talk to each other rather than past each other. And I hope we’ve learned that whatever side of this issue you came down on, the person on the other side was not wearing horns and sprouting a tail or trying to enslave all humanity in some kind of theocratic nightmare of a world that would take away your access to internet porn or ban your Girls Gone Wild videos.
It was a remarkable experience re-reading the dozen or so posts I wrote on the Schiavo matter. I was surprised at the depth of feeling, the emotional temperature of the articles. I remember some of them were extremely easy to write because the feelings the Schiavo matter engendered made the words flow from a place I had never written from – the heart. For a someone who considers himself something of a rationalist, this is unsettling. I found that I cared about “big things” – things that poets and novelists spend a lifetime trying to capture and put on paper. For instance, here I tried to distill 2000 years of western civilization’s thinking on life into a couple of paragraphs:
The rules that societies set up nearly two thousand years ago to take the decision to end life out of the hands of humans and place it in the hands of the almighty were a radical departure from classical societies in the past. Both the Greeks and Romans routinely murdered the weak, the lame, even the sickly. Female children have been the target of post natal murders for thousands of years with the Chinese government going so far as feeling it had to issue an edict against the practice within the last two years.But the radical values of Christianity that posited the notion that God was in every human being not just up on a mountain or in the sky started to mitigate against the wanton slaughter of the helpless ones. When nation states formed in the late middle ages, the strictures against these kinds of killings were put into law.
But the real answer has to do with what’s unfortunately come to be known as “secular humanism†or more accurately, †human centrism.†This idea that we are the supreme arbiters of the universe (or at least this insignificant little corner of it) took hold at the turn of the 20th century as progressives fervently believed that both science and government, if used properly, could make this planet a secular Eden.
I can say with certainty that I’d never written anything like that before, although I must have had those thoughts for years. In a similar vein, I wrote this:
Human beings are the only creatures on this planet who are capable of contemplating their own death. This quirk of evolution has allowed us to create a grand mystique around a perfectly natural biological process that otherwise would remain, as it does in the rest of the animal kingdom, an instinctual matter. The problem is, no one wants to either contemplate it very much or talk about it. Most of us take the attitude that “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.â€Well, we better start thinking about it. As it stands now, the advocates for throwing away human beings as if they were nothing more than garbage bags full of rancid water and smelly old bones are winning. And the reason they’re winning is simple; very few people are paying attention.
My point then and now is simple: A dramatic change has occurred over the last 25 years that has radically altered the very definition of life. I wrote about here:
As monstrous as the rationale given by the granddaughter sounds, the outrage being committed here and elsewhere in the United States is not by confused, grieving, or even inconvenienced or greedy relatives; the crime against human dignity here is being committed by a medical community who has decided that their ever narrowing definition of what “life†is has gone beyond the simple mechanics of how the human body works and entered a metaphysical realm that used to be reserved for priests, shamans, rabbis, and philosophers.In short, they see themselves as a new strata of healers, a class of medical High Priests whose knowledge and experience regarding human health are now augmented by insight into the mysteries of consciousness itself. They are aided and abetted by ethicists that justify their actions, scientists who support their conclusions, lawyers who keep the legal ground from turning into quicksand beneath their feet, and a certain segment of the population that puts their faith in the ability of humans to glean eternal truth from empirical observation
This last was written when an Alabama woman was dumped into a hospice by her granddaughter despite a treatable condition. The woman, Mae Magourik, died a couple of months later. This fact doesn’t obviate the need to search our hearts on these matters and try to come to a consensus as a society about some very fundamental issues. What is life? Do we ration life giving care? Who is worth saving? Who makes that decision? Should we embrace euthanasia?
As I reread what I wrote about the Schiavo matter, I realize that, in a purely selfish way, the debate allowed me to know myself a little better. But was I right?
Clearly those who believed that Michael was the devil incarnate and that Terri had a chance for some kind of recovery were wrong. However, I find the gloating on that score this morning despciable and only confirms my belief that there were many who saw this issue as a way to bash the Christian right. That said, I can see where my initial unease with getting the Congress involved (though I supported it at the time as necessary) was well justified. I should have realized what would have happened when politics was added to this mix. Nitroglycerine added to gasoline is never a good idea especially when there were so many standing by with lit matches. I believed prior to Congressional interference (and still believe) that given the initial circumstances, I was right to join this fight.
Jody, who blogs at Steal the Bandwagon and is of one mind with Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy echoes that thought:
I don’t want to name names but some people hijacked a wonderful purposed group and created a screaming parade of psychotic idiots who were emotional and crazed and blind to the law. And honestly, I was one of them. I backed off when someone asked me, what do you want them to do, storm the nursing home and kidnap her like they did Elian Gonzalez…oh…and something sunk in my heart because I knew I was losing a battle.
Please don’t take this as a criticism toward Blogs for Terri as a blog or even as a group, I just feel that it got a bit “crazy†toward the end. Sometimes when someone believes something so much they become zealous and blind to anything but their end goal, usually when that happens, they fail to change minds because people just turn off. Are you surprised to hear me say this? Maybe.
I’m not surprised that someone like Beth, whose initial advocacy for Terri is what got me involved in the first place, would reach this conlcusion. The Randall Terry’s of this world were the ones that made me realize how much of a circus the battle had become. And when self-aggrandizing charlatans like Terry (or some of the self-important, Christian bashing strutting peacocks who came down on the opposite side of this issue) push themselves to the forefront of a debate like this, all hell can break loose. And it did.
Some bloggers have been fairly mild in their criticism this morning. Bill Ardolino:
This doesn’t critically undermine many of the ethical arguments on either side of the issue, but it certainly kills much of the over-the-top hyperbole and inaccuracy surrounding her condition.
Surprisingly understated and well said. I wish John Cole had been as circumspect:
Terri Schiavo had to be kept alive because of THEIR moral beliefs, not hers and her husbands. And because we didn’t allow or accept a political (and had they had their way, a judicial) assault on the most personal aspect of someone’s existence, their mortality and how to handle their end-of-life decisions, we are to be shamed. Because we didn’t have the necessary arrogance to tell Terri and Michael Schiavo to live by someone elses definition of life, we are villains. Because we felt that personal decisions should remain personal (to the extent that the Florida legal system allowed them to remain personal), we support a culture of death. It is nonsense, it is offensive, and it can’t go unchallenged.And that is all I am going to say about Terri Schiavo, absent some egregious silliness popping up. It is over. Let the women and her husband and her family rest in peace. I am sure you all will find someone else to use to your political ends in little or no time, but, for now, it is time to let Terri Schiavo be
I think that John is using a broad sword here when he should be using a scalpel. First and foremost, government does indeed have an interest in insuring that viable life is protected. In the case of protecting life, there is no such thing as personal. I believe that government should protect any life that’s viable outside of the womb. I also believe that government has a right to protect people at the end of life who may be afflicted with a variety of ailments, but are nevertheless capable of feeling love and giving affection in return. The elderly who are summarily dumped in hospices and left to die because they suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease are being, in my opinion, murdered. There is no ethical rationale for this practice. And it’s only going to get worse.
That said, I think Mr. Cole is correct in saying that politics should be kept out of these decisions. The problem, of course, is that’s extraordinarily naive. Living in a free society, the confluence of government and politics assures that these issues will take on a political character. Should individual cases be splattered all over the news? There I agree with John and hope from here on in the debate on these matters can be kept in the realm of the general rather than the specific.
Perhaps what surprised me most about the Schiavo matter was the depth of feeling it aroused on both sides. Yes there was a lof of ignorant Christain bashing as there was some unconscionable name calling and moral posturing on the right. But by and large, this was the result of strongly held personal beliefs reflecting the cultural, religious, and political realities of the individual. And if, like me, it made us think about these issues and learn something about ourselves, an enormous amount of good came of it.
UPDATE
There were a couple of other reactions I wanted to get. First, the Captain:
What we have left are the issues that started the debate in the first place. Unlike today’s New York Times editorial’s assertion on the subject, this was not a “right to die” case. Terri had never requested to die, not with any transparency or formality. All we had for witnesses on her state of mind was a husband who waited until after he had won a substantial lawsuit to recall a conversation in which Terri made an offhand comment about not wanting to live on a respirator, and two of his relatives who corroborated him. The husband had a conflict of interest in the matter, having started a new relationship with another woman and fathering two children. On the other side, Terri’s parents and siblings were willing to take over her medical care and the responsibility for its costs.Amd most of all, as the coroner affirmed yesterday, Terri was not dying.
Despite all of this, Florida decided that it would deliberately kill Terri on the basis of her husband’s wishes, without any living will or formal indication of her state of mind. As Rick Santorum said yesterday, such a ruling should have been allowed to receive a de novo hearing in federal court for a review, just as any death-penalty case would get. Without that, essentially Terri’s fate rested on two men, Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who refused to release the case to another court at any point in order to get a new hearing on the merits in front of another judge. And when the state decides to kill someone who isn’t dying on their own—as opposed to stopping artificial breathing/cardiac support for those who lack any ability to survive without it—it should have more substantial oversight before doing so, and it should have more to rely on than an estranged husband’s belated recollection of a superficial, general conversation as its basis.
I agree with the Captain for the most part. The problem of judicial oversight of such cases is that it’s impossible to prove conflict of interest. In the Schiavo matter, Michael also had the diagnosis of recognized medical experts (who turned out to be for all intents and purposes, correct) on his side.
I agree that it should have come down to the fact that Terri’s family was willing to assume the burdens outlined by Mr. Morrisey. Why Michael did not take this easy and obvious avenue of escape will remain for me the biggest mystery.
For me, the whole tragedy surrounding Terri and the people who wanted her dead didn’t hinge on how severely brain-damaged she was. She was alive and wasn’t on life support, and her husband’s credibility was extremely low, too low to trust his assertion that Terri wanted to die if ever severely brain-damaged. Forget about what you’d want if you were ever in the same condition. Take yourselves out of the equation.
The way they killed her was appalling, and I was angry for a long time afterward. I’m giving you a heads-up. Don’t be alarmed or disgusted by the liberal media and liberal bloggers (and some conservatives, too) declaring that Terri’s wayward husband is somehow “vindicated†by the autopsy report. The doctor-induced starvation was immoral.
I agree. Michael was in no way “vindicated” by the autopsy report. If you believe he was incorrect in seeking Terri’s death in the first place, there’s no vindication or justification for that matter possible.
Michelle Malkin has done a thorough examination of the autopsy report:
Michael Schiavo and his supporters and doctors have long maintained that Terri suffered from an eating disorder. In interviews with Larry King, in countless newspaper articles over the past 15 years, and during his successful malpractice trial against Terri’s primary care physician, Michael Schiavo stressed his wife’s bulimia-related low potassium level as the cause of her initial collapse. Schiavo won $1 million in damages on the grounds that Schiavo’s obstetrician had failed to diagnose bulimia.Unquestioning journalists ran dozens of stories echoing the claim: “Eating disorder is real issue in Schiavo case,” “Terri’s life a lesson in dangers of bulimia,” “The lost lesson of Schiavo case: the dangers of eating disorders,” etc.
The autopsy report spends three-and-a-half pages debunking Schiavo’s claim, as well as the related claim that she had a heart attack (or, more medically precise, myocardial infarction). But if mentioned at all, the news reports I have seen have downplayed and buried these astonishing revelations (revelations which bear directly on Schiavo’s credibility regarding his claim that Terri would have wanted to die).
Viewing the issues in light of Michael’s misstatements about Terri’s “eating disorder,” I agree with Michelle that it calls into question other statements made by Michael. But as other commenters have pointed out, Michael’s claim that Terri wanted to die was buttressed by her best friend – Michael’s sister – and must be taken at face value.
I wanted to get the reaction of a blogger from the left but have been disappointed and outraged at the gloating and recriminatory tone used at the sites I’ve seen. If someone wants to point me to a site that treats this issue with the seriousness it deserves and in a non-political manner, I will gladly link to it.
UPDATE II: THE “ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE” EDITION
No sooner did I ask for a sensible post from the other side of this issue than Mona in the comments section of this post answers my prayer:
Mr. Moran, I volunteer in a program that services retarded adults, some of whom have IQs as low as 15. The profoundly retarded are entirely incapable of comprehending the purpose of a feeding tube, or what it would mean if it were removed. The highlights of one individual’s day is seeing his mother visit and he coos at her, and he also enjoys playing with his feces, which the staff seek to prevent his doing. The idea he could comprehend the implications of an order to remove a feeding tube and beg to live is absurd, and he HAS a measurable IQ. Terri had none at all.Lies were told. Many of them. All buttressing an increasingly rancid attack on the Florida judiciary. Judge Greer had to begin living under armed guard.
Mr. and Mrs. Schindler can be entirely forgiven for deluding themselves that Terri was interacting and responding. But the cretins, legal and otherwise, who surrounded them and nurtured these fantasies and peddled them all over the media, can only be reviled.
I certainly hope that Mona is not advocating euthanasia for her young retarded charge. Are we going to define life now as reserved for those who can comprehend what it means to die? That’s a world I don’t want to live in and will fight to prevent. That said, please read Mona’s entire comment as she makes some excellent legal points.
7:46 am
First and foremost, government does indeed have an interest in insuring that viable life is protected. In the case of protecting life, there is no such thing as personal.
Except for the strange conditional “viable” part, I would say you’re exactly right.
The inalienable rights, according to our Founders and to the people who influenced them, are to life, liberty, and property. These are not of equal importance; they are listed from most to least important because of their hierarchy of dependence.
One cannot enjoy one’s right to liberty and property without one’s life.
One cannot enjoy one’s right to property without one’s liberty.
Any government which infringes on these rights without due process (i.e., trial by jury,) no matter what euphemism they use to do so (e.g., the “right to privacy” or the “right to die,”) is flirting with tyranny.
7:55 am
Very thoughtful and well-written. The politicizing of it, the “making a Federal case out it” (literally), made me ill, too. I blew up when Congress intervened. Beth summarized well the feeling of many who might have felt that their honest views got hijacked.
My own views have been expressed well enough by the bloggers I linked to: Bill Ardolino, John Cole, Andy WWR.
It is a very, very sad case. In most tragic circumstances like this, the family resolves it within the family members themselves. In this case, even more tragically, because the family members didn’t agree the Florida state courts got involved for 7 years (or whatever). IMHO, that was far enough. If there was ever a time for us to think about what matters are best left at a local level, this was it. Politicizing it Federally really bothered me.
(Because you asked.)
Thanks
8:03 am
Mel Martinez
NYT: Schiavo Autopsy Renews Debate on Legislative Actions Senator Mel Martinez, the Florida Republican who pressed the case most, said he has since had second thoughts about Congress’s involvement. “I really probably come to the view this has to be m…
9:12 am
Sub Minister Maximus of Atomic Fusion
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … It’s Stop the ACLU Thursday
11:01 am
Mr. Moran, thank you for a very measured and obviously heart-felt analysis. Myself, I was appalled by the Save Terri! forces, and largely continue to be. Further, there are issues in the Mae Magourik matter that were, to say the least, under-reported and do make a difference to understanding what Mae’s granddaughter was doing. In both the Schiavo and Magourik cases there were somewhat complicated but important legal issues at play that were so entirely misunderstood by so many.
Longstanding Florida law required Judge Greer to take testimony as to Terri’s wishes, in the absence of her having executed an advance directive. Indeed, the FL constitution had long been held to require that this be done, to preserve Terri’s (or any other Floridian’s) right to privacy.
Greer heard from three people— including Michael Schiavo’s sister whom it was not disputed had been Terri’s closest friend—that she would want the tube pulled if she was PVS. Greer also took testimony from a psychologist with expertise in the views of people in Terri’s age cohort and her demographics—we came of age during the Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan cases, and many of us made loud statements to friends and family that we would want the tube pulled. (In the Cruzan PVS case, Nancy’s parents were eventually permitted to pull the tube based on testimony about her orally stated wishes—were Mr. and Mrs. Cruzan “murdering” their daughter?)
So, Judge Greer followed the law he was mandated to follow, and he also, in my view, came to the correct decision where he enjoyed discretion.
The anti-judiciary feeding frenzy that exploded from the Save Terri! forces obscured these facts with appeals to increasingly feverish and bizarre conspiracy theories implicating Greer, the hospice in which Terri resided, the medical personnel, and even the police. To listen to these folks, a horrible plot initiated by wife-beating Michael Schiavo had taken grip in Pinellas County, Florida.
We were told she could track balloons and that her face lit up when her mother entered a room—but she was blind. Randall Terry and some on the Schindlers’ legal team insisted that Terri wept in her mother’s arms when “informed” the tube was to be removed; that she began articulating the sentence “I want to live.”
Mr. Moran, I volunteer in a program that services retarded adults, some of whom have IQs as low as 15. The profoundly retarded are entirely incapable of comprehending the purpose of a feeding tube, or what it would mean if it were removed. The highlights of one individual’s day is seeing his mother visit and he coos at her, and he also enjoys playing with his feces, which the staff seek to prevent his doing. The idea he could comprehend the implications of an order to remove a feeding tube and beg to live is absurd, and he HAS a measurable IQ. Terri had none at all.
Lies were told. Many of them. All buttressing an increasingly rancid attack on the Florida judiciary. Judge Greer had to begin living under armed guard.
Mr. and Mrs. Schindler can be entirely forgiven for deluding themselves that Terri was interacting and responding. But the cretins, legal and otherwise, who surrounded them and nurtured these fantasies and peddled them all over the media, can only be reviled.
The Florida courts are not Murder, Inc. Terri was PVS and had a right, per Florida law, to have testimony taken as to her wishes, and her tube removed if that was determined to be consistent with her wishes. Floridians who object to this state of affairs should amend their constitution (and several facilitating statutes) if the results in Schiavo displease them. But as it stands, the courts there proceeded entirely properly, and it is unpatriotic to carry on a jihad against our probate courts, a bedrock institution of our nation of laws. (And no, I’m not a liberal; I’m a hawkish libertarian who voted for Bush in ‘04, and was not concerned about the Christian right until beholding their harmful antics in the Schiavo matter.)
Well, I’ve gone on long enough. Perhaps I will contribute my views on the Magourik case in a subsequent post, if any are interested.
12:41 pm
Ah, my ‘puter issues that I emailed Mr. Moran about notwithstanding, I was able finally to return to this site, and I want to post this:
Mr.Moran, thank you for your consideration of my comments. And to answer your question, no, I most adamantly do not believe that retarded people should be killed. The reason I am involved in the program I referenced is because my 22-year-old son is serviced by it; he, however, is mildly retarded and semi-autistic, not profoundly retarded. But all of the people in that program have minds and are able to interact with the world, however minimally.
I oppose abortion, and have only recently, and reluctantly, concluded that for purely pragmatic reasons it should be legal in the first trimester. The fetus may not be aware at 8 weeks, but leave him/her alone and s/he will awake to awareness.
By contrast, people in PVS are gone. There is no mind left to generate personality (profoundly retarded people do have personalities) and they will never reawaken. Their self is dead but their body lives, if artificial feeding is undertaken; in prior generations their bodies would have joined their minds in death, because before feeding tubes the same reason they lack self/mind would cause them to be unable to take in sufficient nourishment to keep the body going.
In my view, when it comes to PVS, artificial feeding technology is not a blessing. Many see it the same way, and after the Quinlan and Cruzan cases made their media splash, we saw the advent of advance directives in which most of us (in my legal experience) direct to have the tube pulled in case of PVS. (Mae Magourik’s advance directive so stated: But that term in her living will was not implicated or controlled by the episode that came to publicity. More on that if anyone cares to hear it.)
You make note of Captain Ed’s discussion of Michael Schiavo allegedly having a conflict of interest. That would be the case for any spouse where the other becomes PVS. In no sense at all could Terri continue to provide any spousal supports to Michael, not physically and not emotionally.
I do not for one minute believe that most spouses would not, when PVS became established and all hope for miracle cure subsides, move on to other romantic interests. That is human. It is what I would want my daughter-in-law to do if my 26-year-old son became PVS, and I would still trust her to carry out my son’s known wishes. And in any event, the guardian ad litem appointed by Governor Jeb Bush found that Michael had behaved with extraordinary solicitude toward Terri, even flying to California with her to pursue an experimental therapy that failed. Guardians and the courts were well-satisfied that Michael was upholding his duties to his wife.
The demonization of Michael Schiavo—buttressed by lies and slanders spewed all over the Internet that are flatly contradicted by GAL reports and court findings—have been appalling. Ditto the extreme and baseless attacks on the judiciary. For the first time, I began questioning my vote for Bush, altho I no longer do (the war on terror remains a paramount issue for me).
And for the first time, I am willing to entertain that the religious right can be a force for serious harm. I had not been in that camp before.
12:41 pm
Nicely done. I think you and Bill Ardolino have done very well with this issue. I think John Cole’s performance is described well in your post.
1:20 pm
And I disagree with Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber: the autopsy report vindicates both Michael Schiavo and the Florida courts. Florida lawyer Matt Conigliaro maintains a fine legal blog and has excellent analysis as well as links to all available legal documents in this long litigation. Matt says this:
Concerns about the cause of [Terri’s] collapse were injected into the feeding tube litigation in 2002—twelve years after the fact and after two trials on her wishes and her condition—through claims that Michael attacked Terri and provoked the collapse. Those claims were intended to discredit Michael and cast a criminal pall over the situation, which to an extent is what happened. But one of the medical examiner’s strongest findings was that the evidence is inconsistent with the notion anyone caused her collapse by beating or strangling her.
I would strongly recommend a perusal of Matt’s Abstract Appeal blog, where he also addresses the bulimia and eating disorder findings. (Michael Schiavo did not diagnose Terri with cardiac arrest; physicians at the time of her collapse did, as you can read in the many court documents at this site. The autopsy report rebuts those doctors on that score, not Michael Schiavo.)
Matt concludes his discussion of the autopsy report by stating: When everything is said, the medical examiner’s report substantiates that the court system did its job well in handling Terri’s case .
I agree. And those who ranted that Michael beat and strangled Terri, or in any manner abused her —findings debunked by the autopsy report —owe him a huge apology. Not the sneering about irrelevancies that Malkin and Barber are engaging in.
4:04 pm
I appreciate seeing a reasoned look, and look back, at this emotional situation. I disagree with some things you believe, generally regarding the “best” decision making level to resolve these matters; but I surely believe we could talk about it without doing violence. However, you lost me more than a bit when you cite LawShawn Barber approvingly; especially “For me, the whole tragedy surrounding Terri and the people who wanted her dead didn’t hinge on how severely brain-damaged she was. She was alive and wasn’t on life support”. This is exactly the demonizing (if you disagree with me you are a murderer
) and distortion (if being unable to live without a feeding tube is not life support, Ms. Barber’s definition is far from mine) that prevents discussion. The casual and incredibly demeaning assumption that anyone intentionally and willfully “killed” Terry Schiavo, particularly from someone with no personal connection to anyone involved, is disgusting.
4:12 pm
I do not for one minute believe that most spouses would not, when PVS became established and all hope for miracle cure subsides, move on to other romantic interests. That is human. It is what I would want my daughter-in-law to do if my 26-year-old son became PVS, and I would still trust her to carry out my son’s known wishes.
What if your son wished to live, but your daughter-in-law insisted he didn’t?
Or what if your son wanted no extraordinary measures taken to prolong his life, but eight years after he fell into a PVS the law was changed to reclassify an ordinary care measure he is receiving as an extraordinary measure?
4:17 pm
I’m not sure tht Michael Schiavo was vindicated, but he sure came out looking alot more honest than the Schindlers
!! I hope that crazy zealots like Randal Terry have been expsed as the whackos of our time!!
4:19 pm
les wrote:
This is exactly the demonizing (if you disagree with me you are a murderer) and distortion (if being unable to live without a feeding tube is not life support, Ms. Barber’s definition is far from mine) that prevents discussion. The casual and incredibly demeaning assumption that anyone intentionally and willfully “killed” Terry Schiavo, particularly from someone with no personal connection to anyone involved, is disgusting.
It wasn’t just the feeding tube, but all hydration and nutrition, oral included, that was removed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she couldn’t swallow (saliva yes, food & water no,) she would have aspirated food & water and died (a much worse sort of dead than dehydrating her, surely), blah blah blah.
4:41 pm
Sue D. says:
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, she couldn’t swallow (saliva yes, food & water no,) she would have aspirated food & water and died (a much worse sort of dead than dehydrating her, surely), blah blah blah.”
Culture of life, indeed. Or is this the authoritative onsite medical opinion that startlingly unveils the errors in the autopsy and years of diagnosis and treatment. Hey
Terry never needed the feeding tube
!
5:35 pm
What if your son wished to live, but your daughter-in-law insisted he didn’t?
Or what if your son wanted no extraordinary measures taken to prolong his life, but eight years after he fell into a PVS the law was changed to reclassify an ordinary care measure he is receiving as an extraordinary measure?
As to the last, it would be irrelevant. I drafted my son’s Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and therein he specifies the removal of a feeding tube if he has been diagnosed as PVS for at least 18 mos. His DPA should control.(However, not necessarily, as you can read about at the Abstract Appeal blog I linked to above. In many jurisdictions written directives can be found to have been orally revoked, which retains potential for a can of worms like Schiavo no matter that wishes have been recited in a formal document. There is an ironclad rule that testamentary wills cannot be orally modified, and some think this should also be true of advance directives. But then again, what if a person who had a DPA like my son’s changed her mind after the Schiavo thing but did not get around to modifying it before she became PVS? Should her tube be pulled even if every member of her family testifies she had changed her mind?)
As to the first, same thing. His DPA should control. If he had none, there would be no conflict as in Schiavo, because both of his parents as well as his wife are fully aware that he does not wish his body to be kept alive if he is PVS. Terri’s body joined her mind on 3/31, and the following Sunday was Easter. At a family dinner held at my son’s attended by my ex, myself, and the rest of our clan who live in the area, we discussed the issues surrounding Terri’s tube removal. We were unanimous that that is what we all would want. I hope many families have had such discussions, and also that they have drafted DPAs and/or Living Wills.
8:59 pm
Let me preface by saying that my mother died when I was 11 years old. She suffered a cerebral aneurysm (brain hemorrhage), fell into a coma and after two weeks was taken off life support. That decision was my father’s. No one who knew either he or she would doubt that this decision cost him dearly or that he would have died himself rather than to have made it. However, he had four motherless children to care for.
The truth is that he never really recovered from her death.
As you may imagine, I have intense convictions about the Schiavo tragedy and the political/media farce that it engendered. These convictions lead me to agree far more with John Cole than with Rick Moran.
That said, I found Rick’s piece to be thoughtful, measured and relatively evenhanded, though by no means objective. I found it almost convincing.
Then I read the update with the excerpt from Mona’s comment. I then came here and read her full comment.
It’s troubling that Rick chose to raise the gratuitous suggestion that Mona might, just possibly, believe in euthanizing the profoundly retarded. The suggestion seemingly inspired by by her work as a volunteer care giver for such folks. That and the fact that she is on the opposite side of the issue from Moran.
The revelation that her son is being cared for by the same facility where she volunteers seems to quash whatever curious chain of logic Rick was pursuing. That is,unless he cares to raise another gratuitous suggestion.
To reiterate: I found Rick’s tone almost convincing. Almost.
12:25 am
“But the radical values of Christianity that posited the notion that God was in every human being not just up on a mountain or in the sky started to mitigate against the wanton slaughter of the helpless ones.”
this is actually a Jewish value, fully articulated in our scriptures (what you call the “Old Testament”). Christianity got it from us. We continued to refine and promote it. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t smear us by implying that it wasn’t there till you “improved” on our ethics. Thank you!
6:05 am
Things I Missed While Away
Besides Margi coming up preggers . . . an awful lot. First of all, the continued rise of the Cotillion. I’m indebted to Beth, Jody, Janette, the American Housewife (and how much do I love that blog design? Ooh!), and…
2:28 am
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
11:21 pm
Yet more on the right to eat.
Previous post on the Schiavo autopsy here. Some of my commenters seem determined to keep repeating Straw Men #1 and #2. (As we all know, if you keep repeating something loudly enough and long enough, it becomes true.) So…
9:20 am
[...] osis Project Nothing La Shawn Barber Perkmashin Gross The Black Republican Rick over at Right Wing Nut House as a very good essay on this story. It is a m [...]
6:39 pm
Yet more on the right to eat
Previous post on the Schiavo autopsy here. Some of my commenters seem determined to keep repeating Straw Men #1 and #2. (As we all know, if you keep repeating something loudly enough and long enough, it becomes true.) So…