Has the Schiavo case Become a Political Football?

Americans United Blasts Congressional Leaders' Promise To Push Religious Right Agenda
Wednesday, March 23, 2005

In Closed-Door Briefings, Frist, DeLay Cement Ties With Religious Right On Schiavo Case, Judges, Abortion, Marriage, Church Politicking, Ethics Complaints

Top congressional leaders have promised to push the Religious Right agenda on judicial nominations, church politicking, abortion, marriage and the Terri Schiavo case, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Americans United today released audiotapes of closed-door addresses by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to a Family Research Council (FRC) gathering March 17-18 at Washington, D.C.'s Willard Hotel. The pair talked about a range of political issues, using the Schiavo case as a springboard.

"Religious Right leaders are determined to run all of our lives, from the moment of conception through the end of life," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "And top congressional leaders are conspiring behind closed doors in Washington to help them do it. It's appalling.

"Frist and DeLay have wrapped sanctimonious language around political posturing," said Lynn. "They are using Mrs. Schiavo's personal tragedy in Florida to burnish their credentials with an increasingly powerful component of the Republican Party. It's a sad, cynical political ploy."

Mrs. Schiavo, a Florida woman, has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, has fought a long legal battle to remove her feeding tube. Religious Right forces and their allies in Congress and Florida government have repeatedly tried to intervene in the situation, despite medical advice and court decisions that support Mr. Schiavo.

During the FRC meeting, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) assured attendees that they would do what it takes to keep Schiavo connected to a feeding tube and also would exert great power to push a whole host of issues central to the Religious Right's agenda.

DeLay urged the gathering to contact lawmakers in both chambers to support legislation that would allow churches to become much more involved in partisan politicking. The Texas Republican blasted current federal tax law, which bars both secular and religious nonprofit groups from endorsing political candidates.

"It forces Christians back into the church and that's what is going on," DeLay claimed. "That's not what Christ asked us to do. We have to fight back."

Beyond swearing allegiance to the Religious Right's agenda, DeLay, who has faced increased attention for alleged ethics violations, also bemoaned "personal attacks" against him and other conservative leaders and said the Schiavo case would highlight those attacks.

"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," DeLay told the crowd.

"This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," DeLay said. He
complained that "the other side" was leading the attack, with a goal "to defeat the conservative movement."

According to DeLay, a "whole syndicate" of "do-gooder" forces are arrayed against him in "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."

FRC President Tony Perkins assured DeLay of the group's support and asked audience members to contact Republican lawmakers and demand that they back the House majority leader.

Americans United's Lynn said, "It is dishonorable for Rep. DeLay to use the Schiavo case and cloak himself in Christian piety in order to evade accountability on ethics complaints."

Frist also told the FRC attendees that he was dedicated to issues dear to their hearts.

"You stand up for our families, our children, you never back down," Frist told the gathering via speakerphone. "That's why we are winning these larger battles today. Together we are leading our nation forward. We have a president, a House of Representatives, a Senate that shares our values and the American people are on our side.

"In this Congress we are going to continue to work on the issues that are important to you, to me and above all, America's future," Frist continued.

Those issues include, Frist maintained, the confirmation of "good judges," protecting the "sanctity of marriage" and protecting "the unborn." He said, "I'm also committed to ending the [Senate Democratic] minority's filibuster [on judges] and restoring this 220 years or more of Senate tradition and history."

Frist was particularly adamant about fighting for a Federal Marriage Amendment, saying that, "We will take action to preserve and protect and defend the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman."

Americans United's Lynn said the comments by DeLay and Frist prove that Congress is beholden to the Religious Right's narrow vision for America.

"I find it appalling that top leaders of Congress are using the Schiavo tragedy to nurture their Religious Right base," Lynn said. "I am confident that the American people do not want their personal lives subjected to interference from Congress and their Religious Right allies."

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

You referred to this form of killing as "a quiet, peaceful, and unpainful death." I then asked you to cite a source, or whether you merely meant that she cannot feel anything at all. How is this apples and oranges? My questions were in direct response to what you had said.

Held:

1. The United States Constitution does not forbid Missouri to require that evidence of an incompetent's wishes as to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment be proved by clear and convincing evidence. Pp. 269-285. [497 U.S. 261, 262

(c) It is permissible for Missouri, in its proceedings, to apply a clear and convincing evidence standard, which is an appropriate standard when the individual interests at stake are both particularly important and more substantial than mere loss of money, Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 756 . Here, Missouri has a general interest in the protection and preservation of human life, as well as other, more particular interests, at stake. It may legitimately seek to safeguard the personal element of an individual's choice between life and death. The State is also entitled to guard against potential abuses by surrogates who may not act to protect the patient. Similarly, it is entitled to consider that a judicial proceeding regarding an incompetent's wishes may not be adversarial, with the added guarantee of accurate factfinding that the adversary process brings with it.

3. The Due Process Clause does not require a State to accept the "substituted judgment" of close family members in the absence of substantial proof that their views reflect the patient's. This Court's decision upholding a State's favored treatment of traditional family relationships, Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 , may not be turned into a constitutional requirement that a State must recognize the primacy of these relationships in a situation like this. Nor may a decision upholding a State's right to permit family decisionmaking, Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584 , be turned into a constitutional requirement that the State recognize such decisionmaking. Nancy Cruzan's parents would surely be qualified to exercise such a right of "substituted judgment" were it required by the Constitution. However, for the same reasons that Missouri may require clear and convincing evidence of a patient's wishes, it may also choose to defer only to those wishes, rather than confide the decision to close family members. Pp. 285-287.

Thus, if some trustworthy evidence existed that the individual would have wanted to terminate treatment, but not enough to clearly establish a person's wishes for purposes of the subjective standard, and the burden of a prolonged life from the experience of pain and suffering markedly outweighed its satisfactions, treatment could be terminated under a "limited-objective" standard.

In Michael H., we upheld the constitutionality of California's favored treatment of traditional family relationships; such a holding may not be turned around into a constitutional requirement

Occam Bill wrote:

Quote:

Ps. I probably won't find time to answer anyway, but 68 pages in I still have yet to see a single person try to explain why Michael might deny Terri's parents access to her medical information and insist on immediate cremation without autopsy.

Maybe we have been married a few more times than you. I can think of several reasons I would have prevented my mothers-in-law from intruding into our lives, that is more than they already did, but you asked about Michael Schiavo.

Maybe he thinks it's none of their business. That's harsh, isn't it? But it's the reality of life. Married people are married to each other and though it's wonderful to have good relations amongst their relations, their private lives are their own.

Maybe he doesn't believe the body should be subject to autopsy. That's a common belief in many religions. The same with cremation. I don't know about Michael Schiavo, but I do know several people who hold those beliefs exactly, something about the sanctity of the body being lost through the invasiveness of the autopsy and the putrefaction in the grave. If he holds those beliefs you wouldn't want to violate them for anyone's curiosity, but only if law enforcement had a legitimate interest.

I wouldn't think many people would want either the government nor other interested parties of any kind intruding on a decision like what is to be done with your deceased wife's body.

At the end, this story is not an uncommon one, but one that is being played out in hundreds of hospices and hospitals at this hour. People are dying. Sons, mothers, daughters, fathers, grandads, nanas and little babies still damp from being born. Every death is different and the same. Sudden Death is a gift to those left behind, that's my opinion anyway, formed in the long years I watched my mother fade. Death hesitant is the cruelest torture, not only for the dying, but for those left grieving. It makes people a bit mad, a bit insane, a bit of defective mental thinking can invade us, sometimes more than a bit, and we make bad decisions or not, say rude things or not, cut off love or not, turn away help or not and deny a thousand times that we are a bit mad, a little insane. Or maybe we become saints.

You and I might avoid the gaze of others as we spend our grief, but the Michael Schiavos of the world are dragged out into the lights and cameras of the world's stage to hear questions like

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why Michael might deny Terri's parents access to her medical information and insist on immediate cremation without autopsy.

His eyes blink through fifteen years of grief and he remembers that the sky was a crystalline blue that morning.

Joe(Please select from the following options)Nation

The fact is, that the only authority to kill her derives from her husband's claim that she once made a certain comment, and he is either telling the truth or lying. Logically, his unsubstantiated account is not much evidence, since his motives are something that can only be speculated about. I would never kill someone simply because one person with unknown motives said that she wanted to die.

Unless you simply mean that she can feel nothing, in which case you must also conclude that death by flamethrower would also be a quiet, peaceful, and unpainful death for her.

I wouldn't want Brandon to miss this. It's too frustrat'n.

Taken from another article, "The American Academy of Neurology has concluded that PVS patients do not experience pain or suffering. Ronald Cranford, a leading authority on PVS, states that "from a neurologic standpoint, they simply do not experience pain, suffering, or cognition."{15}"


The reference link is www.bethel.edu/~rakrob/files/PVS.html


Maybe it needs to be bigger.

I think that death by dehydration/starvation and death by flamethrower are poor comparisons considering the debate would then move from one of passive euthanasia and into one of active euthanasia.

Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: March 20, 2005

To many people, death by removing a feeding tube brings to mind the agony of starvation. But medical experts say that the process of dying that begins when food and fluids cease is relatively straightforward, and can cause little discomfort.

"From the data that is available, it is not a horrific thing at all," said Dr. Linda Emanuel, the founder of the Education for Physicians in End-of-Life Care Project at Northwestern University.

In fact, declining food and water is a common way that terminally ill patients end their lives, because it is less painful than violent suicide and requires no help from doctors.

Terri Schiavo, who is in a persistent vegetative state, is "probably not experiencing anything at all subjectively," said Dr. Emanuel, and so the question of discomfort, from a scientific point of view, is not in dispute.

Patients who are terminally ill and conscious and refuse food and drink at the end of life say that they do not generally experience pangs of hunger, since their bodies do not need much food. But they can suffer from dry mouth and other symptoms of dehydration that can be treated effectively.

Once food and water stop, death usually comes in about two weeks, and is caused by effects of dehydration, not the loss of nutrition, said Dr. Sean Morrison, a professor of geriatrics and palliative care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "They generally slip into a peaceful coma," he said. "It's very quiet, it's very dignified - it's very gentle."

The process of dying begins in the kidneys, which filter toxins from the body's fluids. Without new fluids entering the body, the kidneys produce less and less urine, and the urine becomes darker and more concentrated until production stops entirely.

Toxins build up in the body, and the delicate balance of chemicals like potassium, sodium and calcium is disrupted, said Deborah Volker, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Texas who has written extensively on end-of-life issues.

This electrolyte imbalance disrupts the electrical system that triggers the action of muscles, including the heart, and eventually the heart stops beating.

I think that death by dehydration/starvation and death by flamethrower are poor comparisons considering the debate would then move from one of passive euthanasia and into one of active euthanasia.