Terri Tried Saying She Wants To Live?

[MMMMMM]

If this is true there is no way Terri is in PVS. She's just severely brain-damaged. I don't see how people can simply dismiss reports like this.

Also below is another article which explains in legal terms how Terri's constitutional protections are being violated.

"Attorney: Terri cried at news
Claims brain-injured woman said she wants to live

An attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents said the severely brain-injured woman cried and yelled out that she wants to live after being told today her life-sustaining feeding tube was about to be removed by court order.

Barbara Weller was in Terri Schiavo's room at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., when the encounter took place, according to activist Randall Terry, who spoke with WorldNetDaily from outside the building as demonstrators continued a vigil.

If true, the report apparently refutes the court's finding that Terri Schiavo is in a "persistant vegetative state" and cannot currently express her wishes. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, contends she had indicated she would not want to live in such a condition, but parents Robert and Mary Schindler dispute that and suspect he is responsible for the 1990 incident in which oxygen to her brain was temporarily cut off, causing severe brain damage.

Weller essentially told Terri Schiavo, "You had better say you want to live or they will kill you. Just say you want to live."

Schiavo responded with a drawn out, "IIIIII," then screamed out "waaaaaaaa" so loudly that a police officer stationed outside the room came in.

The officer then ordered Weller removed from the room, according to Terry.

The event was witnessed by Terri Schiavo's sister Suzanne Vitadamo and Suzanne's husband Michael.

"I talked to Suzy and Michael, and they both said it was unbelievable," Terry said. "It was very articulate, for Terri, but they also say this is normal [for her to communicate]."

Terry explained the family says Schiavo often is talkative, though similar to a 10-month-old.

"The words usually are not discernable, but she's responsive to commands, uses slow diction and her voice lilts to show emotion and context," he said.

Weller teared up after hearing Schiavo respond today, Terry said, and indicated Schiavo was crying.

Terry has established a website, helpterri.com with information about how to get involved, including phone numbers of lawmakers and details of a rally and lobby-training sessions to be held next week in the Florida capital, Tallahassee, beginning Monday.

"We need people there Monday night, people who have never lobbied before, to come, and we're going to be begging the [Florida] Senate to get its act together," Terry said.

Doctors removed Terri Schiavo's feeding tube today to carry out her estranged husband's requested court order.

Barring an intervention, she is expected to live another week to 10 days.

The tube removal came after a Florida judge blocked an eleventh-hour end-run waged by members of House and Senate panels, ruling the device can be removed immediately.

Early this morning, the House Government Reform Committee decided to launch an investigation into the case and issued subpoenas that order doctors and the administrator at the hospice facility not to remove her feeding tube and keep her alive until the investigation is complete.

At the same time, the Senate Health Committee also requested Terri and Michael Schiavo appear at an official committee hearing March 28.

As a result, minutes before the 1 p.m. EST deadline for the tube removal passed Pinellas Circuit Court Judge David Demers ordered the feeding tube remain in place while presiding Judge George Greer addresses the matter of the congressional subpoenas in a court hearing.

But an hour later, Greer disregarded the subpoenas and again ordered the feeding tube pulled. "

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43383


Terri also is being deprived of her life by the state without her constitutional rights to due process being satisfied (which must include "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" not merely "clear and convincing evidence"). See the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the following article for legal discussion:

"Terri Schiavo has been ordered by a state judge to be killed by starvation and dehydration. The order implicates her Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights not to be deprived of life absent due process of law — the courts that have examined this case do not dispute this indisputable point. I believe it is unquestionably the law of the United States — today, already, without any need to change the law for Terri's benefit — that due process mandates that no person may be deprived of life by state action unless every factual predicate legally necessary to validate the state action has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

The two factual predicates that triggered the state order in this case — that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) and that she evinced a desire to die rather than be sustained by food and water if ever she were in a PVS — were not established by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This cannot be denied. Even the Florida court, which claims (however dubiously) to have made its conclusions using a lesser "clear and convincing evidence" standard, cannot and presumably would not contend that the reasonable doubt standard was used in the state proceedings. Where a taking of life by state action is at issue, the Constitution minimally requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Period.

I believe due process probably also requires a jury trial and counsel for Terri at every stage of proceedings aimed at taking her life. But that is beside the point for the moment. The main consideration is that an American is being killed by a court order based on fact-finding so palpably unreliable there cannot even be the pretense that the due-process yardstick our country has long demanded in death cases was used. No one contends the Florida court required proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Put another way, if PVS were considered a crime Terri had been indicted for, rather than a condition she is afflicted by, the record in this case would have been laughed out of court five minutes after an appellate tribunal started looking at it. Not because the proof was inadequate, although it surely was. Simply because the wrong standard was used. If a Florida court tried to deprive a person of life based on facts establishing capital murder that had been proved only by clear and convincing evidence, the editorial pages would be teeming with condemnation. Both the ACLU and the death-penalty bar would be lined up for miles outside the Supreme Court in anger over a due-process outrage. And they'd be right.

In the United States, we require proof beyond a reasonable doubt on all facts necessary to the judgment before someone is killed by the machinery of the justice system. Nothing less will do.

As Terri Schiavo's court-ordered killing has proceeded, a spirited debate has arisen between, on the one hand, conservatives outraged by what they (here, I should say "we") regard as abominable state action, and, on the other, conservatives who, however sympathetic to Terri's plight, remain understandably suspicious of both federal encroachment on areas traditionally committed to the sovereign authority of the states, and encroachment by any government on areas best left to individual citizens.

"Isn't what you're really asking for," the latter group presses the former, "substantive due process?" In conservative circles, this is akin to saying: "Aren't you asking that we all be stricken with Bubonic Plague?" Mischievous substantive due process, on this accounting, is one of the principal ways (the murky and thus seemingly boundless "right to privacy" being another) that judges have been able to knead our Constitution over time to fit the pieties of the moment and, more importantly, to transfer decision-making authority from the democratic ballot box to themselves, reducing freedom.

The concern is a legitimate one, but it is inapposite in the circumstances of Terri Schiavo's case. Those of us who believe government action — whether by U.S. or Florida authorities — must be taken to save Terri's life should not shrink from the forthright admission that we are asking for her federal due-process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to be given substantive content.

That doesn't mean it is wrong to do so. And it doesn't mean the law has to be changed. In truth, we are not asking for the creation of new rights woven out of whole cloth. We are asking very simply for two things: First, that in assessing this situation, people stop elevating form over substance; and second that existing due-process principles — not new ones manufactured for the situation — be applied to a situation that cries out for their application.

As for the first point, though we have pointed out the absurdity that Terri, an innocent woman who does not even stand accused of a crime, is being treated far worse by our law than a hardened criminal would be, we are reminded again and again that Terri's case is a civil case, not a criminal case. A private action, not a public prosecution. Therefore, so the argument goes, the due-process and other constitutional protections that apply to criminals are not germane to Terri's situation.

This is the worst kind of "form over substance" claim. A state court has issued an order that has no other purpose and effect than to kill Terri Schiavo. Without that order, she would be living unthreatened and being sustained today. Because of it, she is being detained, those who would help her are being kept at bay by the police, and she is being slowly killed. Functionally, this situation is no different from the entry of a judgment in a capital case ordering an execution.

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments do not distinguish between the lives of capital murderers and the lives of other persons. They don't mention "criminal" and "civil" distinctions. In this context, they command simply that no person shall be deprived of "life...without due process of law." There is no reason in the text of the Constitution to believe that "due process of law" should have a different meaning depending on whether the life to be taken by state action is that of a convicted criminal or that of some other person.

Complementing that textual consideration are the equities involved. Given the absence of any apparent reason for having one set of due process requirements for murderers and another set for everyone else, if society nevertheless decides to have different requirements, why in the world would we think the murderers should get the better process? Such a notion is ridiculous on its face.

It is also unrealistic. Where the Constitution talks about the taking of life by due process of law, it is obviously talking about criminal defendants. At the time of the founding, in the domestic context, the federal and state governments did not kill Americans other than criminal defendants — killing other citizens is a modern development. The people who raise "substantive due process" as if it were a worthy objection have it backwards. It is not we who seek a dramatic change. It is they who push a radical notion: that even though the constitution describes only one "due process of law" for takings of life, and even though the Supreme Court has imposed minimal standards for that due process on the states for eons, somehow, in the last decade or so, there has supposedly grown up, without our notice, a second, laxer due process to be applied to innocent people who haven't killed anyone. Nonsense.

It is anything but clear that society has actually made a conscious decision to create two (or more) different varieties of death-related due process — one for criminals and one for everyone else. That we now seem to have two is a historical accident, no doubt owing to the facts (a) that killing non-defendants is so novel the due process implications have not been thought through, and (b) while capital punishment for criminal defendants is firmly rooted, our society shies from honestly acknowledging that its governments are actually taking the lives (as opposed to euphemistically removing the feeding tubes) of non-criminals.

Having refused even to confront honestly that our state governments are now in the business of killing the innocent, we have not yet gotten around to considering that there are no constitutional shortcuts. The due process involved in such takings of life must be measure up to the due process provided for other state takings of life.

Why would it be important to perform such a measurement? Because there is a mature body of capital-punishment law, which grows ever more restrictive and weighs ever more presumptively against execution. (For what little it may be worth, I am reluctantly in favor of the death penalty — I am not seeking here to advance an anti-capital agenda.) Significantly, moreover, this jurisprudence proceeds from one unmistakeable premise: that death is different. Because human beings are prone to error in decision-making, and because death is incorrigible, state takings of life are sui generis.

Death may not, even in a worthy case, be imposed absent extraordinary protections. The "qualitative difference between death and other penalties," as the Supreme Court put it in Lowenfeld v. Phelps (1988), "calls for a greater degree of reliability when the death sentence is imposed." Because the taking of life stands on a different plain as the most serious, irrevocable action that government can take, the safeguards that have been imposed by the Supreme Court stand as the minimum threshold requirements that government must satisfy before it may order death consistent with the due process requirements of the Constitution.

This state of affairs, it must be noted, exists in addition to an indisputable fact my states'-rights friends strain to avoid here: There is absolutely nothing new about this federal intrusion. The states and their courts are already compelled by the incorporation doctrine (the Supreme Court's application to the states of some, but not all, of the Bill of Rights protections that the federal government must honor) to meet many, many minimum federal standards when it comes to the due process in the context of deprivations involving the three fundamental interests explicitly identified in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments: life, liberty, and property.

Understandably, states'-rights advocates despise the incorporation doctrine. But resenting it does not make it go away. Nor does it justify unprincipled distinctions — such as the stubborn insistence that an order which has exactly the same effect on exactly the same fundamental interest should be treated differently for due-process purposes based on whether it arises out of a civil as opposed to a criminal case. Again, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments do not talk about civil and criminal cases; they talk about government-sanctioned actions that deprive a person of life.

Is this substantive due process? Of course it is. But it already exists, it is irreversible, and it is so much a part of our legal tradition now that we don't even think about it any longer.

It is also vital to any consideration of the constitutionality of Terri's court-ordered death. In capital cases, as in all criminal cases, the government is required to prove all the essential facts that predicate a death sentence beyond a reasonable doubt. But because of the aforementioned special imperative of reliability in capital cases, the Supreme Court has emphasized the need for searching review on a comprehensive record whenever death is ordered.

Terri's case is analogous to a criminal death-penalty case in that there are crucial factual predicates — which would be called "essential elements" in the criminal context — that must be established before an order triggering death by depriving sustenance may properly issue. She must be shown to be in a persistent vegetative state and to have convincingly evinced — while she had the capacity to do so — a desire not to receive sustaining food and water if she were ever in this most dire of conditions. Yet, as noted above, even though this is a death case, the fact-finding here has not proceeded on a reasonable doubt standard. It has proceeded on the lesser evidentiary standard of clear and convincing evidence.

As a matter of constitutional due process, this is unacceptable. Indeed, we should be frightened by it, because if here, in a matter literally of life and death, we are losing reasonable doubt — a core protection for Americans against excessive state action — we are sure to lose it in other areas as well.

As the Supreme Court has only recently underscored (in Booker and Fanfan, the cases that held the federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional), nothing less than reasonable doubt is acceptable for facts that trigger increases in a sentence — even if the fact would increase the sentence by a day, much less result in the defendant's death. If the most heinous terrorist had been sentenced to die, and it was later shown on appeal that the court had mistakenly instructed the jury that government was permitted to prove some essential fact merely by clear and convincing evidence, the death sentence (and perhaps the conviction itself) would be reversed. Instantly. Even if the evidence had been overwhelming. Reasonable doubt is that basic in our tradition.

I respectfully believe the attorneys for Terri's parents should go back to the federal district court and seek the reinsertion of her feeding tube — whether by a temporary restraining order (TRO) or the court's power under the All Writs Act — on the narrow but epically important ground that due process in the United States requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt before a court may issue an order that results in the taking of life, a right that Terri has been denied.

The law passed by Congress Sunday night clearly permits them to do this. It says in any suit brought by Terri's parents:

...the District Court shall determine de novo any claim of a violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo within the scope of this Act [i.e., claims under "under the Constitution or laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life"] notwithstanding any prior State court determination and regardless of whether such a claim has previously been raised, considered, or decided in State court proceedings....

Terri's parents did not raise the specific due-process claim described here in federal court (nor do I believe they ever did so in the state courts). But if the federal legislation means anything, it means they have not waived any claims — especially one so fundamental — and they are entitled to de novo review on any claims raised.

If, as has already occurred once, the federal district court declines to use its abundant authority under the All Writs Act to stop the clock, it would proceed to assess the claim under ordinary TRO standards — which call for evaluating the likelihood of success. In this case, here's what that would mean: To deny a TRO, a federal district court would have to inform us all that it is now permissible under the due process standards of the United States for a state to order the taking of life on fact-finding based on something flimsier than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

That seems highly unlikely. Indeed, it seems ridiculous. The court will find abundant, long-established, black-letter law that reasonable-doubt reliability is a sine qua non when the stakes are life and death. I doubt the judge will find much, if any, support — in a contested case where the question was specifically raised and actual considered by a court — standing for what would be the revolutionary proposition that the state may order death on the insufficient evidentiary standard used here. If there is such authority, it would be good for the American people to know about it.

If I am right, if reasonable doubt is the minimum constitutional requirement, then the court should proceed to a full-blown hearing at which the evidence of Terri's supposed PVS and desire to die are weighed anew — de novo — on the more demanding evidentiary standard. Perhaps then we would learn why basic, easy-to-do scientific tests to measure brain damage were not done in Terri's case; whether the clinical observation on which the Florida court relied (essentially, a 45-minute examination by a neurologist who is a right-to-die zealot) was adequate for a death case; and whether Michael Schiavo was credible when he suddenly remembered, seven years after the fact, that Terri happened to mention that she wanted to die if she were ever in a PVS.

Maybe it will turn out that the evidence is sufficient, and that the appropriate thing to do is remove the tube and end Terri's life. But at least then we would know, as a society, that Terri was actually given what the constitution commands: due process of law.

She has not gotten it to date. Not by a long shot.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies."

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200503250823.asp

[masse75]

Here are some straws...start grasping.

[fluxrad]

Yeah, I totally agree.

Personally, I think Terri is just screwing with people. I mean, I think she just lies there, completely out of it when other people are around, but then as soon as everyone leaves and it's just her, her parents, and their cronies, Terri gets up and starts tapdancing and cooking delicious udon noodles for everyone present.

Her parents have essentially gone mad over the past 15 years and this does nothing more than make that case. Mr. Schindler at one point claimed that Terri whispered to him that she wants to live. I'm not saying that this probably didn't happen. I'm saying that it definitely didn't happen. She does not have the brain capacity to process things like speech. For the last time: Terri Schiavo cannot process language. Moreover, even if by some miracle of God in heaven she could process language, she would still be unable to fully comprehend the meaning of that language.

The Schindlers have convinced themselves that outright fabrications are acceptable so long as it keeps their daughter alive. To be quite honest, I feel very sorry for them, not because they're going to lose their daughter (that happened 15 years ago) but because they're so deluded about the whole process.

On a side note: I have a theory about this whole mess and why so many people have sided with her parents so I'm hoping you can answer a couple of questions for me.

1. Are you pro-choice?

2. When did you first hear about the Terri Schiavo incident?

3. How long after first hearing about her did you see the video released by her parents?

4. Are you religious? What denomination?

5. Do you agree with euthenasia at all?

[cardcounter0]

Randall Terry and WorldNetDaily ???

BawHawHahahahahahaha!

Hey, I just saw in the National Enquirer where the Bush twins were impregnated by Aliens from Outer Space, that would explain a lot.

Go buy some pants.

[whiskeytown]

what if she was trying to say "I want to die?" After 15 yrs. of being in that state, I would.

and here's a major wrench in the whole thicket of it - what if her husband is telling the truth (and I have no reason to believe he's not) - and she would have wanted the plug pulled, even if there's a slight chance she could be slightly rehabilated. What if, to her, not being alive, fit and able wasn't worth living. (and we have reason to believe she felt that way due to the fact she was starving herself BEFORE she got in that condition)

Speaking for myself, I don't care what the odds are - try the long shot surgery, but if it don't work, screw it - trapped in that existance for 15 yrs I'd be praying for death every single day.

But of course, what she might have wanted is irrelevant, right? We can't let people go around making choices about whether they want to live or not...we need to do it for them.

My sincerest hope is that this backfires on the Republicans in 2006 - A lot of people are gonna be filling out living wills and making sure these idiots don't try the same stunt on them by getting them out of there in 2006.

RB

[ACPlayer]

So, what is the solution? Beyond a public airing of the "facts" from various sources with various agendas and implications of various agendas.

We certainly dont want the executive and legislature stepping into every decision between patient (or guardian) and their doctors -- the Right clearly want us to do that in this case showing how far the Republicans have strayed from conservative principles.

Clearly a set of laws have been passed by the legislature and signed by the executive and the courts are using these laws to establish procedure. Every court has ruled on this subject and others may rule as well. It has likely been put in front of a medical ethics committee at the hospital and been throughly reviewed.

If every disputed medical decision is subject to a media review and a special interest review the country would shut down as these decisions are being taken by families every singled day.

A very unfortunate situation but there are people in unfortunate situations every day of the week.

[cardcounter0]

http://www.bartcop.com/call-surg-congress.jpg

[MMMMMM]

Fair questions, ACPlayer...but consider that in this case the STATE is intervening to force her to be deprived of her life. That is unacceptable constitutionally unless Terri has received due process as under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments. And such due process requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely "clear and convincing evidence" (the second article posted discusses this in more detail). Since both her wishes and her condition are diputed, and since death is irrevocable, I think Terri is being treated extremely unfairly (and apparently unconstituionally as well).

[MMMMMM]

It is sad that this has become a political pawn for some, but my deeper concern is that Terri is being deprived of her life by the state without adequate due process and while reasonable doubt still remains as to both her condition and her wishes.

The state could never get away with executing a criminal based on such evidence. Why shouldn't an innocent Terri be entitled to the same constitutional protections?

[ACPlayer]

How is the STATE intervening here? The only STATE intervention is the politicizing of the issues.

The decision is being made by her legal guardian. It has been subjected to intense review by state courts and (perhaps unconsitutionally) the fereral courts.

Do legal guardians always make the "right" decision? Probably not. Do legal guardians have "other agendas"? Probably quite often. Do Legal Guardians treat their wards "unfairly"? Probably so in many cases and depending on your definition of unfair.

Legal review is not STATE intervention.

[Zygote]

she doesn't have a cerebral cortex. the only thing left in its place is scar tissue. Without the cerebral cortex she is psychologically dead. she has no senses. she has no perception. she has no conciousness.

claiming she said she wants to live and it being true is as likely as a family member of chris reeve claiming the same thing and it being true. If reeve's family hypotheically made these claims, then why would you believe terry's family's claims over chris's family?

[MMMMMM]

The state is intervening by placing police officers at the hospice to enforce that nobody may give her water or nourishment in order to ensure that she be starved to death--and probably in other ways as well.

Did you read the National Review article by McCarthy? It is very well written, and seems sound (to this layman).

[ACPlayer]

The state could never get away with executing a criminal based on such evidence

There have never been unmediacized or disputed executions? You likely wont find them in your usual reading list (national review, world net) but trust me this same argument happens frequently in death penalty cases.

I would prefer the abolition of the death penalty and would prefer that all seriously ill people live forever. I am definitely against the case by case approach to problem solving.

[MMMMMM]

Zygote, it is DISPUTED by more than one doctor that she is in PVS or that she has no cerebral cortex. There are also numerous anecdotal evidences from various sources that she DOES respond in more than a reflexive way to various things.

Clearly there is REASONABLE DOUBT here.

The U.S. Constitution does not differentiate between criminal or civil cases when it comes to due process for depriving someone of their life.

[Lestat]

I think the parents are desperately grasping at anything now.

I don't want to make a seperate post, because what I have to say isn't important to anyone else. But I want to get this off my chest:

I think the biggest tragedy in this whole thing is that this poor woman is not being allowed to die with any sense of dignity. I think it's terrible that her parents have made such a public and pitiful spectacle of her. I understand that they are willing to do anything to save their daughter's life, but at least to me, some things are worse than death. She is dying a thousand deaths.

That said, if it were up to me I'd restore the tube. I'm not sure what the legalities are, but I do not believe she was (past tense), suffering. Maybe it's because I am not closely involved in the case and I don't know all the facts, but I have my doubts as to both her condition AND the motives of her husband.

I do not believe the husband should be allowed to make this decision. I don't care if my daughter is married or not, no guy is gonna tell me whether she should die! Spouses come and go, but our children are our children forever. It would kill me to have my kid die because of someone else's say-so.

Maybe we need new laws. A special board of doctors specifically trained to diagnose when quality of life is in a state where living is more cumbersome for an individual than dying. I know this is very dangerous territory. But we need someone, something, to protect us ironically from our own loved ones in this case. I can't help wonder if the parents aren't unwittingly being selfish and not acting in the best interest of Terri, but rather are just unable to let her go. It's sad.

The bottom line is that I have questions. A lot of people have questions. What harm can come from erring on the side of life? Again, her condition does not seem to make her suffer. She's went 15 years like this, what's another couple of months? Re-open the case. Re-look at the medical facts. If there's even a .001 chance that anyone is wrong (maybe she does have more awareness than we know about. maybe she can get better. maybe she wouldn't have wanted to die, etc.), then it is well worth exploring. If it is determined that there is no chance, then I think everyone including her parents needs to let go.

[ACPlayer]

They are being posted as a result of a court order requested bu the legal guardian.

The bogey man of state intervention is just that.

I have followed the case (loosely, I admit) in the New York Times.

[MMMMMM]

The only "evidence" against her is that her husband, who has conflicts of interest, suddenly remembered seven years after the accident, that she had made a comment about not wanting to live "like that" in reference to something they were watching on TV--and the husband's siblings said that was so.

The evaluation of her condition was split 3-2 by doctors in court, with 2 stating that she was not in PVS.

There have been various anecdotal evidences from various sources that she does indeed respond to people and more than merely reflexively. Now it has been reported that when the feeding tube removal situation was explained to her, and that it would proceed and she would die unless she would say she wants to live, she responded with a loud "AAAAHHH" or "IIIIIII" followed by a louder "WAAAAAAAA".

Both the judge, and the doctor Michael picked for Terri, are both right-to-die zealots. And Felos and Felos, the firm of George Felosd, Michael's attorney, donated to Judge Greer's reelection campaign.

If this whole thing isn't a railroad job to kill Terri Schiavo, nothing is. And the implications go well beyond the tragedy of this woman's life.

[ACPlayer]

Good thoughts.

Perhaps the legislature should take a second look at the definition of a legal guardian in cases of "pulling the plug". However the decision should be a family/doctor/hospital decision not a political board decision - IMO.

Of course when we get married we are fully aware that as a result of the marriage we are giving such decision making capability to our spouses and we are doing so voluntarily.

Anyone who has not, after reading this case, written clear instructions to handle this situation if it should arise -- well will only have themselves to blame. Correct?

[Zygote]

[ QUOTE ]

Zygote, it is DISPUTED by more than one doctor that she is in PVS or that she has no cerebral cortex.

[/ QUOTE ]

it can be disputed by a thousand doctors. it doesn't make it true.

[ QUOTE ]
There are also numerous anecdotal evidences from various sources that she DOES respond in more than a reflexive way to various things.


[/ QUOTE ]

there is no credible evidence of this.

[ QUOTE ]

Clearly there is REASONABLE DOUBT here.

[/ QUOTE ]

there really isn't. all medical evidence points to chris reeve having no pulse. all medical evidence points to terry having no cerebral cortex. there are many unreasnoble, but possible doubts that chris is alive and that terry can communicate.

[fluxrad]

[ QUOTE ]
If this whole thing isn't a railroad job to kill Terri Schiavo, nothing is. And the implications go well beyond the tragedy of this woman's life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed! Why does no one understand that there is a vast and tragic conspiracy by almost every court in the United States to murder Terri Schiavo, because she knows the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. Even the Supreme Court is in on this judicial activism. Why don't you people see this!??! There was a blog I read just the other day about Justice Rhenquist's secret meeting with Adolf Hitler (no he's not dead) to exterminate Terri Schiavo, by way of denying her appeal...for life!!!

Or...we could all take off our tinfoil hats, ponder the implications of occam's razor, and realize it is entirely more likely that Terri Schiavo's parents are grasping at straws, and that there is no high reaching judicial conspiracy to murder this woman. She does not, in fact, have microfilm of the Kennedy assassination. She doees not have proof of the faking of the moon landing. Michael Schiavo has not plotted with The Left and Pro-Abortion Aliens to kill her.

She is simply a vegitable who deserves a better death than any of us have seen fit to give her.

Oh, and re: the doctors you keep mentioning (the 3 vs. 2). Two were picked by Michael Schiavo, two were picked by the Schindlers, and one was picked by the court. Can you guess which 3 said she was in a permanent vegatative state and which 2 said she wasn't?

Stop buying into the bull@$% perpetuated exclusively by the Schindlers and the pro-life lobby.

Here's a decent rebuttal (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/23/204359/812) to the crap coming from the right on this one.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
The state is intervening by placing police officers at the hospice to enforce that nobody may give her water or nourishment in order to ensure that she be starved to death--and probably in other ways as well.


[/ QUOTE ]

In other words, the state is intervening by preventing an assault. Simply laughable.

[masse75]

[ QUOTE ]
Fair questions, ACPlayer...but consider that in this case the STATE is intervening to force her to be deprived of her life. That is unacceptable constitutionally unless Terri has received due process as under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments. And such due process requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely "clear and convincing evidence" (the second article posted discusses this in more detail). Since both her wishes and her condition are diputed, and since death is irrevocable, I think Terri is being treated extremely unfairly (and apparently unconstituionally as well).

[/ QUOTE ]

15 years of due process isn't enough?

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
15 years of due process isn't enough?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not enough until they rule in the way that you want.

[MMMMMM]

That isn't due process as required under the 5th and 14th amendments before the state may take life--READ the McCCarthy article before commenting further please.

[MMMMMM]

Elwood did you even READ the McCarthy article? I expect better things out of you especially in discussion of legal matters.

[fluxrad]

From the McCarthy article:

[ QUOTE ]
Where a taking of life by state action is at issue, the Constitution minimally requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Period.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where does it say that in the constitution? Seriously. Where? You'd figure a federalist would be pretty pissed off at someone attempting to insert "intent" into the constitution. I supppose it's excusable when a federalist is doing it, though.

[ QUOTE ]
Put another way, if PVS were considered a crime Terri had been indicted for, rather than a condition she is afflicted by, the record in this case would have been laughed out of court five minutes after an appellate tribunal started looking at it.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's the fallacy of the article and, more importantly, why no one but you is taking it seriously. This is not a criminal case. Criminal cases require a stringent proof of guilt because of the principle that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to put one innocent man in jail. In civil matters (i.e. the Schiavo case) there is no such requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[ QUOTE ]
If a Florida court tried to deprive a person of life based on facts establishing capital murder that had been proved only by clear and convincing evidence, the editorial pages would be teeming with condemnation.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, the author is trying to move the goal posts. The state is not taking anyone's life. The state is allowing Michael Schiavo to terminate life support in accordance with what it has found to be Terri's wishes.

Put simply, this article is replete with straw men and red herrings. Mr. McCarthy makes comparisons that are incorrect and invalid and, in doing so, attempts to discredit the argument for letting Terri Die. Nowhere does he bring up new evidence that Terri is conscious or self-aware. Instead he resorts to simple demagoguery (ironically, a tact conservatives usually accuse the left of using.)

The McCarthy article is tripe.

[InchoateHand]

66 USES FOR PERSISTENT VEGETARDS
1. Political Chess Piece
2. Beanbag Chair
3. Cat Scratching Post
4. Firewood Caddy
5. Elevator Counterweight
6. O2 / CO2 Converter
7. In-Sinkerator
8. "Resusci-Terri" Doll
9. Cosmetology Practice Bust
10. Sofa Ottoman
11. Draize Tester
12. Percussion Instrument
13. Throw Pillow
14. Puppy Teething Toy
15. Lawn Sculpture
16. Conversation Piece
17. Air Freshener
18. Paperweight
19. Umbrella Stand
20. Bottle Opener
21. Flypaper
22. Fertilizer Factory
23. Garden Hose Spool
24. Surrogate Mommy for Hire
25. Preschool Jungle Gym
26. Chicken Egg Incubator
27. Ashtray
28. Glove Mold
29. Shoe Tree
30. Punching Bag
31. Mousetrap
32. Candelabra
33. Florida Voter
34. Coat Rack
35. Stash Box
36. Whiteboard
37. Christmas Tree
38. Yogurt Maker
39. Scarecrow
40. Carpool Lane Passenger
41. Coal Mine Canary
42. Space Heater
43. Fangoria Cover Model
44. Mystery Meat
45. Boat Anchor
46. "Hannity & Schiavo"
47. Doorstop
48. National Intelligence Czar
49. Organ Farm
50. Minesweeper
51. Speedbump
52. Deep Sea Fishing Lure
53. Jello Mold
54. Wetnurse
55. Insulation
56. Support for Shelves
57. Ironing Board
58. Anvil
59. Cider Press
60. Pez Dispenser
61. Minature Golf Obstacle
62. Compost Turner
63. Medicine Ball
64. Cutting Board
65. Home Methane Farm
66. Swift Boat Veteran for Truth

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
This is not a criminal case. Criminal cases require a stringent proof of guilt because of the principle that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to put one innocent man in jail. In civil matters (i.e. the Schiavo case) there is no such requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.


[/ QUOTE ]

So the burden of proof to end an innocent person's life in a non-criminal case should be lower than the burden of proof in a capital criminal case??? People not charged with a crime are deservant of less protection??? That's absurd.

The constitution DOES NOT differentiate between criminal or civil when addressing the question of depriving someone of their life.

[ QUOTE ]
Again, the author is trying to move the goal posts. The state is not taking anyone's life. The state is allowing Michael Schiavo to terminate life support in accordance with what it has found to be Terri's wishes.

[/ QUOTE ]

The state enforcing her starvation is not depriving her of her life? Come on.

[MMMMMM]

Her status as PVS has been greatly disputed, and has certainly not been determined beyond a reasonable doubt.

[elwoodblues]

The article assumes things that are incorrect. The burden of proof isn't beyond a reasonable doubt. This isn't a criminal case. The Florida state legislature could have made that the burden of proof and they didn't.

There isn't state action, thus the due process arguments are interesting but irrelevant. A court resolving a dispute is not sufficient state action; nor is the state enforcing an otherwise lawful order. If it were, you could artificially create state action any time you wanted to make a private action fall under the arm of the constitution...just sue in court (state action) and don't follow the court's order thereby requiring the police/executive branch to act to enforce and then magically out of thin air you have state action and can make a constitutional claim where one doesn't exist.

[MMMMMM]

Thanks for your targeted input, Elwood. Now for some thoughts:

[ QUOTE ]
The article assumes things that are incorrect. The burden of proof isn't beyond a reasonable doubt. This isn't a criminal case. The Florida state legislature could have made that the burden of proof and they didn't.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't see how it makes any ethical or moral sense that the burden of proof should be lower when someone's life hangs in the balance.

[ QUOTE ]
There isn't state action, thus the due process arguments are interesting but irrelevant.

[/ QUOTE ]

It seems to me there is state action, because the state is enforcing her starvation. How can that not be state action?

[ QUOTE ]
A court resolving a dispute is not sufficient state action; nor is the state enforcing an otherwise lawful order. If it were, you could artificially create state action any time you wanted to make a private action fall under the arm of the constitution...just sue in court (state action) and don't follow the court's order thereby requiring the police/executive branch to act to enforce and then magically out of thin air you have state action and can make a constitutional claim where one doesn't exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

The most important Constitutional/Bill of Right matters concern the protection of our lives and liberties. Allowing these Constitutional protections to be sidestepped via the device of a civil action seems to me to be disingenous intellectually, contrary to the Constitution, and of significantly dangerous portent.

Our Constitutional protections supersede any civil matters, if the two should come into conflict, do they not? I don't think it makes sense that depriving someone of their life can be "only" a civil matter. It must necessarily be a constitutional matter as well: "No person...shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

Depriving Terri of her life without meeting the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a terrifying precedent. Heck, how about wholesale euthanasia in the future of the infirm, handicapped or elderly who require costly care: no need to PROVE anything, just submit some "clear and convincing evidence". How absolutely incredible. By the way George Soros is working on a new political project to move things in that approximate direction.

[sirio11]

Pretty funny list

[QuadsOverQuads]

All of this proves exactly one thing:

Republicans will believe ANYTHING, no matter how much it flies in the face of reality, just as long as it serves The Party Line.

Next up: "3-week old fetus mouths words to Star Spangled Banner. Abortion foes up in arms."


q/q

[Matty]

[ QUOTE ]

All of this proves exactly one thing:

[/ QUOTE ]Was already proven when John Kerry and John McCain became traitors, while Bush is regarded as a hero for getting drunk and abandoning his unit.

[QuadsOverQuads]

[ QUOTE ]
Was already proven when John Kerry and John McCain became traitors, while Bush is regarded as a hero for getting drunk and abandoning his unit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

The modern Republican movement has literally become so cult-like and Orwellian that it astonishes even a die-hard cynic like me. It's like they've literally abandoned the notion of Truth, in favor of whatever press-release is put out by Party Headquarters today. Honorable men would be ashamed for behaving like that.


q/q

[sirio11]

[ QUOTE ]
Agreed.

The modern Republican movement has literally become so cult-like and Orwellian that it astonishes even a die-hard cynic like me. It's like they've literally abandoned the notion of Truth, in favor of whatever press-release is put out by Party Headquarters today. Honorable men would be ashamed for behaving like that.



[/ QUOTE ]

Do you guys actually know a political forum where conservatives like the TRUTH, or at least respect it? Or even a conservative website that is pretty impartial? This is not sarcasm, I'd like to have information from and interaction with honest conservatives.

[zaxx19]

The University of Chicago is known as a right of center institution....

Its dedication to truth has resulted in numerous Nobel prizes.....

Specifically the Econ dept and Law school.(Conservative and of the highest repute)

[adios]

Here's something that was put up powerlineblog. Italics being Powerline's commentary:



What Went Wrong




Steve Sailer reproduces a letter from a Florida lawyer, who comments on how the seemingly perverse outcome of the Terri Schiavo litigation came about:

I have been following the case for years. Something that interests me about the Terri Schiavo case, and that doesn't seem to have gotten much media attention: The whole case rests on the fact that the Schindlers (Terri's parents) were totally outlawyered by the husband (Michael Schiavo) at the trial court level.

This happened because, in addition to getting a $750K judgment for Terri's medical care, Michael Schiavo individually got a $300K award of damages for loss of consortium, which gave him the money to hire a top-notch lawyer to represent him on the right-to-die claim.


By contrast, the Schindlers had trouble even finding a lawyer who would take their case since there was no money in it. Finally they found an inexperienced lawyer who agreed to take it partly out of sympathy for them, but she had almost no resources to work with and no experience in this area of the law. She didn't even depose Michael Schiavo's siblings, who were key witnesses at the trial that decided whether Terri would have wanted to be kept alive. Not surprisingly, Felos steamrollered her.


The parents obviously had no idea what they were up against until it was too late. It was only after the trial that they started going around to religious and right-to-life groups to tell their story. These organizations were very supportive, but by that point their options were already limited because the trial judge had entered a judgment finding that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to live.


This fact is of crucial importance -- and it's one often not fully appreciated by the media, who like to focus on the drama of cases going to the big, powerful appeals courts: Once a trial court enters a judgment into the record, that judgment's findings become THE FACTS of the case, and can only be overturned if the fact finder (in this case, the judge) acted capriciously (i.e., reached a conclusion that had essentially no basis in fact).


In this case, the trial judge simply chose to believe Michael Schiavo's version of the facts over the Schindlers'. Since there was evidence to support his conclusion (in the form of testimony from Michael Schiavo's siblings), it became nearly impossible for the Schindlers to overturn it. The judges who considered the case after the trial-level proceeding could make decisions only on narrow questions of law. They had no room to ask, "Hey, wait a minute, would she really want to die?" That "fact" had already been decided.

I can't comment on the quality of the work done at the trial level without reading the transcript, but in general, what this lawyer says is correct. The reason why appeals don't often succeed is that all fact-finding is done in the trial court. If there is evidence to support the facts found by the judge or the jury, those facts are set in concrete from that point on. The question on appeal is only whether proper procedures were followed and the law was correctly applied. It is not hard to imagine that the Schindlers had no idea what they were getting into, and were ill-equipped, financially and otherwise, to fight a legal battle against their son-in-law. By the time they started garnering outside support, it was too late.

Powerline (http://www.powerlineblog.com)

This is basically what I thought in the case. It takes a lot of money to litigate civil cases (criminal as well) for the most part i.e. if you want to win. The Schiavo's didn't realize what they were getting into. Surprisingly to some probably I don't think that is an excuse for the Schindler's. The Schindler's didn't evaluate their hand properly to borrow a metaphor from poker. I feel for them though. I would guess that the Schindler's view the legal system quite a bit differently now than before they started this case.

[MMMMMM]

Good insights, and I wasn't aware of the vast financial gulf in the litigants' ability to spend on counsel.


[ QUOTE ]
"This fact is of crucial importance -- and it's one often not fully appreciated by the media, who like to focus on the drama of cases going to the big, powerful appeals courts: Once a trial court enters a judgment into the record, that judgment's findings become THE FACTS of the case, and can only be overturned if the fact finder (in this case, the judge) acted capriciously (i.e., reached a conclusion that had essentially no basis in fact).


In this case, the trial judge simply chose to believe Michael Schiavo's version of the facts over the Schindlers'. Since there was evidence to support his conclusion (in the form of testimony from Michael Schiavo's siblings), it became nearly impossible for the Schindlers to overturn it. The judges who considered the case after the trial-level proceeding could make decisions only on narrow questions of law. They had no room to ask, "Hey, wait a minute, would she really want to die?" That "fact" had already been decided."

[/ QUOTE ]

As for the above, that may be the way the law works, but I think it is just WRONG. There is no way that a somewhat uncertain issue should legally be be determined as a FACT, to be given a 100% truth value for all future references. That is stupid, it is FALSE, and I don't see how such procedure should be part of the law.

Any genuine uncertainty determined one way or the other ought to have a rough percentage value or modifying descriptor attached to it for future record and reference. For example, it should be called a finding "somewhat factually likely" or "very factually likely". Something only 75% certain should not be called 100% certain.

So a 75% certainty must be considered a 100% certainty in all future court proceedings? How ridiculous can the law be? That is absolutely RETARDED. Does the law want to get at the truth or not? Utterly amazing to me (although I learned something), and grossly unfair to Terri (and probably to many others even in completely different situtations).

This would be a perfect case for conscientious jury nullification. Tragically it is too late for that.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Speaking for myself, I don't care what the odds are - try the long shot surgery, but if it don't work, screw it - trapped in that existance for 15 yrs I'd be praying for death every single day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Whiskey,

Well you are certainly entitled to feel that way about such a thing yourself, but many would not share that sentiment.

I think a lot of people have projected their own feelings onto Terri's case. It is important to realize that that has nothing to do with what is fair or right for Terri.

For instance, there is no way in hell I would ever want to be killed in such a condition nor would I be praying for death. I just think life is too precious for that kind of attitude, personally speaking, and there is always the outside chance of a cure or improvement even if at a much later date. Yet I don't know what Terri would have wanted.

The thing is, the courts don't know either. I think it is wrong to be taking life without being very sure. And the court couldn't be sure at all; it just thought it more likely and therefore ruled it as a "finding" which henceforth had to be taken as fact. To me that is a travesty of law even if it is a part of our legal system.

I would bet that most who came down on the side of "she is better off dead", do not really hold life in reverence. I am not a religious person but I do think life is by far the most precious gift and should be treated as such. I only wish I were better at so doing in my daily life.

[Zygote]

you guys should stop trying to learn the law from opinion-based articles. just stand back from this issue because you dont have enough experience to understand the medical or legal facts involved. i really respect your foriegn policy views, and i know you are smart guy. but on this perticular issue, your points are way off bound and are very weak criticisms. i really do'nt have the time to go through all of it with you, but i hope you can understand that it takes a strong legal understanding to even begin to criticize the legal process.

[Analyst]

[ QUOTE ]
Fair questions, ACPlayer...but consider that in this case the STATE is intervening to force her to be deprived of her life.


[/ QUOTE ]

This interpretation - completely and totally incorrect, frankly - demonstrates why this situation is so controversial. The STATE, at least the judiciary branch, is making certain that the a legal guardian is allowed to make crucial medical decisions for those for whom they responsible. The STATE, as in the legislative and executive branchs at both the state and federal level, seems to feel that the government is better equipped to do so.

Questions to ask:

1) If Terri Schiavo had filled out a living will stating that she wished not to live under her existing conditions, would you agree that the feeding tube should be pulled?

2) If a new round of tests confirmed beyond any doubt that she is in a persistant vegitative state, would you still fight Michael Schiavo's decision?

[adios]

I don't know if even 75% certainty is required. What is the legal meaning and what are the precedents for meeting the standard of "clear and convincing" in Florida? Basically I'm in agreement with you though. The Florida legislature could have changed the law according to some lawyers I heard in the media (David Boies who represented Al Gore in Florida and the Supreme Court was one such lawyer) so that the feeding tube could be re-instated but they've chosen not to. The problem with the previous law that was deemed unconstitutional according to them was that it only applied to the Schiavo case. My take is that Florida Legislature doesn't want to change it's laws. Whether or not Schiavo "gamed" the system is not clear but it indicates to me that it is possible to "game" the system in certain circumstances so that you can have someone put to death against their will. I think it's far from clear that Terri isn't suffering in her forced starvation and de-hydration as well. FWIW I think the legal system i.e. civil court, should almost all the time be the last resort in rectifying differences between two partys. In this case hundreds of thousands of dollars maybe even over a millions of dollars have been wasted on legal fees when to me they could have been better spent on further tests for Terri and/or donated to medical research efforts. There's also a report out there that I can't find a second source for that claims that Felos, Schiavo's attorney, contributed to Greer's campaign. Greer was the Judge that made the ruling that ordered the feeding tube removed.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
i really do'nt have the time to go through all of it with you, but i hope you can understand that it takes a strong legal understanding to even begin to criticize the legal process.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whatever a "stong legal understanding" means. Actually the basics of the legal process isn't all that hard to understand. In my mind the thinking that is dangerous and expensive is the thinking that you have to have a "strong legal understanding" to deal with the legal process and asses your case. Yeah a layperson needs a lawyer to deal with legal system but IMO if more people actually understood the process they wouldn't wind up in court. Mind you when I think of the alternatives I think the process is for the most part ok and I wouldn't really want to change it.

[MMMMMM]

Well thanks for your comments, Zygote...I just think that the primary purpose of the law is to safeguard our rights to life, liberty and property...and that all else must necessarily be secondary. I don't see that Terri's rights were adequately safeguarded throughout these proceedings; therefore I am faulting the procedure and/or the law itself.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
1) If Terri Schiavo had filled out a living will stating that she wished not to live under her existing conditions, would you agree that the feeding tube should be pulled?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, provided it was certain that her existing conditions were properly diagnosed, which would entail a new examination since years have passed since the last one. Also, as I've mentioned before, even the diagnosis of PVS was greatly disputed in cvourt by doctors.

[ QUOTE ]
2) If a new round of tests confirmed beyond any doubt that she is in a persistant vegitative state, would you still fight Michael Schiavo's decision?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it was a mistake to award him the power to be her sole guiardian, due to his conflicts of interest and the accusations against him. At least, he should not have been given the power of life and death over her, given those doubts. Furthermore, it is far from certain that she expressed the wishes he claimed she expressed. Therefore the state should be protecting Terri's right to life instead of enforcing her death by stavation/dehydration.

So to answer your question, yes, I would not agree, and do not think anyone can have confidence in Michael Schiavo's decision and therefore the state should protect her life not aid in taking it. The default value here should be life not death, and "clear and convincing evidence" is NOT the same as "beyond a reasonable doubt". To those that say reasonable doubt only applies in criminal cases, I would respond that taking of innocent human life on lesser standards is very dangerous (not to mention immoral). Hell you guys will be old someday: how about a doctor, guardian and judge euthanizing you. What if you don't want to die? Hey the judge orderted it and found "clear and convincing evidence".

The law allowing innocents to be effectively put to death without everything being proven beyond a reasonable doubt is just a terrible travesty of the intent of the US Constitution, the primary purpose of which is to protect your right to life and liberty. There most surely was reasonable doubt on several hinging matters in this case so IMO it is a moral tragedy for Terri to be killed--and a very poor example of the law. As Dickens said: "If that be the law, then the Law is an Ass." That I firmly believe in this case.

And what about Terri maybe trying to say she wanted to live? Yeah the doctors said it was easily explained by some involuntary reflex--but what if it wasn't? Awful strange how it happened RIGHT AT THE MOMENT THE SITUTATION WAS EXPLAINED TO HER. But no, the judge had to play God and decided to IGNORE that. No further tests allowed. What an absolute crock.

The right-to-die zealots are very dangerous IMO. Look up George Soros' new project to save money by terminating the life-prolonging care of the infirm and elderly. Just a warning for the future from M. Some of these guys apparently don't see the difference between suicide and mercy killing. I'd also bet that they project their dismal views of life onto everyone else thereby presuming that no one else would want to live if quite infirm or whatever. What a bunch of wimps seeking to foist their depressing views on everyone else. Hell I'd undergo a hundred years or more like Terri if there might be a chance for a scientific breakthrough in the future that could allow for a cure or improvement (and with advances in Longevity science and genetic repair etc. almost nothing is impossible regarding the future) These guys just have a very pessimistic view and don't really respect life.

All in all a very bad case and a very immoral outcome, in my view. The US Constitution doesn't protect your right to life if 3 out of 5 doctors, a court-appointed guardian with conflicts of interest, and a right-to-die zealot of a judge decide otherwise. Good grief.

[adios]

Trying to keep this in one thread. It's far from clear that Terri's forced starving and dehydration are painless to her. Is

Schiavo's Hydration Level Raises Questions (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050326/ap_on_re_us/brain_damaged_woman_dehydration_4)

[Analyst]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1) If Terri Schiavo had filled out a living will stating that she wished not to live under her existing conditions, would you agree that the feeding tube should be pulled?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, provided it was certain that her existing conditions were properly diagnosed, which would entail a new examination since years have passed since the last one. Also, as I've mentioned before, even the diagnosis of PVS was greatly disputed in cvourt by doctors.



[/ QUOTE ]

Did you mean "yes" here? If you really do mean "no" as written, that in a context of a written living will a patient's express wishes should not be followed, then frankly there's not much to discuss.

As to the doctors' testimony, I am not a physician so can't have too much an opinion other than I would not hang my arguments on Dr. Hammesfahr's testimony; I wouldn't go to him for a hangnail. Also, while she has not be fully examined as of late (though this does not seem to stop the likes of Bill Frist and the latest doctor found by Gov. Bush from making pronouncements about her condition), the existing flat EEG and CAT scans seem conclusive. Again, I'm not a doctor.

But it all seems irrelevant, doesn't it? Unless there was a typo in your comment above, you seem to be saying even if she had a written living will that her legal guardian should not be allowed to carry out her wishes; that your preferences trump another's when it comes to the most fundamental decision about their own life. What's the point in having a discussion if you feel that you are more qualified than I to make my health care decisions?

No, thanks - I'll make my own life-or-death decisions when it's my own life at stake. Failing that ability, I trust my wife to make them for me. However, I do not trust Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Jeb Bush or his brother (or any politician du jour) to decide when and how I shall live or die.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
As to the doctors' testimony, I am not a physician so can't have too much an opinion other than I would not hang my arguments on Dr. Hammesfahr's testimony; I wouldn't go to him for a hangnail.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would you feel more qualified if you served on a jury in a malpractice case? Non doctors are asked to evaluate doctors testimony in Courts all the time. You're post is a cop out.

[Analyst]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
As to the doctors' testimony, I am not a physician so can't have too much an opinion other than I would not hang my arguments on Dr. Hammesfahr's testimony; I wouldn't go to him for a hangnail.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would you feel more qualified if you served on a jury in a malpractice case? Non doctors are asked to evaluate doctors testimony in Courts all the time. You're post is a cop out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, in most cases if I were sitting on a malpractice jury, I think that my background is strong enough to reasonably evaluate a doctor's testimony - even conflicting testimonies - in court. In this case, everything I've seen and read of Hammesfahr and of his testimony indicates that he lacks credibility in comparison to the other physicians (including the other doctor who hedged on a PVS diagnosis).

[ QUOTE ]
Well thanks for your comments, Zygote...I just think that the primary purpose of the law is to safeguard our rights to life, liberty and property...and that all else must necessarily be secondary. I don't see that Terri's rights were adequately safeguarded throughout these proceedings; therefore I am faulting the procedure and/or the law itself.

[/ QUOTE ]

This statement demonstrates the problems with your arguments. Your concern seems to be vindicating Terri's rights. So there would not be any disagreement then that if she did in fact make it clear that she did not want to live this way, then vindicating her rights would mean pulling the tube. Your objection then can only be with the finding of fact that she made this clear -- for everything that has happened since then is consistent with vindicating the rights of one who expressed an intention that he/she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means. So I do not understand your consistent criticism of "the law". "The law" is not the issue. It is doing exactly what was intended, based upon the factual determination that Terri Schiavo clearly expressed an intention not to be kept alive in this manner, under these circumstances.

So the question then is, who are you, or me, or Congress, to question the findings of fact made by the courts when none of us is familiar with all of the evidence ... not nearly as familiar with it as the judge that made the determination? We all feel we are in a position to make a determination -- one better than any of the judges in the case?

I feel badly for Terri Schiavo, and her parents. As I am sure all of us do. I cannot imagine having to bury a child. But sympathizing with her plight is not a basis to question the decisions made the courts. What is most distasteful about this whole thing, in my opinion, is that our federal Congress has arrogantly found itself to be more qualified than the state court judicial process AND THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA to determine the proper legal remedy here, irrespective of the true facts, and has interjected itself into a matter involving a private citizen, whose situation is more than adequately addressed by state law, usurping the authority of Florida's state government in every respect. It's an absolute disgrace. If I was a Floridian, I would be outraged. As a New Jerseyan, I am outraged at the possibility that Congress could do this to my state's legislature.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
So the question then is, who are you, or me, or Congress, to question the findings of fact made by the courts when none of us is familiar with all of the evidence ... not nearly as familiar with it as the judge that made the determination? We all feel we are in a position to make a determination -- one better than any of the judges in the case?

[/ QUOTE ]

So if you were the judge you would just TRUST Michael Schiavo on this 100%? An estrangfed husband with conflict of interest is 100% berlievable 7 years later? What about Terri's rights to life? ANY reasonable doubt should be cause for choosing life not death.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
1) If Terri Schiavo had filled out a living will stating that she wished not to live under her existing conditions, would you agree that the feeding tube should be pulled?



[ QUOTE ]
No, provided it was certain that her existing conditions were properly diagnosed, which would entail a new examination since years have passed since the last one. Also, as I've mentioned before, even the diagnosis of PVS was greatly disputed in cvourt by doctors.

[ QUOTE ]
Did you mean "yes" here? If you really do mean "no" as written, that in a context of a written living will a patient's express wishes should not be followed, then frankly there's not much to discuss.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

I did mean to write "yes" there, Analyst. Thanks for catching my error.

[ QUOTE ]
No, thanks - I'll make my own life-or-death decisions when it's my own life at stake. Failing that ability, I trust my wife to make them for me. However, I do not trust Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Jeb Bush or his brother (or any politician du jour) to decide when and how I shall live or die.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fine--but what if your wife became estranged, took up living with another man and kids, stood to possibly gain financially if you died, then 7 years later suddenly "remembered" what you said your wishes really were (to have you die)? Just how credible is that really? Just how much confidence should it instill?

[ACPlayer]

[ QUOTE ]
Fine--but what if your wife became estranged, took up living with another man and kids, stood to possibly gain financially if you died, then 7 years later suddenly "remembered" what you said your wishes really were (to have you die)? Just how credible is that really? Just how much confidence should it instill?

[/ QUOTE ]

Unless you leave a living will, the rest of us have to go with your judgement in marrying the person in the first place and the due process of any legal process in place. It seems that this has been done in this case.

While, it is possible (or even likely) that Ms Schiavo would not want the feeding tube removed and that is not a good thing; it is however a lot more scary that the executive/legislature should try to inject itself into this on a case by case basis.

[QuadsOverQuads]

[ QUOTE ]
you guys should stop trying to learn the law from opinion-based articles. just stand back from this issue because you dont have enough experience to understand the medical or legal facts involved.

[/ QUOTE ]

See, the problem is that this would require both humility and honesty, and these traits tend to be very problematic for those who see themselves as "soldiers" in a national/religious "Culture War". The moment they have to confront their own fallability and inadequacy, it forces them to admit that they might be wrong. And how can the Army Of God be wrong? It raises much deeper issues that they simply are not prepared to address. So they simply avoid them alltogether by pretending they don't exist.


q/q

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Unless you leave a living will, the rest of us have to go with your judgement in marrying the person in the first place and the due process of any legal process in place. It seems that this has been done in this case.

[/ QUOTE ]

If they were not estranged, etc., I might agree (provided no history of abuse, etc.). But Michael was as estranged as if they had been divorced--and if they had been divorced then no guardianship, right?

[ QUOTE ]
While it is possible (or even likely) that Ms Schiavo would not want the feeding tube removed and that is not a good thing; it is however a lot more scary that the executive/legislature should try to inject itself into this on a case by case basis.

[/ QUOTE ]

What is scarier than that is that someone can legally be killed without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Constitutional protections should supersede civil matters.

Also, in my view the state did interject itself into this case in an ultimately very forceful way (although you might argue otherwise).

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I'll be honest. I really don't know what I think about this case. What I do know is that there was never federal jurisdiction, so the US Congress was out of line to get involved and SCOTUS is absolutely correct to refuse to hear the case.

What it underscores is the importance of having a legal document, signed and notarized about what you want to be done in cases like this.

Legally, there is precedent that a feeding tube is the same as a respirator. Both are "extreme measures." Her legal next of kin (her husband) and her doctors have made their case to the courts and ultimately every court has agreed.

On the other hand, her parents are doing what every parent would do.

This scenario plays itself out hundreds of times a day all over the country, but most of the time, either the disputing parties come to an understanding or at least decide to keep it private (or maybe they can't afford the legal fees). Setting precedent that the state can become the legal guardian in these cases would be horrible. The laws that exist surrounding these issues exist for a reason. Are they perfect? No. But the process is there and until *science* develops a better way to measure sentience or awareness we have to hope that on balance these laws work.

Personally, I believe that the protection by the state should inhere when you take your first breath, and should persist until you are no longer able to breathe on your own. That might put me on the side of those who support keeping her alive, and philosophically, I am. But in reality, we must allow the legal system to work as designed.

As Robert Frost said "and they, not being the one dead, turned to their affairs."

Each of us should write down and have notarized how we want this handled.

The first rule of survival (poker-wise at least) is Protect Your Hand.

[masse75]

[ QUOTE ]


So if you were the judge you would just TRUST Michael Schiavo on this 100%? An estrangfed husband with conflict of interest is 100% berlievable 7 years later? What about Terri's rights to life? ANY reasonable doubt should be cause for choosing life not death.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop spinning...he wasn't estranged when she fell into this condition.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
you guys should stop trying to learn the law from opinion-based articles. just stand back from this issue because you dont have enough experience to understand the medical or legal facts involved.

[/ QUOTE ]



See, the problem is that this would require both humility and honesty, and these traits tend to be very problematic for those who see themselves as "soldiers" in a national/religious "Culture War". The moment they have to confront their own fallability and inadequacy, it forces them to admit that they might be wrong. And how can the Army Of God be wrong? It raises much deeper issues that they simply are not prepared to address. So they simply avoid them alltogether by pretending they don't exist.


q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Totally off-base, q/q: my opposition to killing Terri Schiavo has NOTHING to do with any religious basis. Rather it has everything to do with protecting our fundamental rights to life and liberty--which, after all, are the most essential rights we have.

I think it is important that our most fundamental rights to life and liberty remain our most fundamental rights--don't you?

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]



So if you were the judge you would just TRUST Michael Schiavo on this 100%? An estranged husband with conflict of interest is 100% believable 7 years later? What about Terri's rights to life? ANY reasonable doubt should be cause for choosing life not death.

[/ QUOTE ]



Stop spinning...he wasn't estranged when she fell into this condition.

[/ QUOTE ]

He was estranged when he "remembered" what she had said many years earlier.

[masse75]

[ QUOTE ]


Totally off-base, q/q: my opposition to killing Terri Schiavo has NOTHING to do with any religious basis. Rather it has everything to do with protecting our fundamental rights to life and liberty--which, after all, are the most essential rights we have.

I think it is important that our most fundamental rights to life and liberty remain our most fundamental rights--don't you?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure do...especially the liberty part...why do the legislative or executive arms believe they can stick their nose in where the judiciary has ruled consistently for years? Political pandering?

You can't argue against judicial activism and then argue for it.

[nothumb]

Well M. After all the posturing I think we can safely add you to the list of so-called 'libertarians' who are just pretending not to be rank-and-file right wingers following the party blog to the end.

NT

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Sure do...especially the liberty part...why do the legislative or executive arms believe they can stick their nose in where the judiciary has ruled consistently for years? Political pandering?

You can't argue against judicial activism and then argue for it.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm arguing that certain rights are more important than other rights, and that Terri Schiavo did not get a fair shake.

The fact that the prior court ruled in such-and-such a way in unconvincing to me based on the facts of the case according to what I have read. Essentially the power to end her life was granted without being sure that those were her wishes or even that she was in a state of PVS.

If there is reasonable doubt the only moral decision is to not take the life.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Well M. After all the posturing I think we can safely add you to the list of so-called 'libertarians' who are just pretending not to be rank-and-file right wingers following the party blog to the end.

NT

[/ QUOTE ]

How the hell do you come up with that?

I'm against the death penalty in almost all cases.

I'm against "victimless crimes" being punishable by law.

I'm against regulation of markets.

I'm against most non-violent crimes being punished by prison sentences.

I'm against anything that infringes on our most fundamental rights and liberties.

Since Terri's wishes WERE NOT TRULY KNOWN, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THAT STUPID COURT DECREED, I believe she should be given the benefit of the doubt, in favor of protecting her life.

Since her estranged husband could easily have conflicts of interest or worse, I'm against allowing his late testimony to be taken as gospel. I'm against a "finding" presented as as fact, when it IS NOT a known fact, that Terri's wishes would have been to end her life under these circumstances.

Since doctors disputed her condition, and anecdotal evidence raises doubts as well, I'm against "finding" that she is definitely in a state of PVS, WHEN IT IS NOT DEFINITE.

As far as a state court ruling TO TAKE SOMEONE'S LIFE, I should think you too would want the Constitution to not be ignored. The Constitution guarantees protection of everyone's rights to life and liberty. Terri might have received due process on paper (only on paper) but not in the spirit of due process which must involve proof beyond a reasonable doubt WHEN TAKING SOMEONE'S LIFE.

I think an innocent person deserves at least as much legal protection as someone accused of murder, before being put to death. Jeez, amazing to me that so many of you guys don't.

Do you seriously support taking someone's life without being sure? WTF.

[nothumb]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you seriously support taking someone's life without being sure?

[/ QUOTE ]

All relevant evidence has been introduced and considered by state courts. The crap coming out now that this is a national media circus is useless. I support leaving this matter to the courts that have been given jurisdiction over it, not involving those who have no business in a private medical matter or opportunistic politicians.

You might not care, but this issue is really disturbing to me. I usually try to tune out all the national media coverage and ridiculous political fiascos in this country, but I have followed this case and I find the whole thing to be terrible. Terri Schiavo was in my dreams the past three nights.

But this is quite simply not the business of federal courts, pro-life activists or national politicians. All legitimate legal appeals are exhausted. If I was Michael Schiavo, I think I would get a divorce. Or maybe just keep her alive, because that's how I am. But it's not my decision. I feel terrible for the parents, but it's not their decision either. Bottom line.

NT

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So the question then is, who are you, or me, or Congress, to question the findings of fact made by the courts when none of us is familiar with all of the evidence ... not nearly as familiar with it as the judge that made the determination? We all feel we are in a position to make a determination -- one better than any of the judges in the case?

[/ QUOTE ]

So if you were the judge you would just TRUST Michael Schiavo on this 100%? An estrangfed husband with conflict of interest is 100% berlievable 7 years later? What about Terri's rights to life? ANY reasonable doubt should be cause for choosing life not death.

[/ QUOTE ]

Another example, my friend, of why neither of us is in a position to pass judgment. My understanding is that it was not simply the testimony of Michael Schiavo. There was testimony from other witnesses to the same effect. And no testimony from anyone going the other way to say "Terri told me she would want to be kept alive" or anything similar. So there apparently is a big difference between what you believe the evidence is (or what you trying to convince everyone else the evidence is), and what the evidence actually is.

[ QUOTE ]
Since Terri's wishes WERE NOT TRULY KNOWN, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THAT STUPID COURT DECREED, I believe she should be given the benefit of the doubt, in favor of protecting her life.

[/ QUOTE ]

God forbid you should ever sit as a juror in a case in which I'm involved. Why let those silly little facts and laws get in the way?

[MMMMMM]

The corroboration "by others" was supposedly by Michael Schiavo's siblings.

I've yet to read any actual verbatim corroboration by ANYONE that they heard Terri say what Michael claims she said.

[masse75]

Criminal trial...man is convicted of murder, sentenced to death. Years later, someone comes forward and says he didn't do it. Credible? Should the courts intervene? Hasn't he gone through the appeals and review process?

If there is reasonable doubt, err on the side of life?

Hey, MMMMMMMM...why keep beating your head over the wall here? Stop padding the post count. Go read a book or something.

[MMMMMM]

First of, NT, I am not comfortable with the idea of states being able to put anyone to death, even in capital murder cases--how much less so then for innocent persons.

Second, why do you place so much faith in the courts? Just because something may have been determined correctly legally DOES NOT necessarily mean it was determined correctly morally. Do you think the law is unfailingly correct and moral? Do you think the courts are infallible? I certainly don't think that of either.

I think you have to put every important case under a microscope, and no cases are more important than those where a life hangs in the balance.

Sorry but I not only don't like the way this has gone down, I feel it has resulted in a highly immoral outcome. An innocent woman is being put to death without even certainty of things beyond a reasonable doubt. Saying that is the state's prerogative is a cop-out as far as I am concerned, because everyone has a right to not be deprived of their life, and most especially so when legitimate doubts remain.

Youy're putting an awful lot of faith in the courts on this one apparently. I happen to think it is more apparent in this case that the law is an ass. An innocent woman is being put to death whilst reasonable doubts remain. Just because that may be legal does not make it right.

Laws are supposed to protect and ensure what is right. Laws do not of themselves make things right. There are exceptions to every rule. In capital cases (which this is, although not criminal capital), the only fair thing to do is extend the benefit of the doubt to the pary whose life is in jeopardy. And nobody can claim there are not reasonable doubts in this case.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Since Terri's wishes WERE NOT TRULY KNOWN, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THAT STUPID COURT DECREED, I believe she should be given the benefit of the doubt, in favor of protecting her life.

[/ QUOTE ]



God forbid you should ever sit as a juror in a case in which I'm involved. Why let those silly little facts and laws get in the way?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely right. The moral imperative is to err on the side of protecting the right to life, if err we must.

One of the biggest problems I have with this case is that things uncertain (Terri's wishes, and her condition) were "found" to be a certain way, and thenceforth taken as fact, WHEN THEY WERE NOT NECESSARILY FACT AT ALL.

Incidentally, my first day of jury duty really is tomorrow morning. Maybe, I'll see you there;-)

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Criminal trial...man is convicted of murder, sentenced to death. Years later, someone comes forward and says he didn't do it. Credible? Should the courts intervene? Hasn't he gone through the appeals and review process?

If there is reasonable doubt, err on the side of life?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, exactly. If there is new credible evidence which may exonerate him, the case should be retried, or even the verdict vacated, depending on the strength of the evidence.

Nobody be put to death if there exist reasonable doubts, even if those doubts came to light late.

To do otherwise would be heinously immoral.

[masse75]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Criminal trial...man is convicted of murder, sentenced to death. Years later, someone comes forward and says he didn't do it. Credible? Should the courts intervene? Hasn't he gone through the appeals and review process?

If there is reasonable doubt, err on the side of life?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, exactly. If there is new credible evidence which may exonerate him, the case should be retried, or even the verdict vacated, depending on the strength of the evidence.

Nobody be put to death if there exist reasonable doubts, even if those doubts came to light late.

To do otherwise would be heinously immoral.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now, the court takes the new witness with a grain of salt and says, REPEATEDLY, no dice. Do we try to pass a law that reverses multiple court decisions?

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Now, the court takes the new witness with a grain of salt and says, REPEATEDLY, no dice. Do we try to pass a law that reverses multiple court decisions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not on that sole basis.

As I posted before, the problem started when the earlier court found two things as FACT which were not FACT at all but rather mere LIKELIHOODS.

That part should be redone, even if that court followed legal procedure to a "T", because it is obvious that they erred in assigning a 100% truth value to a couple of uncertainties. And if the law required them to so cast an uncertainty on either side as 100% yea or nay, then that part of the law should be redone ASAP, and applied retroactively.

Since someone's life hangs in the balance, and because death is irrevocable but life is not, I also believe Greer should have issued a stay.

[Cyrus]

An English teacher heard it clearly.

[jokerswild]

well? the great leader doesn't hestitate to torture, and execute elsewhere for more specious reasons.

Really, the one party American system of government currently in place could do anything it wishes. They'd rather let the woman die and push the blame on "liberals" than act to save her.

[TransientR]

"Terri Schiavo did not get a fair shake."

Considering she has severe brain damage, that is true. But she has gotten far more of a 'fair shake,' than many many others.

Hypocrite-In-Chief W had no problem passing a law in Texas letting hospitals pull the plug regardless of family wishes (no money, no life). He had no problem giving short shrift to death row appeals, even when a defendant's lawyer was sleeping through most of the trial. And, once Rove got wind of the negative poll numbers even among the Republican base for W's attempt to usurp the courts, Bush, along with Delay and Frist, quieted right down.

Terry has no hope for anything approaching a normal life; that is a fact. Believe any innuendo you want about Michael Schiavo, and don't question the motives of Terri's parents or their supporters. The Terri Schiavo who people knew and loved is gone. This is not murder.

Frank

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]

"Terri Schiavo did not get a fair shake."

Considering she has severe brain damage, that is true. But she has gotten far more of a 'fair shake,' than many many others.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps; but that does not excuse the law treating her unfairly.

[ QUOTE ]
Hypocrite-In-Chief W had no problem passing a law in Texas letting hospitals pull the plug regardless of family wishes (no money, no life). He had no problem giving short shrift to death row appeals, even when a defendant's lawyer was sleeping through most of the trial. And, once Rove got wind of the negative poll numbers even among the Republican base for W's attempt to usurp the courts, Bush, along with Delay and Frist, quieted right down.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't has time to read about that yet so I can't comment.

[ QUOTE ]


Terry has no hope for anything approaching a normal life; that is a fact. Believe any innuendo you want about Michael Schiavo, and don't question the motives of Terri's parents or their supporters. The Terri Schiavo who people knew and loved is gone. This is not murder.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whether she has a chance to lead a normal life is irrelevant to whether she should be deprived of her life.

I question the motives and bias of all parties--and that's just the point. Nobody should be deprived of life if there are the slightest doubts.

[adios]

I've heard this reported today in the media. Will try to find a confirming story ASAP. If she isn't in any pain, why is she getting morphine?

[adios]

FWIW I enjoyed reading your take, a beacon of rationality IMO.

[ QUOTE ]
FWIW I enjoyed reading your take, a beacon of rationality IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

thank you

[elwoodblues]

My undestanding is that the morphine suppresses some of the reactions that her body is making as a result of the dehydration (i.e. if her body is twitching, the morphine helps to suppress that.) It sounds like the morphine is more for the family than for Terri.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Totally off-base, q/q: my opposition to killing Terri Schiavo has NOTHING to do with any religious basis. Rather it has everything to do with protecting our fundamental rights to life and liberty--which, after all, are the most essential rights we have.

I think it is important that our most fundamental rights to life and liberty remain our most fundamental rights--don't you?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure Terri is alive. Even if she is "alive", she will never be able to live a half way decent life again. Face it MMMMMM, Terri isn't coming back. She's gone.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure Terri is alive. Even if she is "alive", she will never be able to live a half way decent life again. Face it MMMMMM, Terri isn't coming back. She's gone.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree she will never be able to live a normal life even if she somehow survived this.

Wacki, personally speaking, I'd rather live a HORRIBLE life than not live at all. I don't expect everyone to share my sentiments but I'm sure some people do. Therefore I urge you to consider that applying your value of what kind of life is worth living, to others, is too subjective to be fair to them. It is partially for this reason, and partially for other reasons, that I think we don't have the right to make those decisions for others without being very, very sure that that is what they would have wanted--nor without being very very sure that their condition dooms them to a terrible and permanent future existence.

Let's say Terri is indeed minimally conscious and before her starvation was not in a great deal of pain. Who knows what her mind/spirit might have been working on in that half-asleep sort of state. I think it is a transgression to intervene and take her life and curtail her rudimentary awareness even in such a state.

By the way, it is also a heinous and likely quite cruel act to starve/dehydrate her to death if she is minimally conscious and if she does feel pain. On the other hand, if she is truly in PVS and feels no pain and has no consciousness, then she is not suffering at all by being kept alive. So what's the harm in keeping her alive if she is indeed in PVS.

We have her estranged and interest-conflicted husband's late testimony corroborated by his siblings. Somehow I don't think that should be accorded enough weight to pass the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt". And in taking life I think no lesser standard should be applied.

It is also not just Terri that I am concerned with here. I think that the state being able to order the deprivation of human life over lesser legal hurdles than a capital criminal conviction, is a very dangerous precedent. Someday if they start euthanizing all the old folks you will see what I mean.

[ACPlayer]

[ QUOTE ]
The moral imperative is to err on the side of protecting the right to life, if err we must.

[/ QUOTE ]

If only you recognized this in other instances of public and intl policy.

[adios]

Could be Terri's father's worried about an overdose though.

Father fears doctors will hasten Schiavo's death (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050328/ts_alt_afp/useuthanasiajustice_050328195614)

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
If only you recognized this in other instances of public and intl policy.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do recognize it in those instances too, but in international policy considerations there is a part to the picture which is not present in a Terri Schiavo sort of scenario.

In international policy, the fact is that certain regimes are killing and abusing huge numbers of people. Terri Sciavo was not killing or abusing anybody. Hence the lives which would be lost due to leaving a despotic regime in place must be considered too; it is not only the lives that be lost in war that count in the whole scenario.

This is all pretty obvious, no?

[ACPlayer]

I disagree with your self analysis.

The problem is that you do not trust in process. In this case we have set a process of laws and checks and balances and you disagree with the result of the process and now advocate something (it is not clear what -- do you want the STATE to intervene with Bush and Bush sending in the Nat Guard to rescue Ms S?). Similarly in the intl policy question we had set up a process (via the UN) and you disagreed with the process and were willing to advocate a go it alone tactic.

I believe that in the long run we are better off by trusting the process and if necessary changing it but not in bypassing it. This is the moral and correct way to sound decision making and policy.

This comes from my long experience in management. Processes can and should be reviewed but not simply bypassed as the outcomes are usually bad.

[MMMMMM]

You are quite correct, ACPlayer: generally speaking, I do not trust much in process. I commend you for this insightful observation.

I trust not a great deal in the courts, and certainly not in the U.N. That is why I think many cases must be thoroughly dissected and analyzed, often on their individual merits, in order to derive a fair and/or optimal solution.

Generally speaking, I think established processes are worth a good bit as starting points or guidelines, but often not much beyond that. I also feel that a one-size-fits-all approach to process usually results in many ill fits.

[cardcounter0]

"I also feel that a one-size-fits-all approach to process usually results in many ill fits."

Does this also apply to pants?
/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ACPlayer]

It is called micro-management.

If the govt were to micromanage every case where some parties drummed up a great deal of media noise then a) we would be overwhelmed with heart rending stories and b) the govt would come to a standstill intervening in each of these cases.

I take it would you would like Bush and Bush to send in the Natl Guard (or equivalent) into the FL hospice intervening in the private lives of FL citizens?

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]

It is called micro-management.

If the govt were to micromanage every case where some parties drummed up a great deal of media noise then a) we would be overwhelmed with heart rending stories and b) the govt would come to a standstill intervening in each of these cases.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not suggesting micromanaging every little case, really. A capital case, yes, certainly; and Terri's case qualifies as a capital case even if not a criminal case.

[ QUOTE ]
I take it would you would like Bush and Bush to send in the Natl Guard (or equivalent) into the FL hospice intervening in the private lives of FL citizens?

[/ QUOTE ]

If someone was trying to starve YOU to death, perhaps with the help of a handful of professional people and possibly a disgruntled or compromised relative, would you consider it a private affair only? I think Terri has the fundamental right to live going for her as a default value, and that neither of the two hinging elements of the case for her to die were proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

In my view it is not interfering in the private lives of citizens, but rather ensuring that nobody's constitutional right to life is being violated. If the right to live even means anything any more, that is. I always thought it was the most fundamental right protected by our Constitution.

[adios]

Michael is the guardian, any special request from the Schindler's to administer morphine would have to be approved by him. Given the acrimony in this case and how it's proceeded to this point I have serious doubts as to whether Schiavo would approve of any type of request like this from her parents. Witness the parents having to get permission to administer her last rites. No I think the morphine is SOP and it indicates to me an uncertainty as to how much pain she is suffering.

[lastchance]

If the government is going to pass a law here, they better not make it specific to one or two cases per decade or so. The federal government should never issue an edict here saying that Terri can't live. It sets absolutely horrible policy to go forward from. There are too many cases of this per year to micromanage.

If a law should be passed here, and maybe it should, then it should, for example, as posted by one of your articles, raise the burden of proof on anyone that wants their spouse to die.

[miajag81]

[ QUOTE ]

Personally, I think Terri is just screwing with people. I mean, I think she just lies there, completely out of it when other people are around, but then as soon as everyone leaves and it's just her, her parents, and their cronies, Terri gets up and starts tapdancing and cooking delicious udon noodles for everyone present.


[/ QUOTE ]

nh

[ACPlayer]

Actually you are suggesting micro management.

In our system we have designed laws to cover these situations in general. We have then built in escalation procedures to handle special situation as they arise (via the judicial and medical reviews). These procedures have been designed around the constitution.

Now, as I said, we can review the procedures with proper study and again, as I said, we can review how a guardian should be defined. But to suggest that we, as a people, or that Bush and Bush as the STATE should meddle in a PRIVATE affair is extremely dangerous. The Right to Privacy is very important.

[adios]

From the Harvard Crimson:

FOCUS: Bigotry and the Murder of Terri Schiavo (http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article506716.html)

FOCUS: Bigotry and the Murder of Terri Schiavo

By JOE FORD

“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.”
—a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

The case of Terri Schiavo has been framed by the media as the battle between the “right to die” and pro-life groups, with the latter often referred to as “right-wing Christians.” Little attention has been paid to the more than twenty major disability rights organizations firmly supporting Schiavo’s right to nutrition and hydration. Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a severely disabled woman, is being starved and dehydrated to death in the name of supposed “dignity.” Polls show that most Americans believe that her death is a private matter and that her removal from a feeding tube—a low-tech, simple and inexpensive device used to feed many sick and disabled people—is a reasonable solution to the conflict between her husband and her parents over her right to life.

The reason for this public support of removal from ordinary sustenance, I believe, is not that most people understand or care about Terri Schiavo. Like many others with disabilities, I believe that the American public, to one degree or another, holds that disabled people are better off dead. To put it in a simpler way, many Americans are bigots. A close examination of the facts of the Schiavo case reveals not a case of difficult decisions but a basic test of this country’s decency.

Our country has learned that we cannot judge people on the basis of minority status, but for some reason we have not erased our prejudice against disability. One insidious form of this bias is to distinguish cognitively disabled persons from persons whose disabilities are “just” physical. Cognitively disabled people are shown a manifest lack of respect in daily life, as well. This has gotten so perturbing to me that when I fly, I try to wear my Harvard t-shirt so I can “pass” as a person without cognitive disability. (I have severe cerebral palsy, the result of being deprived of oxygen at birth. While some people with cerebral palsy do have cognitive disability, my articulation difference and atypical muscle tone are automatically associated with cognitive disability in the minds of some people.)

The result of this disrespect is the devaluation of lives of people like Terri Schiavo. In the Schiavo case and others like it, non-disabled decision makers assert that the disabled person should die because he or she—ordinarily a person who had little or no experience with disability before acquiring one—“would not want to live like this.” In the Schiavo case, the family is forced to argue that Terri should be kept alive because she might “get better”—that is, might be able to regain or to communicate her cognitive processes. The mere assertion that disability (particularly cognitive disability, sometimes called “mental retardation”) is present seems to provide ample proof that death is desirable.

Essentially, then, we have arrived at the point where we starve people to death because he or she cannot communicate their experiences to us. What is this but sheer egotism? Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, this is obviously an attempt to play God.

Not Dead Yet, an organization of persons with disabilities who oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia, maintains that the starvation and dehydration of Terri Schiavo will put the lives of thousands of severely disabled children and adults at risk. (The organization takes its name from the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which a plague victim not dying fast enough is hit over the head and carted away after repeatedly insisting he is not dead yet.) Not Dead Yet exposes important biases in the “right to die” movement, including the fact that as early as 1988, Jack Kevorkian advertised his intention of performing medical experimentation (“hitherto conducted on rats”) on living children with spina bifida, at the same time harvesting their organs for reuse.

Besides being disabled, Schiavo and I have something important in common, that is, someone attempted to terminate my life by removing my endotracheal tube during resuscitation in my first hour of life. This was a quality-of-life decision: I was simply taking too long to breathe on my own, and the person who pulled the tube believed I would be severely disabled if I lived, since lack of oxygen causes cerebral palsy. (I was saved by my family doctor inserting another tube as quickly as possible.) The point of this is not that I ended up at Harvard and Schiavo did not, as some people would undoubtedly conclude. The point is that society already believes to some degree that it is acceptable to murder disabled people.

As Schiavo starves to death, we are entering a world last encountered in Nazi Europe. Prior to the genocide of Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, the Nazis engaged in the mass murder of disabled children and adults, many of whom were taken from their families under the guise of receiving treatment for their disabling conditions. The Nazis believed that killing was the highest form of treatment for disability.

As the opening quote suggests, Nazi doctors believed, or claimed to believe, they were performing humanitarian acts. Doctors were trained to believe that curing society required the elimination of individual patients. This sick twisting of medical ethics led to a sense of fulfillment of duty experienced by Nazi doctors, leading them to a conviction that they were relieving suffering. Not Dead Yet has uncovered the same perverse sense of duty in members of the Hemlock Society, now called End-of-Life Choices. (In 1997, the executive director of the Hemlock Society suggested that judicial review be used regularly “when it is necessary to hasten the death of an individual whether it be a demented parent, a suffering, severely disabled spouse or a child.” This illustrates that the “right to die” movement favors the imposition of death sentences on disabled people by means of the judicial branch.)

For an overview of what “end-of-life choices” mean for Schiavo, I refer you to the Exit Protocol prepared for her in 2003 by her health care providers (available online at http://www.cst-phl.com/050113/sixth.html). In the midst of her starvation, Terri will most likely be treated for “pain or discomfort” and nausea which may arise as the result of the supposedly humane process of bringing about her death. (Remember that Schiavo is not terminally ill.) She may be given morphine for respiratory distress and may experience seizures. This protocol confirms what we have learned from famines and death camps: death by starvation is a horrible death.

This apparently is what it means to have “rights” as a disabled person in America today.

Joe Ford ’06 is a government concentrator in Currier House.