Schiavo Pt. Four

[Jaguar]

I think the media didn't give nearly enough coverage to this case.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
From the MSNBC link:

At a federal appeals court in Atlanta, one judge rebuked the White House and lawmakers Wednesday for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

Judge Birch

If only more judges had such reverence for the Constitution.

[Q Classic]

I don't know so much about the starvation angle, but it is said that dying of dehydration is pure agony. To all of you who flippantly say you are going to exercise a living will authorizing the pulling of a feeding tube, imagine yourself lying there, unable to communicate, and slowly dying of thirst.

It's not flippant. Agony or no, lacking a cerebral cortex as she did, I wouldn't mind.

And if I did have some sort of consciousness, being unable to contribute to society and being a drain on resources... :shrugs: what's the point of existence then? Especially that even now, when I can contribute, all such contributions are moot in the long run? The agony, the pain, the suffering, all of it would be cathartic... and moot.

Pull the plug. I'll be sent to a better place, I hope. Hell, even Purgatory would be better than this Hell we currently call existence.

It's why, as supportive of the sanctity of life as I am, couldn't really back the rightists here.

That, and it didn't feel right to be fully aligning myself with the pro-death penalty anti-euthanasia anti-abortion crowd on the right.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Tuberski
And you questioned the Schindlers repeatedly, but never questioned Schiavo's.

What's the point?

ACK!

The point was in your misssus' original post which I quoted. Perhaps you'd like to go back and read it? In addition, perhaps you'd like to reread the post to which you responded, so that you can understand the superciliousness of your post.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

For me this whole ordeal has been about future judical cases similiar to this. I continued to agree that the woman was already not in a conscious state. They only thing that bothered me was the lady was being starved to death, and questioned why the man could not walk away from the whole thing. Since terri was already a sack of meat as people have refered she wouldnt care if she was alive or dead. To simply claim im doing this to follow her wishes is brazen but selfish to. Its sad that the husband and parents couldnt reach an agreement that could have changed a lot of the outcome that was just played out.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Ned
I don't know so much about the starvation angle, but it is said that dying of dehydration is pure agony. To all of you who flippantly say you are going to exercise a living will authorizing the pulling of a feeding tube, imagine yourself lying there, unable to communicate, and slowly dying of thirst.

where did you hear that? dying of thirst isn't pure agony

[Dis]

Originally posted by Ned
The Schindlers have released an audiotape of Terri being asked, does this hurt, does that hurt. Terri responds with answers that are unmistakably "yes" and "no."

[Dis]

I won't do the dance smiley. I'm not happy she has died, but relieved. This torture of Terri is over. And I'm not talking about the torture of the past 14 days. I'm talking aboutt he torture of the last 15 years.

[Dis]

Pat boone is comparing Terri with Joan of Arc.

[chequita guevara]

Living will is the best revenge

By ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Perspective Editor
Published March 27, 2005



Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

Robert Friedman is editor of Perspective. He can be reached at friedman@sptimes.com

[Dis]

Pat Robertson is saying we need to restrict the power of judges and supreme court judges.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Who listens to Pat Robertson anyway? I think his statements that we deserved 9/11 for our permissive lifestyle totally ruined any credibility he may have had.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Its dem gay aktuhvist judges whut dun got us into trubble wit the Lord.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

awww Sarcasim. I love it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]