Stop eating and drinking right now. No matter how hungry you get, no matter how maddening the thirst, don’t do anything to sustain your life. Then, just before you die, please tell “Michael Schiavo”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/18/schiavo.brain-damaged/ just how peaceful your death was. Especially the bits about who you felt when you went into “kidney failure from the dehydration.”:http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000501.htm
I have a hard time with this case – it’s tragic for all around. Does Michael have an ulterior motive? Who knows? Does Terri have a dedicated family willing to care for her on the chance that her life is worth living? Most definitely. I don’t know who’s right in this mess with regards to her medical condition, but would we be having this discussion if she was born severely handicapped? Are we the Netherlands, where a decision can be made at birth to end a life because of a judgement that it’s a life “not worth living?”:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/983ynlcv.asp At least the babies are euthanized in a painless way, not starved to death. We react in horror to stories of adopted children being mistreated and malnourished, but can apparently accept that starvation is OK for a completely defenseless woman, based on nothing more than heresay?
It’s not that I have a problem with ending the suffering of a terminal patient who can make that decision. But I’m tired of hearing people justify the act by saying that her death will be “peaceful and painless”. It won’t be – it will be horrible and painful and she will die of a state sponsored lack of care – the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment. These are the same people who want to stop capital punishment, but have no problems starving a woman who *might* have some level of consciousness, however minimal. And it’s that word – “might”, that causes all of the problems. There seems to be a legitimate disagreement on her level of mental capacity. We live in a society that will stop the execution of mentally handicapped felons convicted of horrible crimes, but will condone the slow and agonizing death of a brain damaged woman who never harmed anyone. To me, that is madness. If Terri Schiavo must die, then at least do it humanely.
h3. UPDATE
Jay Reding “says it better.”:http://www.jayreding.com/archives/2005/03/19/if-there-is-a-right-to-die-kill-her/
h3. UPDATE 2
Read the “last sentence,”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7257835/ and contemplate the word “unlikely”.
Doc, you did a fine job of leaving religion out of your post.
I consider that strange, because this whole Shiavo biznez is about religion.
It’s about religion now being in our Federal Law, where 230 years and countless lives of soldiers and just plain people have been given to keep it out of our Federal Law.
It’s a sad day Doc, and a sadder one still because good and understanding folks like yourself still don’t get this point.
No life, not yours, not mine nor Terri Shiavo’s is worth saving if the one thing we exist for ends.
And end it we just did.
Think about it.
Then think about the history of religious governments.
Then think about a religious government here.
That government just drew it’s first breath, Doc, and you helped birth it.
Whoa! Goerge!
I left religion out of it, because I’m the resident atheist at RNS, remember? Actually, there may be more than one, I never really asked.
The point of my post was that dying of dehydration is a TERRIBLE way to die. I tried to make clear that I don’t know who’s right with regards to her capacity to feel pain/comprehend what is happening to her. The point was that we are killing this woman in a way that we would not consider for a mass muderer, a vicious dog, or just about any other living being.
You may be right about the “religious” connotations of what is happening here. But I’m not a religious man, and I feel a sense of moral despair at what we are contemplating in the name of “mercy”. I’m not a part of the religious right, in fact – not even really a part of the right, as far as I can tell. But some of the most moral people I know are atheists, and some of the most amoral proclaim a belief in a higher power. That’s not my issue – but rather – should we kill this woman, in this way.
So your solution is what, exactly?
The solution is perspective, Doc. Perspective tells you that no one person is worth trashing our Constitution so severely for. We wouldn’t do that for the Pope, for God’s sake. Why are we doing it for one vegetative woman who, by the vast majority of medical opinions of doctors who have examined her, and by a UNANIMOUS opinion of the Impartial doctors who have examined her, CANNOT FEEL ANY PAIN.
ARE WE SO STUPID AS TO NOT RECOGNIZE THAT THE WOMAN IS TOTALLY UNRESPONSIVE, AND WHAT THAT MEANS?
What that means, if an EMT Basic might deign to lecture a learned DVM, is that you could remove entire limbs from the woman without benefit of anaesthesia and she wouldn’t feel it.
To a conscious person, starvation and dehydration is a tough way to go. I know, because my father ended his life that way, down to 78 pounds at death. He was partly conscious until his last week, too. IT WAS HIS CHOICE TO GO THAT WAY, BECAUSE, IN FEAR OF MY CAREER ENDING, I DENIED HIS LAST REQUEST FOR SUICIDE VIA MY SERVICE PISTOL.
No, Terri Shiavo is a very lucky woman. What’s left of her life will end, and she’ll never know it, just as she’s never known the last 15 years of it.
Like it or not, hundreds of old people end their lives this way every year in this country. So tell, me Doc, why didn’t the damn Congress outlaw all of THOSE DEATHS ALONG WITH TERRI SHIAVO’S?
Nope, compassion has nothing to do with this case, never has, never will. The family is fighting each other and mostly over Terri Shiavo’s considerable wealth, and the soul-less politicians are fighting to end the free will of the individual as we know it. The Left is fighting, for once, on the side of the individual, but politics makes very strange bedfellows, and I wouldn’t give a plug nickle for the Left being on the correct side of another argument very soon.
No, today, our Nation lost a huge chunk of itself.
Go read Kim DuToit’s take, or mine, for that matter on Rivrdog blog. Read what patriots unbowed by priests standing behind them with the pike of the New Inquisition have to say.
Then think, Doc, think about what has been lost. Just so one woman with no chance at life can be kept “alive”.
I repeat, no one is worth that. Not you, not I, and certainly not Terri Shiavo.
Is Life cheap? When it comes to defending the only worthwhile Democratic Republic the planet has ever seen and will ever see, you bet it’s cheap. If I had to sacrifice ten thousand Terri Shiavos to save one word of the Constitution, I would do it in a blink of my eye.
OK, George, I get it. And the not so subtle dig at me being a veterinarian – sorry I had the audacity to have an opinion on the method chosen for her death.
I understand your upset over the route being taken by some – a route I have neither condoned or endorsed in any way. I think terminally ill people should be allowed to die, most especially if they have the cognitive function to make that decision, as your father did. It’s crazy that the option is “let’s let her die of dehydration” vs “let’s euthanize her quickly and painlessly”. This is the angle of my post – not the one you keep trying to make it be about so you can call me stupid and use capital letters in your sense of outrage.
I’m sorry – I just have trouble seeing her as nothing more than a potted plant – if she dries out and dies, all is well – we can always get another.