STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

dc · Dooney & Bourke

RE: Terri Schiavo - different perspective

crystal · Kate Spade

i just wanted to add one thing that i don't think has been brought up:

my dad told me (and he's read/heard a lot about the case so i trust his information) that terri & her husband had only been married for 3 years when she had her heart attack (i thought it was a stroke, but someone here said heart attack, either way...) so while the husband may think he's fulfilling terri's wishes, he really didn't know her that long compared to how long her family has known her. in fact, it kind of scares me that the husband is the one who gets to decide these things, if & when i create a living will it will say that my parents have the choice if they want me to be kept alive because i know it can be a financial burden but i'd rather have people who love me unconditionally & known me my whole life decide my fate than my husband. what if we were only married for a day & i became a "vegetable"?? i don't think it's fair for him to make my decisions.

that said, i don't think that terri's husband has bad intentions, i just think that the people who know her best & the longest should get to decide her fate.

dc · Dooney & Bourke

crystal - It's a valid point, but my assumption is that a husband would know the wife on a more intimate level than the parents. It's just the nature of a spousal relationship that you'd have deep and profound discussion (I would hope) about life philosophies and wishes for end-of-life care, and even funeral arrangements. One's relationship with a spouse is simply more intimate . Not better or more loving - just on a different level of emotional and intellectual intimacy where these types of things would more likely be discussed in the context of hopes, fears, dreams.

Plus, a parent is naturally repelled at the idea of the death of their child - it would be much harder for them to face realities about their child's wishes in a case like this when they project their own hopes and the shattered dreams they had for this child upon the situation.

When you marry - it doesn't matter for how long you've been married - you promise to love the person for better or for worse, etc. It is at that point that your spouse's welfare becomes your responsibility.

Cricket · Gucci

quote:
Originally posted by: crystal
"i just wanted to add one thing that i don't think has been brought up: my dad told me (and he's read/heard a lot about the case so i trust his information) that terri & her husband had only been married for 3 years when she had her heart attack (i thought it was a stroke, but someone here said heart attack, either way...) so while the husband may think he's fulfilling terri's wishes, he really didn't know her that long compared to how long her family has known her. in fact, it kind of scares me that the husband is the one who gets to decide these things, if & when i create a living will it will say that my parents have the choice if they want me to be kept alive because i know it can be a financial burden but i'd rather have people who love me unconditionally & known me my whole life decide my fate than my husband. what if we were only married for a day & i became a "vegetable"?? i don't think it's fair for him to make my decisions. that said, i don't think that terri's husband has bad intentions, i just think that the people who know her best & the longest should get to decide her fate."

Well, my husband certainly hasn't know me as long as my parents or the rest of my family and some friends, but I don't think that matters. He knows me better than anyone ever has or will. I would much rather want him being the executor of my fate than anyone else. It doesn't matter that they were only married for 3 years before she went into the coma. They were married. He obviously cares very much for her. He could have just washed his hands of her years ago if he didn't give care about her wishes. I have a lot of respect for him. He has stuck by her for 15 years. How could he possibly be benefitting from that? It's been too long. He would have divorced her if he did not believe she didn't want to live in this state.

dc · Dooney & Bourke

quote:
Originally posted by: crystal
.....when she had her heart attack (i thought it was a stroke, but someone here said heart attack, either way...)

She had a heart attack as the result of a potassium imbalance due to bulimia.

beachgirl · Kenneth Cole

Has anyone seen the movie "Million Dollar Baby"?

Personally, I would not want to be kept alive. If my friends and family really cared about me, I hope they would let me go and move on to a better place. It makes me sick thinking about what it would be like, lying there, unable to communicate or move. It would be just terrible. She is completely bedridden. How could anyone possibly want to live like that? That's not living at all. It's torture! I think it's horrible and really selfish that her parents won't let her go and I hope that she is completely incapacitated so she doesn't know what's happening to her!

halleybird · Hermes

I am sad for this entire situation...it's a reminder of why EVERYONE needs a living will.

That said, I don't trust the husband and I never have. I don't get any sense of compassion from him whatsoever -- it just seems like he wants to be done with her. Also, I think I read that they had marital problems related to her eating disorder (which caused her condition in the first place).

-- Edited by halleybird at 16:56, 2005-03-24

blink · Coach

quote:
Originally posted by: dc
"crystal - It's a valid point, but my assumption is that a husband would know the wife on a more intimate level than the parents. It's just the nature of a spousal relationship that you'd have deep and profound discussion (I would hope) about life philosophies and wishes for end-of-life care, and even funeral arrangements. One's relationship with a spouse is simply more intimate . Not better or more loving - just on a different level of emotional and intellectual intimacy where these types of things would more likely be discussed in the context of hopes, fears, dreams. Plus, a parent is naturally repelled at the idea of the death of their child - it would be much harder for them to face realities about their child's wishes in a case like this when they project their own hopes and the shattered dreams they had for this child upon the situation. When you marry - it doesn't matter for how long you've been married - you promise to love the person for better or for worse, etc. It is at that point that your spouse's welfare becomes your responsibility. "

Actually, it totally depends on each individual relationship. I have been married almost six years and I guess I am different. I love my husband, but he is a more concrete thinker than my mom...therefore, my mom and I are actually closer than he and I are because we can talk about more issues in depth. I tell my husband everything, but I would actually trust that my mother would make the better judgment if I were Terri.

Mia · Kate Spade

Boiled down, my position is this: there is no living will. There is no certainty. Therefore, I do not support the removal of her feeding tube.

There is a reason it is so important to have a living will, and that reason is, so families, spouses and the legal system can be *absolutely sure* of a person's wishes. It is, imo, WAY too iffy to rely on the word of a single person to make life or death decisions for another person. I understand the legal issues, I understand he is technically her legal guardian. I just think it's too tenuous.

Some here are assuming Terry Schiavo's life is worthless and that she herself would prefer to be dead. Others are assuming that, mostly in part because she has been shown to react positively to the presence of family members, she wishes to live, even in her state. The point is - NOBODY KNOWS what her wishes are because there is no living will. Like domkfox, I never thought I'd be saying this, but I agree with Bush's words: we *have* to err on the side of life in this case.

It is possible the husband is a caring man who is doing his duty and trying to do right by his wife. It's also possible he's playing a power game and wants to be rid of her. Again, the point? None of us KNOW which of these it is, or if it is somewhere in the middle. Someone's life is at stake here, it is not a life any of us would wish for, but it is still a life, and nobody has the right to state definitively that it isn't worth living (and take action based on that) except the person living it. In no way am I prepared to take the word of one man in such an instance, especially when her parents say she would have wanted just the opposite. Neither her husband nor her parents can be said to be impartial in any way, but their views are so opposing, and it isn't clear that one is right and one is wrong. We don't know.

I hope the tube is re-inserted and that she is allowed to live. I disagree that her condition is terminal. She needs food to live, just like everybody else. If I stopped feeding and watering my dogs they would die, but they do not have terminal diseases.

bliss · Dooney & Bourke

quote:
Originally posted by: dc
"6. Ms. Schiavo, like all people, incapacitated or not, has a federal constitutional right not to be deprived of her life without due process of law. Due process has been given - more than anyone in history. Certainly - and I'll soapbox a litle - she has had more due process than the infant recently taken off of life support in Texas because of legislation enacted by Bush when he was governer that allowed his treatment discontinued because his family could not pay for his treatment. But I digress.

DC I agree with your arguments completely. I could have been sleeping but I failed to see Bush dash back to fight the right to life battle of an infant in his home state. Makes me question why that wasn't a battle he chose to fight.

I also find it tragically ironic that the cause of Terri's current starvation is linked to her self-starvation. I can understand the parents battle, anyone would want to hold onto their child or family member forever. However they have to take a look at the quality of her life, it's impossible to measure her pain and emotional state.

-- Edited by bliss at 14:39, 2005-03-25

domkfox · BCBG

Mia
After quite a battle with my own thoughts, I think I have come to the same conclusion as you did. I completely agree with your post.

blubirde · Chanel

quote:
Originally posted by: dc
"First of all, this is not a liberal or conservative issue. Well, it wasn't until conservatives made it that way by tying it to the abortion/right to life battle. Moreover, let's not demonize the husband for attempting to live his life when it has been very clear that Terri is not coming back. A loving wife would want that if she died, and the woman who was his wife is long gone - but still he devotes time and effort on her behalf. It is not like he abandoned her. Anyway, attacking him (a la Tom delay, in possibly the most awful statement ever uttered about a private citizen who has broken no laws by an elected official) turns my stomach as much as criticizing the good intentions of the parents does. I hardly think that he wants her dead so that he can get a divorce, and he could not get a divorce and still remain her guardian, which he feels he owes her... he is in a catch-22. This article is nothing new - these are many of the same things that people have been saying all along. Actually, I think it's overwrought nonsense in many of its arguments. It's just so biased with emotion that you almost can't help but be affected by it at first. Here is my point by point response (any medical facts I point to come from physician testimony) . I don't want to sound insensitive, because I think this is an awful and tragic situation. I am just angered by what has happened to this case politically. ******************************** 1. Ms. Schiavo is not terminally ill. She has lived in her current condition for 15 years. This is not about end-of-life decision-making. The question is whether she should be killed by starvation and dehydration. The word "killed" here is not exactly objective. Moreover, yes, she is terminal. Her heart attack would have killed her had her husband not found her. She is only being kept alive by outside means. Otherwise, the heart attack that caused her brain damage would have killed her. 2. Ms. Schiavo is not dependent on life support. Her lungs, kidneys, heart, and digestive systems work fine. Just as she uses a wheelchair for mobility, she uses a tube for eating and drinking. Feeding Ms. Schiavo is not difficult, painful, or in any way heroic. Feeding tubes are a very simple piece of adaptive equipment, and the fact that Ms. Schiavo eats through a tube should have nothing to do with whether she should live or die. Her body does not work just fine. If she were fed through her mouth, she would aspirate her food into ehr lungs and die. She is being fed throguh a tube in her stomach, and like any other life-supporting device, this is the only thing keeping her alive. It is as much life support as any other device, and this is exactly the sort of thing that people mean when they refer to not wishing to be kept alive by outside means. 3. This is not a case about a patient's right to refuse treatment. I don't see eating and drinking as "treatment," but even if they are, everyone agrees that Ms. Schiavo is presently incapable of articulating a decision to refuse treatment. The question is who should make the decision for her, and whether that substitute decision-maker should be authorized to kill her by starvation and dehydration. Again with the strong emotional language, this person clouds the legal argument. The legal battle is about the choice she articulated to her husband that she would not wish to be kept alive if she were in a vegetative state. Her husband is her legal guardian and it is his duty to ensure that her wishes as he perceived them are met. As stated before, having a feeding tube surgically inserted into one's stomach does, in fact, constitute medical treatment. This is not eating and drinking the way the author here wants to paint it - like sipping and munching. It is the clinical provision of nutrients - the same as if she were receiving some type of medicine intravenously. Her parents claim that being removed from such life support is not what she wanted - he claims it is. He is her legal guardian. The law is on his side. 4. There is a genuine dispute as to Ms. Schiavo's awareness and consciousness. But if we assume that those who would authorize her death are correct, Ms. Schiavo is completely unaware of her situation and therefore incapable of suffering physically or emotionally. Her death thus can't be justified for relieving her suffering. Those who authorize her death - again, way to insert inflammatory language. Nobody is arguing in the court that letting her pass on - as she would have years ago (and that essentially, the person who was Terri Shiavo, did 15 years ago) - is justified because it releases her from suffering. The LEGAL argument has to do with her wish to live or die, and her husband's ability as her guardian to execute what he claims was her will, period. 5. There is a genuine dispute as to what Ms. Schiavo believed and expressed about life with severe disability before she herself became incapacitated; certainly, she never stated her preferences in an advance directive like a living will. If we assume that Ms. Schiavo is aware and conscious, it is possible that, like most people who live with severe disability for as long as she has, she has abandoned her preconceived fears of the life she is now living. We have no idea whether she wishes to be bound by things she might have said when she was living a very different life. If we assume she is unaware and unconscious, we can't justify her death as her preference. She has no preference. This argument would then put into question EVERY living will - nobody knows how they will feel or if they will feel in the situation. The legal question is what she would have wanted when she was healthy and able to make decisions about her future welfare. 6. Ms. Schiavo, like all people, incapacitated or not, has a federal constitutional right not to be deprived of her life without due process of law. Due process has been given - more than anyone in history. Certainly - and I'll soapbox a litle - she has had more due process than the infant recently taken off of life support in Texas because of legislation enacted by Bush when he was governer that allowed his treatment discontinued because his family could not pay for his treatment. But I digress. 7. In addition to the rights all people enjoy, Ms. Schiavo has a statutory right under the Americans With Disabilities Act not to be treated differently because of her disability. Obviously, Florida law would not allow a husband to kill a nondisabled wife by starvation and dehydration; killing is not ordinarily considered a private family concern or a matter of choice. It is Ms. Schiavo's disability that makes her killing different in the eyes of the Florida courts. Because the state is overtly drawing lines based on disability, it has the burden under the ADA of justifying those lines. Terri Schiavo is more than disabled. Her cerebral cortex is liquid. Everything that made her Terri Schiavo is gone. And again, nobody is trying to "kill" her out of malice- they are simply arguing that she would not have wished to be kept alive in this condition. Even the means that have kept her alive to this point have done a disservice to the wishes she is alleged to have had. 8. In other contexts, federal courts are available to make sure state courts respect federally protected rights. This review is critical not only to the parties directly involved, but to the integrity of our legal system. Although review will very often be a futile last-ditch effort—as with most death-penalty habeas petitions—federalism requires that the federal government, not the states, have the last word. When the issue is the scope of a guardian's authority, it is necessary to allow other people, in this case other family members, standing to file a legal challenge. Do not confuse federalism with what happened on Capitol Hill on Sunday, which amounted - in a nutshell - to elected officials putting up a roadblock to a state decision which they didn't like for ideological reasons. This is a dangerous precedent for any number of state cases and a hell of a pandora's box - you'll see this bandied about now as justification for opening up all sorts of state decisions, from gay marriage to state abortion laws. And don't think that they didn't know that. 9. The whole society has a stake in making sure state courts are not tainted by prejudices, myths, and unfounded fears—like the unthinking horror in mainstream society that transforms feeding tubes into fetish objects, emblematic of broader, deeper fears of disability that sometimes slide from fear to disgust and from disgust to hatred. While we should not assume that disability prejudice tainted the Florida courts, we cannot reasonably assume that it did not. We also have a stake in making sure that our courts and government are not tainted by religious prejudices, myths, etc.... The florida courts - not exactly bastions of liberalism, either - were "prejudiced" only by legal arguments and medical evidence. It has been said time and time again that Schiavo's parents lacked a case and any evidence to support their claims of what she would have wanted and her medical condition as they perceive it through their glass of hope. It might seem cold and harsh, but science and law are the most objective things we have. 10. Despite the unseemly Palm Sunday pontificating in Congress, the legislation enabling Ms. Schiavo's parents to sue did not take sides in the so-called culture wars. It did not dictate that Ms. Schiavo be fed. It simply created a procedure whereby the federal courts could decide whether Ms. Schiavo's federally protected rights have been violated. BULLSHIT! First of all, as soon as key phrases such as "compassion for life" were bandied about, there was a side taken in the "culture wars." What the legislation did was to sidestep the authority of the florida court - poo-pooing a decision that powerful people being lobbied by right-to-life groups didn't like. It was the most disgusting display (watched the whole thing) I have ever witnessed of exploiting tragedy for personal gain. Let's not forget the memo that circulated tellnig these folks what an "opportunity" this case was for pandering to the radical right. While the effect was that the parents were able to continue their fight, the intent of those voting for the legislation was far bigger than this girl's right - it was to make a political statement on behalf of the right-to-life movement they so desperately want to court. I won't even get into the big deal Bush made of leaving his ranch to be ready to sign the legislation when it came down. It'll take him 3 days to respond to the biggest natural disaster we'll ever see, and he won't leave the ranch for that, but a photo op for the right-to-life crowd... well, I guess he owes them for the election and all. Moreover, the "doctors" (Frist and Coburn) who lent their supposed expertise by viewing heavily edited videos and disagreeing with the medical opinions of unbiased experts who had actually spent time with Schiavo in person should be ashamed. But what do you expect from Frist, who adopted stray cats in medical school on the pretense of adoption only to dissect them. And for what? This is a man who thinks tears and sweat transmit AIDS. Not a doctor I'd go to. And Coburn is a guy who thinks that all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest - should be illegal, and who values life (ha!) so deeply that he thinks people who perform abortions should be executed (seemingly forgetting he performed a few himself). On an unrelated note, Coburn is also the freakshow who said that lesbianism was rampant in OK schools and that girls should not be allowed to go to the restrooms together. However, even though his anti-gay rhetoric is legendary, Bush appointed him to head up the HIV/AIDS advisory council, where he has chipped away at efforts to promote condom use and been on the side of various peices of legislation that would deteriorate the privacy rights of AIDS patients... actually, he has done almost nothing GOOD in that role. His compassion for life doesn't extend so much to gays, you see. Not exactly unbiased physicians, those two. So you see, politics definitely played into all of that, and those hearings were nothing BUT culture wars. In the Senate, a key supporter of a federal remedy was Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a progressive Democrat and longtime friend of labor and civil rights, including disability rights. Harkin told reporters, "There are a lot of people in the shadows, all over this country, who are incapacitated because of a disability, and many times there is no one to speak for them, and it is hard to determine what their wishes really are or were. So I think there ought to be a broader type of a proceeding that would apply to people in similar circumstances who are incapacitated." First of all, his remarks were intended in a broader context. Harkin was stating that this case brought up issues that needed to be addressed on a general level regarding people with disabilities. A broader solution to the rights of the disabled should never include hearings on a specific medical case by people with no pertinent expertise and who are subject to constant pressure from special interests. The rights of the disabled as a group do deserve a forum, but the cynical use of one woman as a political pawn is just wrong. Moreover, her parents' case has been heard and denied by multiple courts at this point, over a period of years. This is hardly limited. Basically, the hypocrisy here absolutely makes my blood boil. -- Edited by dc at 00:21, 2005-03-24-- Edited by dc at 00:24, 2005-03-24"

I'm just reading this post - I don't usually come to the Current Events forum for fear of people's opinions changing my mind about them (it's wrong I know). I usually stick the NYTimes forum for my current events, but I decided to give it a try and I'm sooo glad I did! DC, your points are so well thought-out and right on (in my opinion), that I have a little woman crush on you now. You know how comedians are attracted to a other comedians because they have good timing, are quick, etc.? That's how I feel about people who have rational, articulate opinions about current events.

And to those who feel a husband wouldn't know them as well as a family member, my advice is to not get married.