I’ve written here about Terri Schiavo – a woman in Florida whose mind has long since died, but whose body is being kept alive at the insistence of Terri’s parents, and over the objections of Terri’s husband – a few times. After a court ruled against Terri’s parents, the Florida legislature – kow-towing to the Christian right – passed a law saying that Jeb Bush could overturn the court’s decision. In an earlier post, I wrote:
Happily, as Prometheus 6 reports, the Florida Supreme Court has now overturned “Terri’s Law.” This doesn’t mean that Terri Schiavo’s mindless body will finally be allowed to die, because there are still ongoing court cases; but it does establish that the executive branch doesn’t have the right to overturn any court decision Jeb Bush disagrees with.
(For folks wanting more information about Terri’s law and the Terri Schiavo case, here are some useful links.)
UPDATE: I just now ran into this series of truly excellent posts on the Terri Schiavo case, over on RangelMD.com. Required reading, especially if you’re interested in the medical aspects of this debate.
Amp,
I thought I’d link to this opinion piece that talks about how in many instances a Governor does have the right to overrule the court – many of which you might agree with.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/weber200409290847.asp
By the way all of our bodies are kept alive by food and water. One I thing I see you do a lot is poison the well. Instead of taking arguments seriously you have a mindset and you go with it, often times pigeon-holing people who disagree with you. There are numerous people who aren’t in the “Christian Right” who are against removal of feeding tubes – especially in this case where there is a large portion of evidence that Terri’s husband doesn’t have her best interests at heart.
Theocracy? Really?
Well, the answer is to present to the judge in a convincing fashion an argument that the husband wants to pull the plug to get at life insurance money. Or whatever. I have few illusions about such situations, and I would be willing to bet most non-ideological judges would have few illusions. The legal right to determine care by proxy does go to the husband before the parents in every state that I know of – and thus there needs to be some reason to overturn the decision making rights of the husband.
i would say that just the husband being the life insurance beneficiary is enough to refuse him the right to turn off the life support. i’d take it as an automatic incentive to end the spouse’s life and leave it at that.
chalk me up as another non-theocrat who was extremely suspicious of the circumstances of terri’s situation. it’s only been recently when someone told me that her apparent reaction-to-stimuli behaviors are most likely side-effects of her brain injury that i’ve backed off at all. still, i saw the video footage. still, i really wonder.
Dana:
So you’re saying that if a spouse is a benificiary of a patient’s death – something that is surely true in nearly 100% of cases in which the patient has life insurance or owns any property – then the spouse should be barred from making life-or-death decisions, if the patient is unable to?
Anyhow, at this point, it wouldn’t be the husband deciding to cut off life support – it would be the court deciding that Terri would want her life support cut off.
As for the videos, I don’t think they’re as meaningful as the MRIs. For me, the bottom line is that every credible medical expert who has examined Terri’s MRIs has said that her cerebral cortex is degraded beyond any hope of recovery. Having no cerebral cortex means that she will never think again; never feel again; never be Terri again, in the most fundimental sense I know of.
She’s dead, and has been dead for years. I feel horribly bad for her parent’s suffering, but it’s anti-science for those of us without a strong emotional reason to fool ourselves to pretend that someone with no cerebral cortex is in any way among the living.
David wrote: There are numerous people who aren’t in the “Christian Right” who are against removal of feeding tubes – especially in this case where there is a large portion of evidence that Terri’s husband doesn’t have her best interests at heart.
I never claimed that “all people who support Terri’s Law are in the Christian Right,” so your point is irrelevant to what I said. I did claim that activism in favor of the law is being driven by the Christian Right, and I think that’s true. Try searching for “Terri Schiavo” and see how many Christian sources versus non-Christian sources come up in support of Terri’s parent’s case.
Terri’s husband’s motives have nothing to do with the court decisions, or with “Terri’s law.”
By the way, you haven’t yet responded to my most recent post on the ad hom question, over on the “pro-life feminism” thread.
I have been a nurse for thirty years, and have worked with several such bodies as Terri Schiavo. And that’s what they are, bodies. They respond less than new born babies, and must have everything done for them like new born babies. They are very difficult for staffs to take care of, being mostly dead weight. They are prone to bedsores, pneumonia, and and bladder infections. Their feeding tubes come out and are often difficult to replace. I personally can’t see them still being “alive” when they have absolutely nothing that marks them as human except a body shape and some DNA. By that definition, and the fact that they are cognizant creatures, chimpanzees are more “human.” However much her parents want to believe she will wake up, she won’t. She will only lie there, day after day, as she has done for over ten years, her body deteriorating little by little. Since there is a malpractice settlement, I assume that is what is supporting her in the nursing home. How fortunate for the taxpayers. Otherwise, she would probably be on Medicaid, costing around $100,000 a year to support. Tube feeding is very expensive, averaging about $250/day. That’s a hell of a lot more than the $149 a month I get in food stamps. If I was still a taxpayer, I would prefer my money go to healthcare for children, or real prescription drug benefits for Medicare, than to feed this body from which the soul has flown long ago. Her husband has waited ten years, it’s time to put Terri out of his misery…. and hers. I think her parents are the ones who are cruel to her. If my dog was in that shape, I would have her put down. It’s time to quit feeding Terri, because all it is accomplishing is making the pharmaceutical companies that provide the tube feeding fomulas and equipment rich.
dana:
i would say that just the husband being the life insurance beneficiary is enough to refuse him the right to turn off the life support. i’d take it as an automatic incentive to end the spouse’s life and leave it at that
The law in Florida, and as far as I’m aware every other state, disagrees with you. And I find your proposal horrendous, anyway. After all, it’s not just life insurance that could create an incentive to “pull the plug,” but any form of inheritance–a house, savings, a 401k account, Social Security benefits, anything. So your proposal would most likely take away the decision from the people closest to the dying individual–spouses, parents, children, brothers and sisters, close friends–and give it to a stranger instead. And what if the life insurance beneficiary also had explicit medical power of attorney? Would you still deny them the right to make the decision?