Saturday, March 19, 2005

On Terri Schiavo

I never thought I'd live to see the day I would stand in alliance with the right-to-lifers, the religious right and various other conservatives who usually make me cringe (Tom DeLay?? GAHH, I'd rather drink goat vomit than praise this man) but that day has come. I'm half expecting now to look out my window and see a pig fly by...

Given the nature of this all, I chose to put it here rather than News & Current Events.

I will admit that until three days ago I wasn't really interested in Terri Schiavo. Greta would do her nightly updates so I was aware but it never impacted me personally. Initially I thought her husband was right in what he was trying to do.

No one is a bigger fan of assisted suicide than I am, I was a major supporter of Dr. Jack and I do NOT think anyone else has the right to tell a person who is already dying when exactly they can die. If I had a terminal disease I would live out what life was left with my family and then when it got to the point where I could do nothing for myself and living came with pain so intense it had to be numbed with meds that also deaden the mind, it's time to go. I would want my family there with me and I would want to be allowed to die with my family there with me and before the suffering became too intense. My family knows this, I have my wishes written down and my mother has it. I am very much an advocate of the right to die, when it is truly the last resort.

I had to explain all that, my own stance on Terri Schiavo is so foreign to how I think.. Who is this pod person who has invaded my body and stands shoulder to shoulder with pro-lifers??

St. Patrick's Day was all Terri on the news, I was flooded with enough news to want to get more info. I went to blogsforterri.com, I read the Bioethics.net site, I listened to specialist after specialist. And then out of nowhere this really strong opinion formed in me and once it formed it intensified.

This is not assisted suicide. This is murder.

(As I write this they just broke in to announce that the Senate will convene in a special Saturday meeting to try and get the House in to pass the IPPA)

I'm sorry, I don't look at this woman on tv and see someone who needs to die, let alone be starved to death. She breathes on her own, she seems to have some level of awareness of her family in the videos. She seems alive to me..

It's creepy. It's Draconian and it's Hitler-esque, starving a person to death over a span of 1-4 weeks. It's murder...

An anonymous person has offered to pay all of Terri's medical expenses for the rest of her life with no strings. Her family wants to take care of her. Why do they have to kill her, her husband has a common law wife and children, why doesn't he just divorce her and let her family take care of her?

I don't buy that this is what she wanted, there is not one iota of evidence that this was what she wanted. There is no living will, no letter or written proof, no one to verify that this is what she wanted.

I don't know how much money her husband stand to get after she dies from the medical malpractice suit, I haven't yet looked up any figures. But I'm sure it's a lot and it's soon to be his, free and clear. Large sums of money always make me a bit suspicious.

The husband wouldn't let them do the MRI or other tests that could tell once and for all the true extent of the brain damage. That's bothersome, I know I would want to know. What purpose does it serve to block painless tests like an MRI?

I remember the Karen Ann Quinlan case. I would have no problem in a case like that, she was on a respirator and showed no signs of cognitive (not sure that's the right word) actions and her parents had the right to ask that she be taken off life support. Yet even in that case they didn't starve her after she continued to breathe on her own afterwards.

I just don't look at Terri Schiavo and see a person in 'a coma' as one moron bimbo on Fox said. I don't see a PVS, I see a person not much more evolved than a baby but we don't pull feeding tubes from babies born with brain damage.

I think it's fascinating that the Senate is getting into it, the President is getting into it, everyone is getting into it. At first I didn't think the government should have intervened but I've shifted on that. It's murder. It hurts no one to let her family take care of her. There is no evidence she didn't want to live.

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this, ever. I watch with a macabre fascination and like so many, wait for the next progression.

It's definitely a strange world.

1. Nice post, kittyn. Honestly, I have to contemplate about such actions too. It’s cases like these that fodder my urge to: never become an ED person (her downfall was from lack of potassium, I have read), eat a balanced diet, and write a living will as soon as I turn eighteen, and I mean on the day I turn eighteen. I don’t think starvation is a humane way today regardless of brain activity. Just one injection of a lethal dose of barbiturate would’ve left the suffering to die with dignity.

   It is a very tricky case when living wills aren’t made, and that’s why I fully endorse the idea of making a living will mandatory for all US citizens once they have reached the age of consent.

   Generally, I am right-to-die, but I have to say an MRI should have been done and if it’s truly a lost case, than well, let them die with dignity. A room in the ICU costs 2 grand a night in Cincinnati, probably moreso in other areas. And that was last year, before gas went up! That’s a really selfish reason to apply the right-to-die, but it’s also selfish to hang onto a lost cause.

   Bobby McGee  on  08/18  at  01:07 AM
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