"Culture of Life"

[coffeecrazy1]

Okay...fair enough point about the "culture of life" thing...whatever that phrase means(I'm suspicious of most sound-biteish catchphrases).

And again, not to sound callous, but isn't there a reasonable degree of grayness to this particular case? Let's say I buy the notion that no one with a life-threatening condition should be denied based on money...wouldn't it be more, I don't know, in the spirit of the law to specify the condition as being emergent, rather than a longstanding condition such as this? Isn't there a quality of life argument somewhere here, i.e., she would die in a place without the machines, but, since she's on the machines, does she now have a right to those machines?

Believe me, I'm not saying I agree with pulling the plug, despite this woman's pleas...that seems to be overly harsh, even for a libertarian such as me(hey, I'm a human being, too). I'm merely debating the principle at hand.

[ QUOTE ]
Believe me, I'm not saying I agree with pulling the plug, despite this woman's pleas...that seems to be overly harsh, even for a libertarian such as me(hey, I'm a human being, too). I'm merely debating the principle at hand.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree, I think we could debate the merits of the Texas law. We do have to deal with living in a world of finite resources, and spending tens of thousands a day on someone on life support who's not going to recover is one of the least efficient ways to spend health care money.

I'm just saying that if you think that Terri Schiavo should still be on life support, you should be horrified by this law. I think it's revealing that so many conservative politicians jumped to grandstand on the "Save Terri" bandwagon and then did nothing about this case. I bet if Bill Frist and the rest of them had given the same kind of attention and publicity to this case, they could have collected enough donations to keep the woman alive to see her mother.

[coffeecrazy1]

For the record, I've had a DNR since I was 17(which, ironically, is an adult in Texas), so you can probably guess where I stand on Terri Schiavo.