Terry Schiavo
It’s been a while since I updated this blog, so I decided a short essay might be appropriate. This issue is already dead and so is the individual whom it concerns, but I thought I’d give my shout out to it anyway. As you all know, Terry Schiavo died last week of ordered starvation. When I first heard about the case, it was two weeks ago. My boss tried to explain her situation to me and why he believed that Terry should be kept alive. I was told that she was smiling, that she was brain dead, that she couldn’t talk and that her brain stopped receiving the simplest signals years ago. For 15 years, she had been on life support and showed no sign of improvement. Or so I was told.
My boss knows what it’s like to be brain dead. He was brain dead and in a come for three months when he was only a year old, but he managed to improve. It was considering this that he believed she should be kept alive. But I thought that if she was brain dead, then she would want to be dead after 15 years of not getting any better. I thought that perhaps it was best that she die because there was nothing there. And I stood by that…until I was told the whole story.
The following Easter, my uncle talked to me about the Terry Schiavo case. First off, she was not brain dead. She reacted to people in her room and looked all around. She even made noise as if she was trying to say something. Secondly, several doctors had testified that she could be rehabilitated. Several more than those that said she could not be cured. And lastly, her husband had been a very fishy character. He beat her so bad that it was part of how she wound up in the hospital. He refused to let them CAT scan her brain to see if there was anything fixable. He was given 1.5 million dollars seven years ago to pay for taking care of her, then two months later “remembered” her saying that she did not want to live as a vegetable. Since then, he has taken every measure possible to take her off life support. Given all this information, I said that maybe she should be kept alive.
But it was too late. The order had been given to remove Terry’s feeding tube and let her starve to death for the next week. The politics that erupted were incredible. President Bush went to Congress to sign a bill to help ensure that all the facts are taken into account before the command to remove someone’s life support is given. I assume this means certain facts like how she had a possibility of being cured and that her husband was a creep who should not have been given the ability to remove her feeding tube. But even though the bill had been signed, they could not reinstate the feeding tube because all such actions are final.
This case is a case of judicial murder. It opened up a can of worms for everyone and events were put into motion over this one woman that were monumental at least in my mind. Lee at right-thinking.com said a lot of nasty things about Republicans that made me think I should stop listening to him. I haven’t, but I thought about it. The Democrats were all over it too. A poll said that 95% of Democrats wanted Terry dead and 95% of Republicans wanted her alive. I’ve gotten the argument that asks “How can you support a war that has killed thousands of people but want this one invalid woman to live?” There are so many holes in that argument, it looks like Swiss cheese, but to anyone who says that, I have a question for them. How can you be against a war which you think has only been good for killing people but want an invalid woman to die? If I’m being a hypocrite for being a Republican who believes in the war in Iraq and wanting Terry to live, then any Democrat who calls me a hypocrite is a hypocrite themselves. So don’t pin your damn crimes on me.
Only time will tell how history sees this little event. For now though, most Democrats will probably continue aligning themselves with the crazies of their group so long as it goes against Bush.
My boss knows what it’s like to be brain dead. He was brain dead and in a come for three months when he was only a year old, but he managed to improve. It was considering this that he believed she should be kept alive. But I thought that if she was brain dead, then she would want to be dead after 15 years of not getting any better. I thought that perhaps it was best that she die because there was nothing there. And I stood by that…until I was told the whole story.
The following Easter, my uncle talked to me about the Terry Schiavo case. First off, she was not brain dead. She reacted to people in her room and looked all around. She even made noise as if she was trying to say something. Secondly, several doctors had testified that she could be rehabilitated. Several more than those that said she could not be cured. And lastly, her husband had been a very fishy character. He beat her so bad that it was part of how she wound up in the hospital. He refused to let them CAT scan her brain to see if there was anything fixable. He was given 1.5 million dollars seven years ago to pay for taking care of her, then two months later “remembered” her saying that she did not want to live as a vegetable. Since then, he has taken every measure possible to take her off life support. Given all this information, I said that maybe she should be kept alive.
But it was too late. The order had been given to remove Terry’s feeding tube and let her starve to death for the next week. The politics that erupted were incredible. President Bush went to Congress to sign a bill to help ensure that all the facts are taken into account before the command to remove someone’s life support is given. I assume this means certain facts like how she had a possibility of being cured and that her husband was a creep who should not have been given the ability to remove her feeding tube. But even though the bill had been signed, they could not reinstate the feeding tube because all such actions are final.
This case is a case of judicial murder. It opened up a can of worms for everyone and events were put into motion over this one woman that were monumental at least in my mind. Lee at right-thinking.com said a lot of nasty things about Republicans that made me think I should stop listening to him. I haven’t, but I thought about it. The Democrats were all over it too. A poll said that 95% of Democrats wanted Terry dead and 95% of Republicans wanted her alive. I’ve gotten the argument that asks “How can you support a war that has killed thousands of people but want this one invalid woman to live?” There are so many holes in that argument, it looks like Swiss cheese, but to anyone who says that, I have a question for them. How can you be against a war which you think has only been good for killing people but want an invalid woman to die? If I’m being a hypocrite for being a Republican who believes in the war in Iraq and wanting Terry to live, then any Democrat who calls me a hypocrite is a hypocrite themselves. So don’t pin your damn crimes on me.
Only time will tell how history sees this little event. For now though, most Democrats will probably continue aligning themselves with the crazies of their group so long as it goes against Bush.
posted by Jaimetud at 7:58 PM
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