Terri Shiavo

[Snow]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck@Mar 23 2005, 07:43 PM

1. I think Mr. Schiavo's sudden recollection of Terri's "wishes" not to be kept alive is not credible.

3. I think the court made up its mind that Terri was PVS in the first hearing, and like most judges, refused to take a second look.

Weren't there three people with such recollections?

I've heard that at this point the ordeal has been presented in front of 16 judges. Maybe 1 or 2 or 5 or 7 of them can't see the issue as clearly as you, but somewhere along the way surely 1 of 16 could get it right.

[Amillia]

Originally posted by Strawberry Fields+Mar 23 2005, 04:39 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Strawberry Fields @ Mar 23 2005, 04:39 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Amillia@Mar 23 2005, 01:15 PM

I know there has been a lot of pain caused by her surviving ~ that much I do know.

Pain cause by her surviving her brain injury? So if something it painful for others to see just look away or better yet kill them?

Since when did we become a nation and people so intolerant to people with a disability that it is just easier to have them dead?

She isn't really living SB.

[Amillia]

Originally posted by Strawberry Fields@Mar 23 2005, 11:30 AM

Quote from Amillia.. How many years has she been on it? And how much progress has she made?

[

No one with a brain injury can make progress without treatment.

Well 15 years ago, lets talk, but today, it's too late and everyone agrees on that one. If she were to live 15 more years, she would not regain anything, only deteriorate more.

[Amillia]

Originally posted by DisRuptive1@Mar 23 2005, 04:54 PM

It is easier to have people dead.  It's too expensive to keep them locked up in jails or to have our tax dollars go towards keeping someone alive who will no longer contribute in any way to the human race.  Actually the members of her family might go back to contributing as usual if they kill her, and let her parents grieve and mourn.  After she's dead they won't devote so much time towards her which can better be used to helping the human race as a whole.

I think you are right in a way, but I don't know that it is even this ~ It is the fact that the person theirself is probably not existing, just living.

Tonight on the news it was stated by two doctors that Terri is not really living, only existing in a very non-existing way. She can't feel, think, cognitize, acknowledge anything because all of her brain for these functions are gone. They showed the xrays of her brain next to a healthy brain and there was nothing there.

BTW Terri isn't being starved to death. They say she will die from dehydration way before she will die from mal nutrition or starving. She doesn't feel starved, because she doesn't feel. She doesn't feel hungry, because she doesn't feel. She doesn't feel thirsty, because she doesn't feel anything.

She doesn't even know she is being refused food and water.

[Amillia]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck+Mar 23 2005, 09:43 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (TheProudDuck @ Mar 23 2005, 09:43 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Originally posted by -Strawberry Fields@Mar 23 2005, 07:27 AM

<!--QuoteBegin--TheProudDuck@Mar 23 2005, 02:17 AM

In this case, I think the judge blew both calls.  I tend not to buy late-in-the-game sudden late-in-the-game recollections of convenient facts, least of all when lawyers are involved.  And if Terri's nurse wasn't lying when she testified Mr. Schiavo muttered "why won't the b**** just die", then his legal surrogacy should have ended right then and there.

PD,

I agree that the judge blew it big time. In your opinion, why do you think he failed to make the right decision?

1. I think Mr. Schiavo's sudden recollection of Terri's "wishes" not to be kept alive is not credible.

2. I think Mr. Schiavo has enough conflicts of interest with respect to what happens to Terri, especially now that he's moved on with his life, that he should have been relieved as legal guardian.

3. I think the court made up its mind that Terri was PVS in the first hearing, and like most judges, refused to take a second look.

4. I think that no matter what the law provides, in this case the law is wrong. As between a nominal husband of five years who is now living with another person, and devoted parents, the parties with the stronger moral claim to act for Terri are her parents.

As for the people who've made variations on the "would you really want to live like that" -- that's an argument that the legal presumption in these cases should be that a minimally conscious person would want to die. Without any exception that I'm aware of, though, the legal presumption in every state is just the opposite -- that the person would want to continue medical treatment, a presumption that must be overcome by clear and convincing evidence. Thus, the "she MUST have wanted to die" argument isn't particularly relevant here; the time to make that argument would have been before the state legislature when the presumption was established. Since a presumption in favor of death was rejected, it can't be used as evidence of what Terri would have wanted.

Would I want to live in Terri's state? Obviously not. I wouldn't have wanted to cut my knuckle near to the bone Saturday trying to fix the dent some jerk put in my dear Tacoma, but I did. All things being equal, I'd rather be alive, healthy and conscious.

Given the choice between dying and lingering in a twilight state, I think I'd hope to be killed outright. "Rage against the dying of the light" only goes so far as advice; at some point, the light is so dim you might as well not bother. But there's an independent variable here: Terri's parents. If I knew that in lingering in some marginally conscious state, the people I love would be happier than the would be if I were dead and buried (as apparently Terri's parents derive some comfort from having Terri at least partly with them) I think I would choose Terri's position, especially if I knew I wouldn't know the difference. Give me the full "Weekend at Bernie's" treatment, if it makes my family happy; what does a vegetable care about what happens to its body for the short time before it's turned over to the worms, who'll surely treat it much worse?

I think what captures people's attention here is that the law is marching coldly and rationally (according to its lights) forward, ignoring the pain it's causing to parents who I think it's clear love Terri more than her nominal husband, and ignoring the plain fact that it's starving somebody's daughter to death against their wishes.

I don't think it really has anything to do with the husband's problems. It is about keeping a semi-existing being, in a state of inhumane conditions which no one in their right mind would choose over death.

[Amillia]

Two questions:

Which one of you will trade places with her?

If you were given the choice right now, which would you choose for yourself? Life as Terri exists, or death?

[MBASS]

I would definately choose death. This case has made me realize the importance of a living will. I would rather be with my Heavenly Father than on a bed for 15 years or longer here one earth.

[shanstress70]

Originally posted by Amillia@Mar 24 2005, 12:50 AM

Two questions:

Which one of you will trade places with her?

If you were given the choice right now, which would you choose for yourself? Life as Terri exists, or death?

This answers Maureen's question as well. That argument just flabbergasts me! Would I want to trade places with Terri? @#$% no! Does that mean that she should be left to die of starvation/dehydration? I don't think so.

I wouldn't trade places with someone in a third world country either, but that doesn't mean that they should die!

Amilia, you don't know what she feels or understands. How would you like to die of dehydration? I think that if they are going to take away the feeding tube, they need to give her lethal injection or put her in a coma or something - it's just barbaric to let someone die like that when you're not 100% sure that she can't feel.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Originally posted by Snow+Mar 23 2005, 10:37 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Snow @ Mar 23 2005, 10:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--TheProudDuck@Mar 23 2005, 07:43 PM

1.  I think Mr. Schiavo's sudden recollection of Terri's "wishes" not to be kept alive is not credible. 

3.  I think the court made up its mind that Terri was PVS in the first hearing, and like most judges, refused to take a second look.

Weren't there three people with such recollections?

I've heard that at this point the ordeal has been presented in front of 16 judges. Maybe 1 or 2 or 5 or 7 of them can't see the issue as clearly as you, but somewhere along the way surely 1 of 16 could get it right.

While it's true that 16 judges have examined various parts of the case, the way the law works is that when a judge's decision is reviewed, the review focuses almost entirely on procedural issues. A trial court's findings of fact (either by a jury or a judge in a bench trial) are almost never disturbed; there basically has to be no substantial evidence at all backing up a judge's finding of fact before it can be overturned.

In this case, it does look like the appropriate Florida procedures were followed, so there was really nothing to overturn. The number of judges who reviewed the case doesn't say anything about the accuracy of the factfinder's original decision, other than that there was some evidence to support it. Even if a reviewing court believed that the evidence was stronger for another conclusion, the original factfinder's determination couldn't be overturned on that basis.

Weren't there three people with such recollections?

Yes -- Michael Schiavo's brother and another brother's wife. That does make his story a little more credible, although what they said Terri said is a little more general than "If I'm ever on a feeding tube, pull it." That's one of the problems with these cases in general -- even when someone say something indicating they don't want to be on life support, or to have treatment continued if incapacitated, there's a very broad range of kinds of incapacitation, ranging from totally brain dead people being kept alive on respirators to people in Terri's condition, where it's clear she has little if any consciousness but it's impossible to determine exactly how far gone she is. (Pretty far, from all appearances.) How incapacitated do you have to be before a general remark about not wanting to be kept alive on machines is interpreted as a desire to have the plug pulled?

Amillia,

Which one of you will trade places with her?

A cheap and shabby question. Of course nobody would trade places with her. I wouldn't have traded places with Christopher Reeve, either, but nobody considered starving him to death.

If you were given the choice right now, which would you choose for yourself? Life as Terri exists, or death?

As I said before, if my existence as Terri exists gave comfort to people I loved, then I'd choose life as Terri exists. Why not? -- it's not like I'd be conscious enough to care either way. Stuff me and prop me up in the coat closet, for all I care.

in a state of inhumane conditions which no one in their right mind would choose over death.

Guess I'm not in my right mind, then. And neither is the law, whose presumption is that people would ordinarily want medical treatment continued, and which requires an affirmative showing by clear and convincing evidence that they would choose otherwise.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Well said, I think:

"Ms. Schiavo's fate can be traced through a nearly impenetrable cloud of legal rulings, page upon page of citations and references and footnotes, all of it laced with words like movant and respondent and all the other esoteric terms that seem to flow so freely from the lips and pens of lawyers and judges. It is this specialized language that allows those employed in the law to imagine themselves superior to the rest of us, the unwashed of the lower orders, to whom such language is foreign. And it is this language that the various lawyers and judges will hide behind when Terri Schiavo dies, when all their writs and motions and petitions have flown from office to office and courthouse to courthouse before floating down and congealing into a massive pile of recyclable rubbish."

[Guest TheProudDuck]

From Peggy Noonan, whose position on Terri is predictable (she's as Catholic as they come), but still a good point:

"Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.

I do not understand their certainty. I don't "know" that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can't know, but we can "err on the side of life." How do the pro-death forces "know" there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles? They seem to think they know. They seem to love the phrases they bandy about: "vegetative state," "brain dead," "liquefied cortex.""

Very true. Why the certainty -- the unquestioning, uncritical, almost religious acceptance of that view of those facts that portray Terri's level of consciousness most minimally? Why the anger and the passion? (I'll grant that there's one fair explanation of the pull-the-tubers' anger -- it's a reciprocation of the anger and passion of the side that wants Terri to live. When people make nasty accusations of you and your motives -- and the let-her-live side has gone out of bounds more than a few times -- you tend to respond in kind.)

But other than the right-back-at-you explanation for the tubepullers' passion, what other explanation is there? Are the moral rights of a spouse, who's not married to Terri in any but the most nominal sense, not only so superior to those of a parent, but so superior that those who think the parents ought to have a say must be characterized as dangerous fanatics? (The parents, to be fair, aren't exactly helping avoid that charge by associating with some of the people they have, including Randall Terry.)

I suspect that a subtext here is the fear and resentment many secular people feel towards people of faith (not that the lines are all that clearly drawn). If religious people are for it, ideologically secular people must be against it, and militantly so.

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by Snow@Mar 23 2005, 08:42 PM

So I heard on the News today more propoganda.

Gov. Bush says that a neurologist now claims that Terri is probably not in a persistent vegatative state but rather a semi-conscious type state.

False.

That is not what the neurologist said. The neurologist (a member of a Christian ethics board) who DID NOT examine Terri but did sit in her room for 90 minutes said that he observed nothing in Terri that indicates she is conscious but that he got the sense that they was a living sentient being there.

Just in from snowmobiling and then off again with my family. :)

Snow I respect you in many ways but.....

I also saw Jeb on the news. I don't see how you can know that what he says is false. This is what I KNOW about Brain Injury. WITHOUT treatment and rehab you have little chance for change. You have said on several posts that she has had rehab for four years. When I have asked you to show me I have been ignored by you.

What doesn't fit your belief you term as propaganda. Why won¡Çt you look at all of the news with an open mind? Are you also set in your ways like the judges who have acted in error in this case?

I have seen miracles happen when people get treatment, just give that some consideration too okay?

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by Amillia+Mar 23 2005, 11:38 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Amillia @ Mar 23 2005, 11:38 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Originally posted by -Strawberry Fields@Mar 23 2005, 04:39 PM

<!--QuoteBegin--Amillia@Mar 23 2005, 01:15 PM

I know there has been a lot of pain caused by her surviving ~ that much I do know.

Pain cause by her surviving her brain injury? So if something it painful for others to see just look away or better yet kill them?

Since when did we become a nation and people so intolerant to people with a disability that it is just easier to have them dead?

She isn't really living SB.

Who is SB?

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by Snow@Mar 23 2005, 08:36 PM

The precedence, you believe, is that from this point on corrupt men will be allowed to murder their disabled wives?

I am not a lawyer (although I play one on TV) but I can legitimately tell you that that is insane thought. It will always be illegal to murder wives, disabled or not. No offense to you personally, it's the idea that's nonsense.

Besides that - that you have to charge that he is a murderer indicates a bit of corruption on your part. It's better to make your case honestly.

Sure, I may be somewhat corrupted by passion with this MURDER Case. Yes I do believe that Terri¡Çs sadistic husband wants her dead before if she is to be rehabilited and recall what has happened to cause her injury his lovely life will be over. He will be sent to prison. I believe that he is holding control and not allowing MRI's and bone scans because of what they will show. She was preparing to leave him right before she was injured. Michael¡Çs current girlfriend was silenced when she told others that He (Michael) made up the lies that he is telling about Terri's wishes not to live.

There is more but I am holding up my family so I need go soon.

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by Amillia+Mar 23 2005, 11:43 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Amillia @ Mar 23 2005, 11:43 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--DisRuptive1@Mar 23 2005, 04:54 PM

It is easier to have people dead.  It's too expensive to keep them locked up in jails or to have our tax dollars go towards keeping someone alive who will no longer contribute in any way to the human race.  Actually the members of her family might go back to contributing as usual if they kill her, and let her parents grieve and mourn.  After she's dead they won't devote so much time towards her which can better be used to helping the human race as a whole.

I think you are right in a way, but I don't know that it is even this ~ It is the fact that the person theirself is probably not existing, just living.

Tonight on the news it was stated by two doctors that Terri is not really living, only existing in a very non-existing way. She can't feel, think, cognitize, acknowledge anything because all of her brain for these functions are gone. They showed the xrays of her brain next to a healthy brain and there was nothing there.

BTW Terri isn't being starved to death. They say she will die from dehydration way before she will die from mal nutrition or starving. She doesn't feel starved, because she doesn't feel. She doesn't feel hungry, because she doesn't feel. She doesn't feel thirsty, because she doesn't feel anything.

She doesn't even know she is being refused food and water.

Amillia,

"She doesn't even know she is being refused food and water." How can she NOT know?? Her spirit which resides within her KNOWS!

"BTW Terri isn't being starved to death. They say she will die from dehydration way before she will die from mal nutrition or starving." Now isn't that nice...

Amillia, I really expected more from you on this topic.

[DisRuptive1]

Her spirit doesn't have a working body that can feel or think properly.

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by DisRuptive1@Mar 24 2005, 04:20 PM

Her spirit doesn't have a working body that can feel or think properly.

I disagree, her spirit know that she is being murdered. Our spirits are the only part of us which is eternal.

[Outshined]

[DisRuptive1]

The spirit doesn't have a body that can think properly and might not even understand pain. Has anyone taken a needle to her toes yet and see if she still reacts?

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by Outshined@Mar 24 2005, 05:01 PM

You must be soooooooooooo proud of yourself. B)

[StrawberryFields]

Originally posted by DisRuptive1@Mar 24 2005, 05:19 PM

The spirit doesn't have a body that can think properly and might not even understand pain. Has anyone taken a needle to her toes yet and see if she still reacts?

Disruptive you are a great guy but it doesn't matter because these judges have ruled.

She will most likely die and the real trauma will begin when this happens to someone whom they love and it will be too late. The "model" of how to handle "these people" is set.

WHO will be next???

[Outshined]

Originally posted by Strawberry Fields+Mar 24 2005, 05:21 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Strawberry Fields @ Mar 24 2005, 05:21 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Outshined@Mar 24 2005, 05:01 PM

You must be soooooooooooo proud of yourself. B)

Yes ma'am! Do you know how hard it was to find a "beating a dead horse" emoticon? B)

[Guest TheProudDuck]

WHO will be next???

I'm thinking Pink Floyd, actually. B)

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

If I end up brain-dead someday, I hope I am not kept alive.

That is all I have to say on this issue.

[DisRuptive1]

I'd rather be shot in the head than die through starvation. At least the gun makes it quick and less painless.