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About Terri
Posted by Kender on March 31st, 2006
On this, the anniversary of Terri’s death, the question remains.
Not the question of who had the right to starve her to death.
That has never been the question that those one the right side of the aisle, and this argument, had foremost in our minds.
Rather, the question we had, that was steadfastly ignored by those in the MSM and the pro-death camps, was this:
Was It The Right Thing To Do?
Those of us on the “right” side of this issue yell loudly that the answer is a resounding NO.
Our opponents, those people firmly in the socialist death camp, continue to ignore the question, placing the debate in the arena of “freedom of choice” and “quality of life”.
Not once has any of the black hearted lovers of death ever said “Starving people to death is wrong.”
This is the crux of this debate.
“We”, those of us that fought to keep Terri alive, are disgusted to think that starving people to death would be considered acceptable behavior.
To our enemies, it is simply “freedom.”
Linked at Stop The ACLU
March 31st, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Terri Schiavo, 1 Year Ago
One year ago the country was divided over the fate of a terribly brain damaged young woman named Terri Schiavo. Terri suffered brain damage under suspicious circumstances and left no living will. Her estranged husband, who had taken up with another w…
April 1st, 2006 at 2:59 am
A point to consider. After her death, Terri was examined. A full autopsy. Her brain was, well, gone. Large parts were actually missing, nothing but CSF where they should be. Other parts were scared and usless. There is no way it could possibly have worked again. At the time, the medical evidence said with certinty just this – I imagine she want through MRI a few times and had the EEG hooked up, which would show emptyness and an almost flat line. The doctors who said she had not the slightest hope of regaining conciousness knew their field. Whatever made her her, it was gone already.
She wasn’t going to recover. Not a hope. So the choice becomes, do you keep her alive as a vegetable until she dies of age? Or withdraw support and let her pass away naturally.
If there was enough of her left to feel pain, you could argue that it would be more humane to just put a lethal dose of morphine in. But that is legally and morally a little trickier than just withdrawing support, and the distinction is meaningless without a brain to care.
April 1st, 2006 at 11:56 am
Suricou – Don’t even bother, I tried this days ago, Raven will just obsfucate the issue or dismiss the loss of half her brain as “biased” and “misleading” somehow.
Either the good nurse doesen’t understand the fundamentals of how a brain functions, or she’s being disengenuous for attention.
April 1st, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Timmiah? Are you paying so little attention to things that you didn’t notice this was my post?
April 1st, 2006 at 2:32 pm
I have to try. That is why I am here, a liberal on a conservative blog. I could chat with the other liberals, getting us all worked up about the conservative and religious revival. But I would rather come here, where I can learn to understand conservative views and reason with them to reach a compromise.
Though personally, I think the existance of liberals and conservatives is itsself a bad thing. It results in issue-lumping – my two least-liked political terms are ‘family’ and ‘pro-life’ for this reason.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Suricou, while I applaud your initiative in coming to a “conservative” blog, your goal of reasoning and reaching a compromise on the issue at hand, starving disabled people to death, is a lost cause.
There can be no compromise when it comes to putting people to death because they are not well and don’t have “a decent life”.
Anyone that seeks a compromise on this issue has not thought through the ramifications of these policies, and are turning a blind eye to what is happening in countries that have adopted a “compassionate end of life policy”.
It is nothing short of murder.
April 1st, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Heh… it is a shame that politics degenerates into us vs them so often. I see there are links here to blogs titled ’smashing left wing scum’ and ‘liberalism is a mental disorder.’ The counterparts on the other side of the political divide are no better. And once a two-side divide forms, every issue that comes along gets split – X takes one position, so Y reflexively takes the opposite.
Getting back on topic though, I think we are dealing with two seperate but related issues here. The specific case of Terri, and of euthanisia (Wether withdrawn-support or assisted) in general.
The first, at least, I see no problem in. Terri did not have a poor quality of life. She had no life. And no mind – her body was nothing but an empty shell. I see no issue with letting it die – she was as good as dead already. If I were religious, I would be confident her soul had left already. The only concern I have is that legally, she had to be allowed to die of natural causes, and starvation results in multible organ failure. Waste of good parts – her brain was ruined, but the rest of her might have been enough to get a couple of people off the transplant list.
In general… there it gets more complicated. But I think some effective system and standard could be put in place with safeguards (It would require multible medical experts testify, and may be overridden if a living-will was in place). Its really not practical to have a national circus in every case as happened for Terri – media mobbing, legal fights, even legislative intervention at one point – and as a general rule, legislation is never supposed to be even considered for the benefit of a single individual. Legislative branch sets policy, judicial applies it in individual cases. Thats how things are supposed to be.
I have heard stories of abuse in countries that do have a system in place – mostly related to families trying to talk an old relative with high care costs into suicide. But information on such cases is very hard to find – the stories exagerate and distort. Thats what the safeguards are for. They might just need a little adjustment.
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:29 am
The NAZIs and Communists advanced the idea that killing the feeble was OK. This is not the Christian position, nor that of the USA. States have the authority to punish murder. Speaking of which, there is a good bit of evidence that her husband may have had a bit to do with her condition.
April 3rd, 2006 at 12:00 pm
AD HITLARIUM ALERT! All debates end the moment any comment reguarding Hitler or the Nazis is made, as the emotional connections and immediate reflexive hatred render logical thought near-impossible.
Besides, there is no connection – the nazi’s had a *completly* different reason, motivation and standards. The Terri debate has no link to them. At all. Any attempt to dredge one up where none exists is the tactic of an unskilled debater.
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:50 pm
No, Suricou Raven, you are mistaken.
The debate over “end of life issues” and “quality of life” questions is exactly the kind of thinking that the nazi government was enthralled with and enacting with their policies.
To let someone starve to death because their “quality of life” is not equal to teh standard of society is barbaric.
To let babies with Downs Syndrome starve to death BECAUSE they are not “normal” (as is getting to be standard in some european countries) is evil.
And THAT is the end of the debate, because saying that killing people that aren’t the same as everyone else, health or mentalwise proves you hold to evil beliefs, and you aren’t going to admit that you are evil, are you Suricou Raven?
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:00 pm
The Nazis were very into eugenics. They were not concerned with the quality of life, but the genetic quality of society. On the issue of Terri, they would actually have been neutral – providing the family paid the full medical cost. Braindead, fully dead… makes no real difference. Either way, a non-breeder.
There is no need to drag the nazis into this. The first person to try to connect Terri with abortion gets their eyes pecked out for the same reason – issue-bundling is a very untidy practice.
I havn’t heard anything about starving babies with downs syndrome in Europe. Not unless your mind is so twisted you are refering to PGD.
Good, evil… just labels meaning ‘agrees with me’ and ‘everyone else.’