a new low in separation of powers

There's a lot going on here and it's sad and it ought to be personal and private. There's a lot of pain here. For the husband who so loved his wife he made gigantic efforts to revive her. For the parents and sibs who love their daughter and sister, giant pain, awful terrible pain.

But this is not right, this is no longer a living person. It's a corpse with a hearbeat. To keep this corpus in this manner is not holy, is not moral, is not loving. It is about as close to clinically defined denial as one can come.
It is not right.

I would like to know where people get the notion that living flesh is sacred, even when it serves the owner no further purpose. That woman's life ended long ago. Why not let what remains go and quit wasting resources on the dead. Direct our energy toward the living.

Once again, Joe, you have found the words that I could not articulate. Your insights are sensitive, thoughtful, kind, and crystal clear. No one could have said it better.

I normally don't add my two cents to these forums because i am not as articulate as the rest of you...but playing devils advocate here..why not let the family take care of her if that is what they want to do...It does seem odd to me that her "husband" would not let them do that....I hear talk of money, his new girlfriend (or old) pregnant with their 2nd child....why not divorce her and let the family take care of her...that said if it were me...my roommate knows under penalties of haunting her forever...to terminate me and let me go peacefully...and there are better methods for terminating other than starvation...
If he loved her so much ...why not a divorce ...he is obviously not a practicing catholic if he is carrying on with another woman while still married..but hey...who am i to judge...

If you believe that Theresa is already dead, then there is no harm in letting the family that insists on taking care of her do what they want to do. The family is holding on to a thin line of hope, let us not decide for them.

The husband on the other hand can file a divorce and can move on with his life. If he thinks she is dead, then let go and move on.

A New Low
I agree that a divorce would be the best solution and would solve a lot of the problems. But these people are Catholics, and that may rule out divorce entirely. On the other hand, what is the Church's position on pulling the plug? The husband may be damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

This whole mess is bad enough, but religion seems to make it even worse.

There is no plug to be pulled. It is a matter of providing food

I understand that, Ricardo. "Pull the plug" is merely a generic expression often used in discussing cases such as this. It just means ending the life, by whatever means.

Well, "whatever means" in this case is killing her, since she is perfectly healthy. I see no moral difference between starving her and shooting her, except that in the former case, people can pretend that she's merely being taken off "life support." Also, I am by no means convinced that she is unaware of her existence. I know for a fact that most of the decisions regarding her case were made by a single judge, a Judge Greer, and that after the decison to starve and dehydrate her to death, the family, the Schindlers, were legally forbidden to release a videotape which they claimed showed her being responsive to their presence. Since there have been many allegations that the husband has a financial motive, I believe that if this is possible, then he ought not to be allowed to be her guardian. If indeed the guardian stands to profit from the wife's death, he ought not to be allowed to make life and death decisions for her. Someone truly impartial ought to be appointed guardian. Actually, I believe there is now a court order to have some of the guardian functions transferred to someone else, although I'm not quite sure of the details.

Brandon: you're new so I'll ask nicely for links to the information you are posting: in particular


You made this point before without attribution.

and secondly
A permanent vegetative state for 13 years is not by any stretch of the imagination perfectly healthy.

Keeping this woman alive is the cruelest thing I have read about in years.
More later...........

Going back to the original question? Does the executive body and legislative body usurped powers of the judiciary?

In my opinion no. The process went through legislation although the law was created specifically for this case and was hastened in order to save her nonetheless it was done through legislation.

President Bush has finally made a comment about this case. And guess what? He supports Jeb. Quelle surprise! :wink:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29BUSH.html

PDiddie<

I think you are on to something here

Family is only thinking of themselves
Terri Schaivo is not brain dead. She is in a persistent vegetative state and has no consciousness. Any facial or body reactions are involuntary, primarily muscle reactions.

What I don't understand is why her family would want to keep their daughter in such a state. If they truly love her, they would want to release her from her non-life existence.

I think they are selfishly thinking of their own sorrow instead of what is best for their daughter.

Terri's husband has a girl friend he wants to marry. He could divorce Terri and remarry. There is nothing in law to prevent that. I don't know the husband's true motives for wanting to let Terri die and whether or not money is involved, and it makes no difference to me.

It appears that the real issue in the case is the family's suspicions about Terri's husband and their fight against him. This should have nothing to do with maintaining Terri in her current condition. If there is evidence of the husband's abuse of Terri leading to her condition, there are legal means to settle that issue. Terri need not be kept alive to pursue that route.

Terri's condition of existence should be the decision motive. Her family should ask themselves if they would want to continue to live in her condition. If, by some miracle, Terri should regain consciousness, do they think she would not be severely brain damaged. Would they want her to live in that even worse state?

How often have we seen family members keep someone alive because they cannot face letting them go, which is understandable. But true love should not produce that result. The family should stop being self-centered and selfish and think of Terri.

We humanely end our pets suffering when there is no hope for them. Can we do any less for those humans we love?

My two cents:
In 17 years of EMS I saw a grand total of two (count them, two) successful resuscitations. Both were on patients who were (comparatively) healthy, under fifty, and had competent CPR begun immediately, followed by defibrillation, intubation, and drugs within ten minutes of going down. I have probably worked over 500 cardiac arrests. This is not a good ratio. If it were me or my loved ones, I would sign a DNR in a heartbeat. I have seen the reuslts of resusces when the above conditions didn't apply: Massive Brain Damage, Vent Dependent, etc..... in other words: persistant vegetative state. Not dead, but not really alive, and not even a good organ donor.

This is not at all the situation. No one needs to resuscitate her, since she is in perfect health apart from her brain damage. They actually have to kill her. The frequent references to "pulling the plug," and DNRs, and so forth really misrepresent the situation (not intentionally, I'm sure).

No offense intended at all, but I won't track down links to commonly stated public domain info. about the case. These details you asked about are often described in the news both on and off the Web. I will say this, though. They're keeping her just a few miles from my place of employment, so I end up hearing more news about the case than most members of A2K, because I also hear it on the local news, local talk shows, etc. It doesn't make my opinion worth any more than anyone else's, but it makes it very easy for me to keep up on the details of the case.

Brandon
Brandon, neither HobbitBob nor I were talking about resuscitating Terri. We were stating the facts, which are against brain damage recovery if Terri were to regain consciousness.

BBB

Re: Brandon

I absolutely agree that substantial recovery is unlikely. My concern is really whether she is aware of her own existence. To me, this is the criterion for whether it's ethical to kill her.

as i stated when i opened this topic, the issue at hand is more in the realm of separation powers beteween the judicial/executive/and legislative bodies in our government. first of all this bill passage and signage is unconstitution to begin with because under the constitution) no law that does not take into equal account of all citizens is not valid. and even more important neither legislative nor exective branches of government can over-ride the judicial branch, only a higher judicial branch can do that. Mr Jeb Bush along with his legislature may wish to make political hay of this but I truely believe it can't withstand judical approval.