Has the Schiavo case Become a Political Football?

dlowan wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

Bush approved legislation in Texas to withhold medical care if the family is unable to pay for their care. He is now saying "every life is precious." What's wrong with this picture?

This is very disappointing to me, if true. Can you provide a link?

Brandon - I will have a good look when I get home - it was in a recent edition of the Washington Post, I think.

I will prolly be beaten to the post by someone else, though!

Thing is - how long can we afford, as a society, to pay for care for people with no hope of recovery? What choices are we making - what else suffers, which could give great benefit to many?

These are real questions....

I assume, then, that you would also favor a law barring people over some age like maybe 80 from receiving any treatment other than palliative, since their life span is unlikely to be great even with a total cure, and those resources could give "great benefit to many."

"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," Mr. DeLay told a conference organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. A recording of the event was provided by the advocacy organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

"This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," Mr. DeLay said.

Mr. DeLay complained that "the other side" had figured out how "to defeat the conservative movement," by waging personal attacks, linking with liberal organizations and persuading the national news media to report the story. He charged that "the whole syndicate" was "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."

He charged that "the whole syndicate" was "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."

The right to substantive due process forbids the government to infringe certain "fundamental" liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided, unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest." Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 301-02, 113 S. Ct. 1439, 1447, 123 L. Ed. 2d 1, 16 (1993); accord Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 722, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 2268, 138 L. Ed. 2d 772, 788 (1997);

Terri's parents ought to have access to a federal court to hear Terri's case concerning her "right to life" as protected by the federal constitution.

All right -- for one thing, I don't believe these precedents apply here. While the state doesn't have a right to kill Terri Schiavo, killing isn't what we are talking about. We are talking about discontinuing her life support. To argue that this is the same thing -- that this is an active act of "depriving someone of life", you would have to show that the 14th amendment establishes an affirmative duty to protect, as opposed to just a prohibition against actively taking a life....

I disagree. I see no reason why the decision of a federal court should be any better informed than the decision of a state court. End-of-life jurisprudence, just like beginning-of-life jurisprudence, is a field on which reasonable people can severely disagree, so it makes sense to allow for state experimentation in the legal treatment of it. And just because the phrase "I am willing to make a federal case out of this" has become synonymous with "this is important to me" in everyday language, this doesn't mean that every important matter has to be actually decided in a federal court. I see this as just another power grab of the federal government against state governments, and I'm strongly against it.

While I will agree with the 10th Amendment, I feel the argument the Shiavos should be making relates directly to the "former" husbands abandonment of his spousal rights. When Mr. Shiavo decided 8/9 years ago to take a new women, have 2 children, probably obtain property together and create a "marriage", he in a real sense "divorced Ms. Shiavo which would make her parents next of kin. As such, the life/death deceision should rest with the parents.

From reading the text of the Bill, nowhere does it demand anything but a review of the case but falls short in asking what to review.

The state has no right to interfer in this. The husband has the right to carry out his wishes....

Why is it nonsense?

I think that starving someone to death is rather harsh however, I think that keeping her alive when she is obviously unable to function in an normal way is also cruel. This is another case of how to decide when is life to be valued (like abortion).

How would the parents feel if the state stepped in and said, hey, she's dead anyway so we are making you remove her food tube. It's the same principle. They don't have any business deciding her life or death.

If the police are called to the scene of a man beating up his wife, do they have the right to interfere with the husband's right to "carry out his wishes?"

And I am not sure what you are after when you say "she's dead anyway," since she will not be dead until they do here what you are advocating.

Brandon9000 wrote:

If the police are called to the scene of a man beating up his wife, do they have the right to interfere with the husband's right to "carry out his wishes?"

I'd hardly call this the same thing. You don't know that he isn't doing it because he knows she would want it that way. You don't know that he isn't doing it because he knows that she isn't there anymore and to keep her body around is just painful.

On the same note, why hasn't he divorced her?

Brandon9000 wrote:

And I am not sure what you are after when you say "she's dead anyway," since she will not be dead until they do here what you are advocating.

You call being unable to feed yourself, unable to do anything other than stare at the ceiling living?

Bella Dea wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

And I am not sure what you are after when you say "she's dead anyway," since she will not be dead until they do here what you are advocating.

You call being unable to feed yourself, unable to do anything other than stare at the ceiling living?

I do not call it dead, since it is not. You are simply wrong.

Bella Dea wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

If the police are called to the scene of a man beating up his wife, do they have the right to interfere with the husband's right to "carry out his wishes?"

I'd hardly call this the same thing. You don't know that he isn't doing it because he knows she would want it that way. You don't know that he isn't doing it because he knows that she isn't there anymore and to keep her body around is just painful.

On the same note, why hasn't he divorced her?

Your assertion that the state has no right to intervene in a family matter is belied by the fact that you would demand state intervention in the case of a man beating his wife.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Bella Dea wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

And I am not sure what you are after when you say "she's dead anyway," since she will not be dead until they do here what you are advocating.

You call being unable to feed yourself, unable to do anything other than stare at the ceiling living?

I do not call it dead, since it is not. You are simply wrong.

I would consider it dead. I would not consider myself alive if in that state. And I've made it perfectly clear to my family of this.

I guess you might want your family to spend millions of dollars to keep you around, despite the fact that you could never express yourself to them again, never feed yourself, clean yourself, do anything....but I would not. And I pity this poor woman.

It isn't like this has left her mentally retarded. This has left her practically brain dead.

I don't believe these precedents apply here. While the state doesn't have a right to kill Terri Schiavo, killing isn't what we are talking about. We are talking about discontinuing her life support. . . .

. . . .I see this as just another power grab of the federal government against state governments, and I'm strongly against it.