Schiavo
: MSNBC just said that the Supreme Court refused to order reinserting the tube.
39 responses to “Schiavo”
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What a victory for women. Your estranged husband can pocket your care money and ask the court to kill you for his convenience.
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The text:
“The application for a stay of enforcement of judgment pending the filing and disposition of a petition for write of certiorari, presented to Judge Kennedy and by him referred to the Court, is denied.” -
msnbc said that jeb could issue a special order to protect Terri, and then said that someone in charge of the state patrol said he would order officers to prevent that. They are taking this situation to dangerous levels.
Separation of powers is at stake, and 82 percent of Americans in the CBS poll said they don’t want Congress and the Executive branch overriding the law.
A “private bill” is an extraordinarily dangerous precedent. -
I think the whole way the Florida courts came to the decision that Terri would have wanted to die is suspect. There are conflicting medical opinions out there as to how far gone her mind is, although the predominant theory is that she is too far gone to ever recover. I feel Michael Schiavo is a bit of a scumbag and I don’t think he is speaking in Terri’s best interests. I feel that this is absolutely the most horrible way to die and there is nothing peaceful about it.
All that considered, it is time for Congress and the politicians to step aside. This is not their fight and now both courts have spoken. They are creating many more problems than the one life they are attempting to save. It is time to make Terri comfortable with pain relief drugs and let her go.
There is no easy solution to this horrible life situation and the politicians are not making it any better. -
Damn those death-worshipping leftists on the Supreme Court!
You know, like Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas . . -
how sad that karl rove can’t control every single aspect of human life.
i guess now bushco will go back to hunting for osama and liberating darfur? -
There are conflicting medical opinions out there as to how far gone her mind is…
No, that’s wrong. There is consensus of medical opinion that she is a vegetable. And then there are a few hirlings of the far-right that have been paid to raise doubt. -
Verso, don’t make this a political issue when you don’t have to, this is a life we are talking about it, not a piece of paper. She is someone’s daughter, sister, etc., not some victory against Republicans. In the end, she is still going to die.
And there are other medical opinions out there that say she is not in a PVS. Of course there are almost always conflicting medical opinions on high profile cases, so who’s to say who’s right? -
Mike,
You say don’t make this a political issue when you don’t have to…
I cannot believe you would say I am making this a political issue! What about the Republicans who called a special session of Congress, and the President who left his ranch and flew to Washington to sign a law passed for the benefit of one person? Was that not political?
You also say, there are other medical opinions out there … who’s to say who’s right?
Who is to say? The courts are the ones who say who is right. Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time there has been disagreement in the history of this Republic. In fact, you’ll find that there are centuries of established law on how to resolve these kinds of disputes. And in america, we have what is known as a Federalist system, under which personal matters are resolved in state courts. The purely political move by Republicans to federalize this case is unprecedented and, frankly, an attack on our system of government. (Some even contend that the Republicans are not even that interested in Schiavo, but merely using this as a means to discredit and weaken the judicial branch.)
In the case of Schiavo, the courts have determined over many years and many trials and hearings that there is NO merit to the minority medical view — and it is a TINY minority. Just because the right wing media chooses to promote the voices of a tiny minority does not mean they have equal standing in the eyes of the law or medical communities. -
The bottom-line is this:
The Supreme Court rejected the petition. She’s a vegetable. Her husband wants the nightmare over. The tube has been pulled. It’s done.
The story is over. There nothing left to talk about. Next subject. -
msnbc said that jeb could issue a special order to protect Terri
How dare Jeb Bush interfere with a state issue!!!
No Republican better say “state rights” to me ever again. -
“They are taking this situation to dangerous levels.”
I couldn’t agree more, oldrepub. I think in the next 24 hours or so, things could go south quickly. I voted for Jeb, and I think this issue has taken a very high emotional toll on him. I’m beginning to wonder if it is starting to affect his ability to govern effectively.
He seems to have gone into tunnel vision mode on this issue, complete ignoring even more serious issues such our horrible inability to protect the children in this state, from pedophiles and the Department of Children and Families.
My other concern is that the right to life protestors may take matters into their own hands. They certainly have the means and the money, and I think they may have reached a point of desperation.
I really hope this doesnít get as bad as it could. -
I really hope this doesnít get as bad as it could.
I agree. The Republicans have this habit of bringing the country to the brink over and over again. Elian, the stolen election of 2000, Schiavo — these are like dry runs for staging a violent revolution.
Sooner or later, it could get ugly.
Fox News is actively inciting its base to violence with all of its talk about Schiavo being “tortured” and “murdered.” If people really believe that, they could become violently unhinged.
All the judges who have ever touched this case now need 24 hour protection, and will for the rest of their lives, thanks the extremists like Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and Jeb and George Bush. -
This is a tragic situation where politics never should have entered in to it. In fact, I would much prefer never to have heard the name of Terri, that it had been resolved within the family whether she was kept alive or killed. But to hear the right now say that this should not be treated as a political issue is simply staggering in its hypocrisy. The republicans made this a political issue, they strove to make it another culture war (check out Delay’s comments that support for Terri’s right to die is an attack on conservatives everywhere and of course an attack on him – what a scumbag to hide his outrageous corruption behind the body of a dying woman). Well now it is a political issue, I hope the republicans keep pushing to appease the fundamentalist right within the party and show the rest of the country exactly what people are now running that party.
(one humerous part of this has been listening to the lawyers, i saw one yesterday arguing that to give Terri food and water would be “assault and battery” – now I’m no expert but isn’t assault and battery better than death?). -
AND “Third Watch” was cancelled today…what is this country coming to? ;-/
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Randall Terry and Rev. Patrick Mahoney have been all over TV today basically demanding that Gov. Bush defy Judge Greer, the Supreme Court and everyone else and “prove who’s in charge of this state” by ordering the Department of Children and Families to essentially enter the hospice and forcibly take custody of Terri Schiavo (as MSNBC reported he theoretically could do). Trouble is, Judge Greer has issued an order to the state police to prevent any such removal of Ms. Schiavo, meaning that Mahoney and Terry et. al. are egging Bush on to defy the court, and set up a showdown between state agencies. “A constitutional crisis,” as Mahoney eagerly goaded this morning.
Bush (Jeb) has been backed into a nasty corner on this one. And Terry’s history doesn’t bode well re the “violence option…” -
The question is can the fundamentalist right pull back from the brink? If I’m some dofus who thinks someone like Sean Hannity is a smart guy and I’ve been listening to how Terri will be murdered and that she is alive, she is consciencous, how will I allow my leaders to do anything but push forward to save her? The republicans are riding a tiger here and I’m sure in the top echelons they’re now thinking about exactly how they get off this beast.
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Tony: how sad that karl rove can’t control every single aspect of human life.
Tony’s right! Where’s KKKarl Rove in all this? If he could make Dan Rather read forged memos on air, surely he could flow through the air vents in the hospice and administer Miracle Cure from his home planet Moltradax on Terri Schiavo. We in the reality based community demand no less!
There’s no end to what that superman is capable of doing, and it’s just plain wrong for Republicans to make him use his powers for evil instead of good.
And I still don’t understand why Jeb Bush thinks he has any right to meddle in Florida’s affairs. He better start showing some respect for state’s rights! If he keeps at it, he’s going to wind up inspiring a bunch of people who value life to start killing people. -
No, it’s the Evil Judiciary that’s doing this, am I right, Right-WingNuts?. All those activist judges must be in cahoots with one another.
Who’s being the moonbats now? -
Here’s a cogent essay on the Terri Schiavo case by a disability-rights lawyer. It appears at Slate online magazine,
http://www.slate.com/id/2115208/#ContinueArticle
Not Dead at All
Why Congress was right to stick up for Terri Schiavo.
By Harriet McBryde Johnson
Posted Wednesday, March 23, 2005, at 4:50 AM PT
The Terri Schiavo case is hard to write about, hard to think about. Those films are hard to look at. I see that face, maybe smiling, maybe not, and I am reminded of a young woman I knew as a child, lying on a couch, brain-damaged, apparently unresponsive, and deeply belovedófreakishly perhaps but genuinely soóliving proof of one family’s no-matter-what commitment. I watch nourishment flowing into a slim tube that runs through a neat, round, surgically created orifice in Ms. Schiavo’s abdomen, and I’m almost envious. What effortless intake! Due to a congenital neuromuscular disease, I am having trouble swallowing, and it’s a constant struggle to get by mouth the calories my skinny body needs. For whatever reason, I’m still trying, but I know a tube is in my future. So, possibly, is speechlessness. That’s a scary thought. If I couldn’t speak for myself, would I want to die? If I become uncommunicative, a passive object of other people’s care, should I hope my brain goes soft and leaves me in peace?
My emotional response is powerful, but at bottom it’s not important. It’s no more important than anyone else’s, not what matters. The things that ought to matter have become obscured in our communal clash of gut reactions. Here are 10 of them:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 effortóas with most death-penalty habeas petitionsófederalism 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.
9. The whole society has a stake in making sure state courts are not tainted by prejudices, myths, and unfounded fearsólike 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.
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.
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.”
I hope against hope that I will never be one of those people in the shadows, that I will always, one way or another, be able to make my wishes known. I hope that I will not outlive my usefulness or my capacity (at least occasionally) to amuse the people around me. But if it happens otherwise, I hope whoever is appointed to speak for me will be subject to legal constraints. Even if my guardian thinks I’d be better off deadóeven if I think so myselfóI hope to live and die in a world that recognizes that killing, even of people with the most severe disabilities, is a matter of more than private concern.
Clearly, Congress’s Palm Sunday legislation was not the “broader type of proceeding” Harkin and I want. It does not define when and how federal court review will be available to all of those in the shadows, but rather provides a procedure for one case only. To create a general system of review, applicable whenever life-and-death decisions intersect with disability rights, will require a reasoned, informed debate unlike what we’ve had until now. It will take time. But in the Schiavo case, time is running out.
[Harriet McBryde Johnson is a disability-rights lawyer in Charleston, S.C. Her memoir in stories, Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life, will be released in April.] -
Isn’t it odd that God has not called upon His Money Changer Evangelical Faith HEALERS to save the day? I also wonder why their followers aren’t begging them to insert their God given powers into TERRY and CURE HER? Hmmm I suspect, like Professional wrestling both Faith Healers and their followers really don’t want to know what they really are, FRAUDS. Why isn’t anyone questing GOD for not saving Terry? Frankly I think God has answered MY prayers. So far that is.
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Terry is not disabled. This is another distraction. I’m disabled. Terry is in an irreversable vegatative state, In other words she’s a vegatable, the lights are on but nobodys home. Face it, this situation could happen to me or you and if it does and you don’t want to be kept a vegetable its your right pull the plug! Who’s body is it anyway. End of story.
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Terri Schiavo is disabled.
I’m sorry you’re disabled.
She’s not a vegetable, and you don’t know if anybody’s home in her body.
We don’t know if she would have wanted to pull the plug. It’s her right to pull the plug, but she has to let us know, and she didn’t.
It’s her body, and no one has the right to end her life without her permission. We don’t have her permission.
End of story right back at you. Although I’m quite willing to keep listening if you are. -
By the way, I agree 100% with you about the remarkably quiet/invisible faith-healing hucksters.
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Unless and until you get 100% agreement, everything is political. Just because you’d like to sweep this under the rug and get on with your previously scheduled entertainment doesn’t mean everyone should.
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Verso says
” just because the right wing media chooses to promote the voices of a tiny minority does not mean they have equal standing in the eyes of the law”…………..WHOA!! Sorry libs you can’t have it both ways. It is a tiny minority supported by a “left wing” press who continually promotes minority veiws on issues such as, gay marriage, extracting the 10 commandments from
pulic buildings, taking GOD out of the pledge, as well as partial birth abortion, and capital punishment. Since when in America does not a “tiny minority” have equal standing in the eyes of the law. I’m curious as to how the A.C.L.U. is coming down on the Shiavo dilemma.
Also as an aside, why is it it when the left gets all worked up they resort to calling the opposition names? “dofus”, “scumbags” “moonbats” “kkkarl Rove” etc. I tell my children if they want to be taken seriously to use proper language. TONY -
Matthew Goggin: If you really want to listen, read this report.
It says far more than any of us can via Haloscan. -
Asx,
I’ve read the Jay Wolfson report twice.
It was very helpful in my getting a handle on the case. If you only have limited time and energy to devote to understanding Ms. Sciavo’s story, then Mr. Wolfson’s report is perhaps the best place to start.
However, as you can tell, I disagree with his conclusions. Like everyone else, he means well, but he gives short shrift to the parents’ side of the case.
I know that Mr. Wolfson may be right, and I may be wrong, but it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that Mr. Wolfson is infallible. -
“Terri Schiavo is disabled.”
An understatement so gross as to be misleading.
“She’s not a vegetable, and you don’t know if anybody’s home in her body.”
She has a flatline EEG in the neocortex. She is missing almost all the brain tissues known to be necessary for cognitive function.
“We don’t know if she would have wanted to pull the plug.”
We have what several courts have ruled “clear and convincing” evidence on this count. You may not agree, but then, you did’nt hear the testimony or evaluate the evidence. -
I not surprised by the Right outpouring for Terry Schiavo, it just more shameless political brinkmanship. What does strike me (which is surprising), is their shameless hypocracy apparent to all but the truest believers.
They talk about a “Culture of Life,” but are addiment about the death penalty for minors and retards. They don’t blink about 100,000 dead Iraqis, or untold victims of torture or imprisonment without trials, attorneys, evidence, and charges. -
So, Matthew, just what do you think we should do with Schiavo?
Do you think everyone who is in her condition should be kept artificially alive for decades on end (even against their own expressed desire), at taxpayer expense? (I do understand that Schiavo could be kept alive with private funds, but I’m interested in your position on these cases in general, not just the one specific case of Schiavo.)
Are you aware that hospitals will remove life support from people just because they cannot pay for their care? Are you OK with that? -
Apparently Terri Shiavo’s brain activity is just below the threshhold required to include her as a disenfranchised Floridian, which would automatically invoke the protection and advocacy of the ultra-compassionate left.
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“…below the threshold”
Meaning there is a standard set in the law, and she does not meet it. Now, if Congress understood the seperation of powers, we wouldn’t be in this mess. -
The “thoughtful” article from Slate that Matthew cites isn’t really very thoughtful at all. The sixth point that is used proves that it’s all B.S. There has been due process in this case no matter what the right is trying to claim. How many more courts and judges need to be involved before they admit this? The answer is that there will never be enough. They are all like Matthew, brains completely closed to the facts. They’ve made up their minds and nothing will change them. Michael attempts to claim that his only problem is giving short shrift to the views of the parents, but these are the same parents who have admitted that they would do absolutely anything to avoid letting go of their daughter. They admitted that not only would they have ignored a direct verbal request from Terri but would have tried to override any living will if she’d had one. Their views have been looked at and then dismissed as ignoring reality. This has continued through multiple doctors, with the only ones agreeing with the Schindlers being the ones they hired, including the ones brought in by the state, not the husband. It has continued with 40 judges. 40. Shouldn’t that be enough if they were really open minded and willing to look at the facts?
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Terry is not disabled. This is another distraction. I’m disabled. Terry is in an irreversable vegatative state, In other words she’s a vegatable, the lights are on but nobodys home.
Posted by ED Beckmann at March 24, 2005 03:48 PM
The same can be said about thousands of people in mental hospitals and nursing homes at this very moment.
Shall we starve them to death too? -
First off, its good to see that at least one “keep the shell of Terri Schiavo functioning” advocate has read the GAL report!
We don’t know if she would have wanted to pull the plug. It’s her right to pull the plug, but she has to let us know, and she didn’t.
no, she doesn’t have to let “us” know, Matthew. Its none of your business, or my business, what Terri Schiavo wanted to do.
The courts have found that, as an adult, Terri Schiavo expressed her desire not to be on life support to three people.
I know that Mr. Wolfson may be right, and I may be wrong, but it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that Mr. Wolfson is infallible.
Wolfson is referenced not because he is considered “infallible”, but because he was appointed by Fundamentalist Christian Jeb Bush to examine all of the relevant facts, did so, and issued the most easily understood summary of the relevant facts.
All of the medical and scientific evidence points to a single conclusion. Impartial courts have examined the issues. Impartial doctors have examined the issues. An impartial GAL appointed by a fundamentalist Governor has examined the issues.
And they all reach the same conclusion.
Denial, as they say, is more than just a river in Eqypt…. its the inability to face the facts. That is what the Schindlers, and those who support them, are doing here. -
The sad fact is that the Schindlers are irrational, and are suffering far more from those who are exploiting their grief-driven delusions than the shell of Terri Schiavo is. Terri Schiavo isn’t suffering—she lacks the capacity to feel hunger or thirst. Her shell is simply fading away, in much the same way that light fades as the sun sets.
If you place a match to a photograph, it burns—-and if one were to project consciousness to the photograph, you would think that the twisting and blackening that occurs as the picture is consumed are signs that the picture is suffering, and demand that the torture of the picture be stopped.
The biggest problem for the Schindler advocates is that they are doing the impossible — “identifying” with something that has no identity. They are empathizing with something than doesn’t exist. They look at pictures and video of the shell of Terri Schiavo, and they see a person…..but that shell is no more “Terri Schiavo” than the photographic paper or videotape that contain the image of the shell. -
If Terry dies on Easter, it will definitely be a metaphor for Christ’s crucifixion ñ and, taken in conjunction with events in Iraq and the Middle East, the latest and strongest sign of the beginning of the End Times.
Jesus is coming — and boy is he mad.
