a new low in separation of powers

The constitution prohibits states from enacting ex post facto legislation:

Article I, Section 10, reads, in part:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

(emphasis added)

If the only way to prevent someone from being murdered is to enact a questionable law, or even to break the law, I believe it is well worth it. Typically the term ex post facto is applied to punishing someone for something that was not illegal when he did it. In this case, the law in question gave the governor the right to stay a directive that someone be killed, which does not seem to me to be related to ex post facto issues. Also, there is nothing to stop the Florida legislature from passing another law stating that no one may be euthanized by means of starvation, which would not raise any constitutional issues.

You are very naive about jurisprudence. This case has been in the system for years. Once a matter is taken up for ajudication, no matter what the process or the subsequent details, any legislation which would attempt to effect the process would be ex post facto. Any such legislation would be constitutionally prohibited. You seem passionately to believe that Mr. Sciavo is trying to kill his wife for venal reaons. Whether or not that were true, your belief clouds your judgment. Contending that a government can overturn any constituted legal authority to "do what is right" is an open invitation to the abuse of civil liberties by self-interested politicians who can whip up a public outrage.

Your arguments about legislation are without merit, and are moot at any event, since they cannot be made to apply. Eventually, a court will make this decision, not Jeb Bush, and not the Florida legislature, for whatever the outcome will be.

Yes, indeed I do believe that passing a questionable law or breaking the law is morally justified if time is very short, as it was, and there are few other options to prevent a murder.

Actually, as I said, if the Florida legislature wants, in the future, to spell out rules regarding euthanasia, including laws that would apply to Terri Schiavo's case, I don't seen how constitutional issues would be raised, since it is the business of the legislature to pass laws.

To be even more clear, I believe in obeying the law only provided that the law is not being used to do severely unethical things.

And of course, you are the judge and jury when it comes to the ethical merit any particular law, right?



You either don't understand, or will not see, that the Schiavo case is in the system, and no legislation enacted at this point can affect it.

1. Yes, I will even go so far as to disobey a law, based on my own judgement, if I believe it to be the only way to stop a murder. Yes, I hope that I would refuse to obey laws that call upon me to cooperate with something grossly unethical. In this present case, what is under question is passing a law that may raise constitutional issues.
2. Do you believe that if tomorrow the legislature made euthanasia by starvation illegal, a judge would subsequently rule that Terri Schiavo ought to be euthanized by starvation? I believe that in such a case, the judge would rule according to the new law.

Then, as i've pointed out, you don't understand jurisprudence.

Ain't you damned virtuous. Just think how exciting and interesting the United States would be were all 280,000,000 million of us to decide we will only obey laws when we feel like it.

You're living in la-la land . . .

I've heard this argument before about how this was such a peculiar case, that the law passed and signed was strictly about these circumstances, what the proponents of this action fail to see is that their actions endanger the very nature of our legal system. Their actions are not only un-Constitutional but also heartless, despite what I know they think are good intentions. This woman no longer has a life, she ought to at least be allowed a decent death.

Joe Nation, please bear in mind that she isn't being allowed to die, since she is not ill, she is being made to die by being denied food or water.

I believe I've stated my position clearly, and rather than continue to re-state it, I'll let other members weigh in.

Is she asking for food or water? Is she communicating distress?

Brandon, this poor thing has been in a vegetative state for thirteen years,
her family, though they love her, are in denial. The law, as clearly found by at least eight courts, is that her husband, not anyone else, must make the difficult decision here to let her body die.

Brandon, we have the medical knowhow to keep a heart and lungs going for as long as there is electrical power. Fifty years? Sure. Do you want to keep her in a vegetative state for another fifty years? To what end, sir, for what?

BTW, I hope you have made out a living will, I have, and it says in big letters D N R .

That doesn't apply. Her organs are not being kept going by any machine. Her organs are functioning because she's healthy. She's not on any form of life support other than a feeding tube.

A New Low
Brandon and Joe Nation talk as though she is still being denied food and water. Unless I imagined it, an hour after Jeb Bush signed the new law the tube was re-connected and she was returned to the hospice where she had been living. And that night her family was allowed to see her.

I read a news item somewhere that said this was the second time the tube had been pulled and re-connected. Anyone know anything about that?

Shoe, check out Butrflynet's timeline. Looks like it happened for 2 days in April 2001.

And a fifth, the tiebreaker doctor appointed by the court, says that she is in a persistent vegetative state -- no self-awareness.

sozobe -- Dumb me. Now that I look around, there it is. Thanks.

Another question: Has anyone heard any talk about possible brain damage from the time she was off food and water? That was one fear of the family before she was disconnected.

I was once ask to sign a Do Not Resuscitate form in the Hospital for my dad. It was a very hard decision but I did it anyway. It was after his fifth heart attack in less than 3 days, his heart has a hole that drains blood to a colostomy bag after his body rejected the teflon coating binding it. I did not ask him if I should do it or not but the last two nights I visited him He said every night I pray to the Lord to take me so that this pain will be over.

In Theresa case, she is not in pain and she is in a healthy body with a questionable state of mind. If a doctor ask me to sign a do not feed form, I will refuse.

There's got to be something better than starving a person to death, regardless of their mental state.

I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply that the patient was on a heart/lung machine. I was referring, badly, to the other cases that this case will have impact on.

Wilso is right, there must be something better than starving a person to death, but the question here is 'Is this body a person?' The human body is a remarkable thing, powered by food that it converts into energy to operate the myriad functions that guarantee it's survival. The brain's higher functions preform all kinds of deeply complex machinations like language and mathematical formulations and throwing a baseball, but it's the lower, less in the press, functions that are working here. Deep down in the cortex, the medulla oblongata fires out it's orders for the primal operations, breathing, heartbeat and heartrate, perspiration.

We know that when a person is drowning the body shuts sections of itself down till only the heart, very slowly, pumps warmed blood toward the lungs, all else, higher thinking, the swallowing reflex, the brain's orders to the other muscles to move are put on hold till there is word that air, not water, is flowing into the lungs.

What we have here is a body in shutdown, without liquid food forced down her throat, she would only shut down further till her heart stopped, but as long as there is energy in the form of food, her survival brain, the one formed from the first cells of the fertilized egg, will urge the lungs and heart and skin onward. Alive to be sure, but like no person I would want to be.

Their daughter is long gone, this body on the bed is not her. Her personage is long gone what's left only looks like her.

Joe

Re: A New Low

It wasn't that night. When the family first tried to see her after she was reconnected, they were told she had been moved without their knowledge, and when they went to the Pinellas County hospice she had been moved to, they were denied access by orders of the husband, who is planning on going back to court to have the feeding stopped again. After a day or so, the parents and siblings were allowed to see her. My guess, and that's all it is, is that Michael Schiavo's lawyers told him that keeping the family out would erode whatever support he has. I believe her family is still not allowed to see any medical reports. One more note. While she was being starved, when a priest attempted to give her last rites at the parents' request (they are Catholic), he was told that he would be physically restrained if he attempted to place the wafer in her mouth (I'm not Catholic, so I may have phrased this incorrectly).

A new low
Brandon -- Just to set the record straight. I heard a radio interview with Terry's brother, who had just come from seeing her at the hospice, the same day she was returned there. He stated that the family was at first refused, but later in the evening they were allowed to spend quite some time with her. Tell it like it was.