PRAY FOR TERRI SCHIAVO
POSTED BY: Conscience
UPDATED: Sunday, June 19, 2005 02:31
VIEWED: 17528
PAGE 7 of 11
I’ve never subscribed to the “Michael Schiavo is a bad guy” theory. I’m sure his intentions are noble. But an autopsy would seem to be a rather dangerous way of finding out if we were right about killing someone. The fact that we need an autopsy should give people pause on just how confident we really are about Mrs. Schiavo's mental health. There's no going back from that point.
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http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/timeline.htm
This seems like a good timeline of what-happened/ was-done when. The whole thing is quite interesting, but one bit stood out. Mrs. Schiavo's husband had a thalamic stimulator experimentally implanted in 1990 to try to improve his wife's condition. That is why she can't have an MRI.
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Quote:
The US governments or governments in general, should not be in the practice of killing people because they do not exhibit enough awareness. As the president said, we should err on the side of life.
said by the president who sentenced more people to death than any other US governor ever
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Okay, let's just get something straight here. What I think the government should not be doing is getting involved in this situation PERIOD! These types of decisions are (sadly) made everyday within families!
If my mother, who isn't old yet but will eventually be, was to get so sick that she could only survive on various forms of life support, it would be up to my family and I to decide what to do. We, along with her doctors, would decide whether or not she should remain on life support for the rest of her life. The doctors would tell us the odds, and we would decide what to do. It would be the WORST decision I could imagine making, but it would be OURS to make.
I feel for Terri's family, I really and truly do. I am very very close to my family, so I empathize with them. I can't even bare to think about the day when I won't be able to call my parents on the phone throughout the day to talk to them, and I can't imagine not seeing them ever again. However, like I said, every day families everywhere face the type of situation Terri's family is dealing with, and the government does not try to decide for them, right? Why then is this case so all fire different? Why suddenly does the government decide to get involved?
I welcome all responses to what I just posted.
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Quote:Governors don’t sentence people to death. Courts do that.
Originally posted by HeatherN:
said by the president who sentenced more people to death than any other US governor ever
Quote:I don’t know the court history, or what precedents have been set, but I agree with you completely. These are painful decision that must be made, but they must be made by the family. In my opinion, the court should stop short of sentencing a person to death for being an invalid. I see nothing wrong with the court absolving liability for the death of a person in Mrs. Schiavo’s condition so that family and their doctors are free to make whatever painful decisions that feel they must, but state mandating the killing by neglect of a person is barbaric, in my opinion. States should not be involved in the killing of innocent people.
Originally posted by Caite:
Okay, let's just get something straight here. What I think the government should not be doing is getting involved in this situation PERIOD! These types of decisions are (sadly) made everyday within families!
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Quote:Iraq. Death row. Texas "Futile care" law.
States should not be involved in the killing of innocent people.
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People on death row have been convicted of a crime and are not legally innocent.
I'm not completely familiar with the "Futile Care" law, but to my knowledge it doesn't obligate a person's death if they can't pay, does it?
Even in war, the state mandated act of killing innocent people for the purpose of killing them is considered barbaric.
But the truth is, I've never really thought about it that much, until now. This is a disturbing issue for me. I believe in the so-called “right” to die, but I also believe that “right” cannot logically extend past a person's ability to clarify his or her wishes. If we don’t have some way of ascertaining the explicit wishes of the person in question, then I believe the state must logically assume that the “right” to live must take precedent. Is that not a reasonable position for the state to take? I’m I completely seeing this the wrong way.
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Finn,
I just can't sympathize with your 'preference for life' in the face of Terri's expressed wishes.
To head off the objection I expect, let me say that in our society the court is the trier of fact. Courts have tried this case repeatedly and have found, on every occasion, that the removal of the feeding tube would be the expression of her will.
This is a question of right to die, not right to life. We (through our congressional and executive intermediaries) should not force a life on this woman that she would not want.
I found this oped helpful (I'm a luddite so you may have to cut and paste):
http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?next=2&ColumnsName=miv
-Eli
If voting mattered, they'd make it illegal.
http://www.bcpl.net/~wilsonr/farpoint.html
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I also found this blog enlightening, even though the author and I disagree.
http://tonyplank.blogspot.com/
-Eli
If voting mattered, they'd make it illegal.
http://www.bcpl.net/~wilsonr/farpoint.html
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Finn,
True story: There once was a murder trial where the defendant said - I didn't kill him, I just had my knife out and the guy fell on it.
It didn't go far, and it shouldn't have.
Same as your lame excuses for why it's OK for government to kill innocent life. We didn't kill children, we just dropped a 500lb bomb next to a school. We didn't execute innocent people, we just didn't review DNA evidence (Roughly 10% of all people on death row are provably innocent). We didn't kill poor patients, we just legalized it.
It's that incredibly twisted rationalizing that makes you and your cohorts look - .... you fill in the blank.
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