PRAY FOR TERRI SCHIAVO

POSTED BY: Conscience
UPDATED: Sunday, June 19, 2005 02:31
VIEWED: 17528
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CAITE

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 10:33 PM

But they aren't killing Terri! Like I said in my earlier post, her legal guardian is making a decision that people are faced with all the time. Multiple doctors have said that there is little to no chance of her ever being able to be off life support. Whenever doctors tell a family that it's the family has to make a decision about whether or not to keep the person on life support or "pull the plug."

I respectfully disagree that this is anything like government sanctioned killing.

And nobody has answered this question of mine yet: WHY is THIS case any different?

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 10:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by xenocide:
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.

If it truly were in “the face of Terri’s expressed wishes,” then you would get no argument from me.

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
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.

Maybe it was the expressed wishes of all those people to die.

Quote:
Originally posted by Caite:
And nobody has answered this question of mine yet: WHY is THIS case any different?

I don’t know that it is.

JASONZZZ

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 11:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Caite:
...

And nobody has answered this question of mine yet: WHY is THIS case any different?

It's about pretty white people and the media likes to show that... Same reason why of all of the spouses murdered with unborn babies in them and Lacy Peterson / Scott Peterson is the case being shown. Same reason why Jon Benet Ramsey gets airtime...

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CAITE

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 11:43 PM

I agree with you. I think this case has a certain appeal for the media and politicians. They've all decided to jump on the bandwagon shouting "me too me too!"

SOUPCATCHER

Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:56 AM

I was reading some commentary the other day to which I had an immediate visceral negative reaction (which I've found often means that I've stumbled onto another cultural bias I didn't know I had). The premise was that Theresa Schiavo (and Nancy Cruzon, etc.) are/were so compelling because they represented the ideal woman - at least in the eyes of those who want to turn back the clock to a mythical time (Out of the workplace. Kitchen. Barefoot. Pregnant. Now.). They are technically alive. They need constant care/protection. They don't talk back. They don't think for themselves. They're the perfect wife. Her wishes don't matter. What matters is that this perfect specimen of womanhood be protected.

I'm still rolling that one around the head and trying it on for size.

One thing that's bothered me about the whole situation (aside from just the act of shining a national spotlight onto the tragedy of one woman, her husband, and her parents) is the bulemia. Theresa had a severe enough eating disorder that it resulted in a heart attack from an imbalance of potassium. How long do you have to be a bulemic before you get to that point? And how hard is it to recognize the warning signs of bulemia if you're living with someone who has an eating disorder?

There's a lot of tragedy involved. But the one that led to all the others was that Theresa Schiavo felt that she didn't measure up to the accepted norms of beauty that we are bombarded with every day.

* editted to add: Well. I hope the grieving will eventually lead to healing.

CAITE

Thursday, March 31, 2005 6:10 PM

Terri Schiavo passed away this morning.

This whole thing is just sad.

REEQUEEN

Thursday, March 31, 2005 8:19 PM

Quote:
The premise was that Theresa Schiavo (and Nancy Cruzon, etc.) are/were so compelling because they represented the ideal woman - at least in the eyes of those who want to turn back the clock to a mythical time (Out of the workplace. Kitchen. Barefoot. Pregnant. Now.). They are technically alive. They need constant care/protection. They don't talk back. They don't think for themselves. They're the perfect wife. Her wishes don't matter. What matters is that this perfect specimen of womanhood be protected.

Interesting. And disturbing.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

RUE

Thursday, March 31, 2005 8:25 PM

Caite:
Yes I do agree with you that it wasn't about the government killing innocent people. I just couldn't take the hypocracy anymore of people who pretend to defend the innocent, when, by their own words, they don't really give a cr*p.

RUE

Thursday, March 31, 2005 8:36 PM

And yes, it is all very sad.

On a less personal note, it does raise the end-of-care issue. Almost nobody dies at home anymore. We will be in the medical system, and receiving medical care. There is a substantial chance that at some point, someone is going to have to make an end-of-care decision for us, or we will have to make it for a family member. Pretending this issue isn't there isn't going to make it go away. It's a natural consequence of modern medicine.

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:01 PM

I have a somewhat different take. I'm not sure its exactly stereotyping (although there is some of that going in too). What I see going on is a tremendous- and I mean TREMENDOUS- amount of projection. Because the press has not bothered to show any of the OTHER 473 million seconds of Terri's life to dispute our projections, we are free to imagine Terri however we want. If Terri has actually recovered, she would not have been as appealing as Terri the victim, who could be the canvas of our hopes and fears.

In many ways, the same thing happens in the anti-abortion crowd. The embryo is the ideal child: undemanding, full of potential, who NEVER disappoints. The fact that it is helpless and silent allows it to become the ideal canvas for our fantasies. If you think this isn't true, just watch what happens to attitude once the child is born: Reality sets in and suddenly it's just another mouth to feed.

There may be SOME sexism at work here. It's probably not as conventional to project onto a male because we simply don't accept them as being helpless. In fact, it would be an appropriate study for the medical community to determine whether more men than women are removed from various forms of life support, more old than young, more blacks than whites etc. It would reveal our prejudicial responses by exposing its influence on our perceptions of essentially equivalent medical diagnoses.

BTW, I'm sick of people driving themselves into hysteria over this one case. Blinkin' idiots, all of them.

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