State meddles in private tragedy?

[Gav]

It's all over: or is it?

Brain-damaged Terri Schiavo dies

[epee1]

Originally Posted by Gav

It's all over: or is it?

Brain-damaged Terri Schiavo dies

I guess now we can move on to something a little less volatile like abortion rights or the veracity of organized religion.

[Maeve_Mari]

If nothing else - the highlighting by the media and our elected officials of this personal matter, as inappropriate as it was - I think we've learned the importance of and value of life planning and the need to prepare a living will and keep it current.

I know I plan on making clear to what extent I would want extraordinary measures employed, and will include burial instructions too.

[esskreemr]

It may be over, it may not be over.

We'll see if any right-wing nut decides to press murder charges...

[Maeve_Mari]

I thought of that. You just know that there's going to be an examination of the procedures of hospitals and doctors in these terminal cases and a determination of how to legislate them. I expect the insurance industry to weigh in big on this too. Can you imagine the numbers the actuarial databases will produce given a possibility of large medical stores (warehouses) of terminal patients permanently connected to life support. If there is no end, what happens?

During some of the news reports from Florida on Terri's death announcement you could see some of the protesters in the background bawling their eyes out and looking near collapse at the news, as if she was their closest relative, not just the impetus for their cause. People that impassioned are going to go to court. Terri was their ticket to the judicial test. We have alot more to hear on this - the only difference now is that they can't force her to/prove that she can recooperate now.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by Maeve_Mari

I think we've learned the importance of and value of life planning and the need to prepare a living will and keep it current.

Well, actually, the health care proxy is a significantly more important document. Living wills tend to be too narrow. Not to mention frequently ignored by doctors (due to their being too narrowly defined) according to a study I read about recently. Having a health care proxy and keeping it current (as well as keeping the person therein named current on your wishes and beliefs) is a more important step (granted both should be taken care of).

-B :)

[jeff]

Brad's advice is very wise. Get that health care proxy and advanced directive information filed - whatever your wishes are.

BTW: Just got in the door and see they've given the Pope last rites.

[jeff]

Originally Posted by grotto

Little personal history here.

Props to grotto for being willing to share this extremely personal piece of family history, and for an overall excellent, reasoned, and sincere post.

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by oiuyt

Well, actually, the health care proxy is a significantly more important document. Living wills tend to be too narrow. Not to mention frequently ignored by doctors (due to their being too narrowly defined) according to a study I read about recently. Having a health care proxy and keeping it current (as well as keeping the person therein named current on your wishes and beliefs) is a more important step (granted both should be taken care of).

-B

Sounds reasonable and more appropriate for what needs to be covered. I hadn't heard it refered to before, but then again, like most people this issue has never been so "in your face" before!

Thanks,

[lochinvar]

Originally Posted by L.O.A.S.

In light of recent court decisions, I had not planned on posting anymore on this subject, but then I didn't want Epee 1 to be the lonely voice of reason on the right

Sorry, I haven't been following this thread, so I was catching up and this phrase jumped out at me. Too funny!

I won't make any of the obvious cracks about a "voice of reason on the right" being an oxymoron or that any voice of reason on the right would by definition be lonely, since they would be the only one... No, I won't take any cheap shots like that.

[lochinvar]

Originally Posted by Gav

It's all over: or is it?

I predict a long and bitter political aftermath as the neocons in the legislature try various ways to circumscribe the powers of the judiciary and/or subordinate them to the legislature...Tom DeLay has already intimated as much.

Seems sad that the biggest expression of outrage is not for the pathetic end to this sad story but rather for the courts who had the utter temerity to ignore the express wishes of Congress Assembled by not reopening the issue.

How dare they! Where did they ever get the idea they could do that? Constitution? What Constitution...?

[esskreemr]

Originally Posted by lochinvar

I predict a long and bitter political aftermath as the neocons in the legislature try various ways to circumscribe the powers of the judiciary and/or subordinate them to the legislature...Tom DeLay has already intimated as much.

Intimated?! He's pretty much flatly stated that there will be a reckoning:

Originally Posted by Tom DeCrook

"The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today,"

OK, here's the beaut:

Originally Posted by Tom DeSnake

the courts "thumbed their nose at Congress and the president," Mr. DeLay, of Texas, suggested Congress was exploring responses and declined to rule out the possibility of Congressional impeachment of the judges involved.

Sounds like King George and his Dark Prince are a little more than miffed at the temerity of the courts for not kowtowing to the political pressure of the right-winged moral minority. How dare they?!!! Perhaps next time they'll declare the relevant parties as "unlawful combatant" terrorists and hold them indefinitely...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/politics/01pols.html?

[jeff]

Interesting comments in the New Yorker about the Religious Right's position in this case. i'll paraphrase:

- If Terri's "right to life" meant that removing her feeding tube was equivalent to murder, then neither the approval or disapproval of her family would have made any moral difference.
- If Terri's parents had agreed with Michael Schiavo, would that have transformed what the RR considered murder into an act of mercy?
- If Michael Schiavo had remained celibate over the past 10 years, wouldn't the same people have demanded that he be allowed to assert his Biblically ordained authority as husband, without interference from government or other family?

My comment (not New Yorker's): The first two have bearing on many people who have the responsibility for deciding on end of life issues for gravely ill relatives. Is anyone who decides to not indefinitely maintain relatives lives - no matter what their wishes or condition - a murderer? In which case, many are. Including the ethically challenged Tom Delay who pulled the plug on his own father. For further hypocrisy I'll cite the president for his mocking of convicted murderer (and later - born again Christian) Karla Faye Tucker. Perhaps he was right to order her execution, he was not right to have mocked her pleading for her life.

[jeff]

From Saint Petersberg Times at
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/Co...s_the_be.shtml

Living will is the best revenge
By ROBERT FRIEDMAN
Published March 27, 2005

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/Co...s_the_be.shtml

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues.
Here's what mine says:
* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.