Interesting point from The St. Petersburg Times:
Three right-to-die cases have stirred the most controversy over the last 30 years: Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan and Terri Schiavo.
Is it a coincidence that all three are women who were under the age of 30 when they slipped into vegetative states?
One bioethicist doesn’t think it is.
Though the families of many vegetative patients – male and female – have faced life-or-death decisions over the years, the plights of injured young women are more likely to engage the public and attract right-to-life advocates, says Steven Miles, a professor for the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota.
“People say, “She needs to be rescued, she needs to be cared for,”‘ Miles said in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times.
Miles said life-support measures on men are seen as an “assault” but with women, the technology becomes “a form of nurturing and care giving.”
Men also are more commonly viewed as clear-thinking adults who made wise statements about their end-of-life wishes. With women, however, any previous statements they made about end-of-life wishes are more commonly blown off as “emotional utterances” that don’t have weight, Miles said.
They also happen to be white women with middle class backgrounds, I think this makes a difference as well. Had Quinlan or Cruzan been minority women from a lower socioeconomic class (or just the latter) in a non-Catholic hospital, I’d be willing to bet that life support would have been withdrawn with the initial family request. If Terri Schiavo were on welfare, she most likely would never have made it to the point she has let alone be the center of this controversy.
It’s morose, just think how many families in poverty could be fed or obtain access to healthcare with the tax dollars Florida is now spending to fight this battle, protect the hospice and this.
I think it’s safe to say that as a general rule, our society is more inclined to protect white women than anyone else. That’s why Karla Fay Tucker’s execution received disproportionate attention. It’s why Jessica Lynch got a lot more attention than Shoshanna Johnson or than any guy who went through a similar ordeal in Iraq. I have no doubt that the average American is more inclined to let an incapacitated man die than an incapacitated woman. After all, guys are supposed to be strong and independent and active. If they’re not, they might as well be dead. Women are supposed to be weak and need protection, and it’s easy to slot Tucker or Lynch or Schiavo into that role.
But I’m not sure that insight changes the merits of the case. I mean, people are a lot more gung-ho about executing men than women, but that doesn’t mean that we should solve that contradiction by learning to be ok with killing women.
Why am I suddenly put in mind of the “Sleeping Beauty” myth. Some day her prince (the right doctor) will come to save her. Until that time, let her stay preserved in her glass coffin untouched and ready.
Sally said:
In the case of executions, undoubtedly; in the case of Schiavo it’s not about killing/execution at all.
What’s interesting is that, on top of the “protect the helpless white girl” premise we have the insinuations that Michael Schiavo was an abuser, is an adulterer, and is money-grubbing to boot.
It’s the abuse trope that I find fascinating given the “traditional” Christianity’s view of the husband/wife relationship and the tendency, in some conservative circles to claim that abuse doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s a private matter. Or that hysterical feminists have a bug up their ass about spousal (and every other kind of) abuse.
Conservatives have become masters at taking liberal precepts and either twisting them (Clean Air Act) or applying them only when it has a chance of helping their cause (Michael Schiavo wants Terry to die because he’s a wife-abusing adulterer).
The other factor that I think does plays some part — turning off a respirator is one thing. But the idea of “denying” food and water to someone who, if you’re just going by the clips you see on TV, simply seems to be severely mentally retarded, is morally repugnant. I, at least, do get a visceral pang of “that’s wrong” even though, intellectually, I know that the video clips I’m seeing are cleverly manipulative and Terri Schiavo is, in essence, already dead.
I’m presuming that at least some of the “let Terri live” faction have been influenced by those clips. Others, of course, just see this fiasco as a way to express their anti-government hysteria, and others are of the fanatically “pro-life” contingent that wouldn’t know a fact if it walked up and bit them on the ass. I honestly think those people get high on their self-righteousness.
The “abuse” in this case is the one kind of abuse that conservatives are willing to acknowledge–it’s “abuse” for a husband to concede to his wife’s wishes instead of overriding them and giving her Biblically mandated direction. That’s what the Promise Keepers teach–abuse is the result of men not taking charge and making all the decisions around the house. So, they are consistent, hard as it is to believe.
Amanda said:
Promise Keepers rings a (vaguely ominous) bell , but I’m not terribly familiar with them.
The abuse argument seems to stem from several points, though.
The first is the Schindlers, who I believe have claimed that Michael was abusive to Terri while she was a fully functioning human being.
Then there are the “Let Terri Live” folks who claim that to let her die (finally) is abuse.
The further claim is made (by the Schindlers and others) is that Michael is lying about Terri’s stated wishes because he wants to get rid of her so that he can remarry. (Interestingly, however, the Schindler’s say that even if Terri’s wishes were expressed in writing and duly witnessed, they would still fight to keep her “alive.”
It does seem to be that much ire is directed at Michael for not taking the “proper” quasi-parental role in this, and that it is part of the desire to see Terri returned to the custody of her parents.
I find it hard to imagine the reverse situation, with parents demanding that a wife relinquish custody of her husband to the parents.
Yes, I do think there’s an element of treating her like property.
[BTW, when are you going to fix my blogroll link?]
I think it’s safe to say that as a general rule, our society is more inclined to protect white women than anyone else. That’s why Karla Fay Tucker’s execution received disproportionate attention. It’s why Jessica Lynch got a lot more attention than Shoshanna Johnson or than any guy who went through a similar ordeal in Iraq.
I agree. Think of most (if not all) of the memorable missing person reports that made it into the national news: Elizabeth Smart, JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson…there seems to be a pattern.
I might be recalling incorrectly, but I believe there was a black child that disappeared within a week or two of Elizabeth Smart’s abduction. The parents were on the Today show once but then it wasn’t mentioned again.
I absolutely think the Schiavo controversey is ONLY possible because Terri Schiavo is/was a young woman.
Think about the image of , say, a 41 year-old, wasted, diapered, intubated man, incapable of recovery.
Now, imagine said man’s PARENTS’ claims being considered over his spouse’, and making it through 30 some court appeals. The entire guardianship fight would be not only unseemly & grotesque, (as they are with Ms. Schiavo) but too distasteful for meida imaging purposes. Somehow I can;t imagine a tearful pair of parents appealing to our overwhelmingly male political instiitutions to “Please, save our little boy” and sending out video via the international media.
I also can’t imagine Imagine our overwhelmingly male politicians–who have made such hay over “protecting” “an innocent young disabled woman” as Ms. Schiavo is portrayed in these appeals –jumping to prolong the life a a 41 year-old man in the same position.
I also fine it hard to imagine that the parents of a son would have had as musch success demonizing a female spouse or with attempts to gain control over the trust fund.
It is too easy for everyone to accept the idea of a passive, helpless existence for Terri Schiavo precisely because she is female.
The one question I would love to be able to have every one of those disingenusous hacks in congress, the White House, the FL legislature and the right win press answer ON THE RECORD is this:
“Would you wish for yourself the continuance of the existence you have tried to secure for Terri Schiavo? How about for your spouse? Your daughter? Your son?”
I’d also like to pose the question to every member of the freak show outside the hospice the same question.
I am female and a contemporary of Terri Schiavo. We came of age during the Karen Ann Quinlan years. One would have thought that these questions had been resolved 20 years ago. And, indeed, LEGALLY, anyway, they were.
You realize, right, that this really does describe Stephen Hawking? (Except that he’s not 41.) Can we please, please, please stop talking about this as if the issue is that Terri Schiavo is intubated or uses diapers.
Biblically mandated direction?????
Let’s not even go there……
Terry McKenzie Says:
Would you wish for yourself the death you have tried to secure for Terri Schiavo? How about for your spouse? Your daughter? Your son?
The first is the Schindlers, who I believe have claimed that Michael was abusive to Terri while she was a fully functioning human being.
I find this claim of theirs odd–they never accused Michael Schiavo of abuse until after he realized Terry wasn’t going to come out of her PVS. Then they suddenly “realized” he was abusive to Terry during their marriage. Makes me wonder why they sang his praises up until then.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong (and I’d prefer documentation, because I’m a future lawyer and we’re picky like that), but from perusing the court documents and timelines, it’s even stranger than this. The original case where Michael asked the court to decide where Terri would want to live or die came before the court in 1998, but the claims of abuse from the Schindlers did not appear until the court cases in 2002.
If I’m correct, why did it take them 4 years to “remember” that Michael was abusive? I would imagine that would be one of the first issues they would bring before the court in the first court proceeding in 1998. But they didn’t.
I have a high burden of proof, personally, and in this case, the Schindlers have a ton of motive for lying about Michael but no proof to back up their claims. Yes, I know about the bone scans, but there’s a myriad of other explanations for that, including the bulimia itself.
Sally says:
You realize, right, that this really does describe Stephen Hawking? (Except that he’s not 41.) Can we please, please, please stop talking about this as if the issue is that Terri Schiavo is intubated or uses diapers.
I’m not sure how far Hawking’s ALS has progressed, but one significant difference between T. Schiavo and Hawking is that he is not in a persistent vegetative state. He can communicate — for example, in 2004 he presented a new theory on black holes. Terri ican’t even say “hello” (either verbally, or by typing on a keyboard)’ to anyone who enters her room.
If you mean by “intubated” that she can breathe unassisted, you’re correct. But she cannot exist without assistance (via tubes) because she cannot chew or swallow. And this is not because she’s paralyzed, it’s because the brain function that controls these motor activities is non-existent.
And, frankly, I think diapers are a given in her situation.l
You missed my point, renska.
I am aware that Terri Schiavo’s situation isn’t the same as Stephen Hawking’s. What I am pointing out here is that Terry McKenzie chose to focus on aspects of Schiavo’s situation (her tubes and her diaper) which she shares with many disabled people who live full and meaningful lives. And by doing that, she threatens to worsen the already massive social prejudice against disabled people.
Terri Schiavo died this morning.
Yes, Hawking has gained lots of sympathy for his disability. But that’s because he’s a great scientist – people feel pity when a talent faces such inevident sickness. Schiavo, however, was just a random girl (at least to us Europeans, dunno if she was a celeb there.)
Therefore, the argument that young female get more sympathy like this than other groups, still holds (now with the correction that things like great talent also increase public sympathy.)
I hate “social evolutionist” arguments, but it has also been suggested that the reason why young female get more sympathy and protection is that they are the ones most important for producing offspring (any normal man can spread his seeds even daily, whereas for a female the pregnancy takes 9 months). Even if this were true (as a biological bias), I don’t think a civilized community should base its laws on such biases (of course, with media, it can’t be helped, only despised.)
I don’t understand why one has to completely stop talking because of a largely irrelevant hyperbole in an otherwise plausible idea.
I didn’t say that the argument didn’t hold. Actually, I think I said that it did hold.
I didn’t mean to imply that anyone had to completely stop talking, and I’m a little unclear about where you got that idea from what I wrote. What I am trying to say, and I’m obviously not doing it well, is that a lot of this discussion sounds like revulsion at disabled people and their disabled bodies. And that’s disturbing. I don’t think it’s “irrelevent hyperbole.” I think it’s scary prejudice. Her feeding tube and diapers may be irrelevent to the discussion of what should have happened to her, but it’s relevent to a larger discussion about how society views disabled people.
I think I’m done with this discussion for a while. I’m obviously viewing it through the lens of my own shit, and it’s too exhausting and depressing right now.
But Sally, if Stephen Hawking said he didn’t want to live intubated anymore, would his wishes be devalued like Terri Schiavo’s were?
I began to wonder if one of the main reasons behind her infantilization and Michael Schiavo’s demonization was that they didn’t have kids together (it was the fertility specialists who were defendants in the med mal suit alleging that they didn’t diagnose her potassium imbalance). I mean, in the view of a lot of people, a woman, even a married woman, isn’t really a woman until she’s had a child. So a full-grown married woman with no children is OF COURSE property of her parents. Because her husband isn’t the father of the grandchildren, he’s just some guy who’s fucking their daughter.
It’s a bad analogy. Stephen Hawking has known for thirty years what his prognosis was, and he’s had lots of opportunity to make his wishes really clear. Terri Schiavo had no way of knowing that she was going to end up suffering massive brain damage in her 20s, and so she didn’t spell out what she wanted. Instead, the courts have had to guess based on imperfect evidence. As I understand it, when discussing other people who had been on life support, she said that she wouldn’t want to die like them and that she supported their relatives’ decision to take them off of life support. But their cases weren’t directly analogous to hers: they were dying, while she wasn’t, and they were suffering, while she wasn’t. And they were on different kinds of life support than she was. And as I’ve said elsewhere, we’re relying on hearsay that we’d consider really sketchy in any other kind of case. The reason it doesn’t seem sketchy here, I think, is that it confirms what most people think Terri Schiavo should have wanted and what they think they’d want in her case. Which is fine, but it’s beside the point.
Maybe her statements are enough. I’m willing to accept that they might be. But it bothers me that people seem to think I’m obligated to take the courts’ and doctors’ decisions at face value. I mean, not that long ago, courts approved massive sterilization programs, and doctors swore that the women being sterilized were disabled, even though many of them weren’t, and that sterilization was for their own good, even though that now seems totally wrong and awful. Courts and doctors do screw up. It seems to me that any feminist should realize that. The fetishization of legal and medical expertise here strikes me as weird.
Fetishization? That’s an odd charge to make, but it sounds like you wouldn’t be satisfied with any outcome as long as there was the slightest doubt.
Why is it an odd charge to make? On the other, monster thread several people have suggested that because doctors and courts have spoken, anyone who disputes the outcome has contempt for science and for the rule of law. And I wonder if they would have said the same thing when doctors and courts decided that Carrie Buck should be sterilized against her will. Doctors had spoken; the rule of law had been followed; and anyone who disagreed was un-American and anti-intellectual, no?
(This seems particularly odd given that, on other issues, Amp claims that he knows better than medical experts. One is an anti-fat bigot if one agrees with doctors that being fat is unhealthy, but when it comes to killing disabled people, we must all acknowledge that doctors are omniscient, or we are evil, anti-science fundies.)
If by “unsatisfied” you mean made profoundly uneasy, then I think that’s a fair charge. It’s always going to freak me out when we kill people without being really sure that’s what they would have wanted. I can’t get around that.
In reading maudlin descriptions of her death scene, which sounded like they’d fit in a Victorian novel, I couldn’t help but notice references to a stuffed animal tucked under her arm. For some reason, a lot of people seem to be comfortable with infantalizing Terri Schiavo, turning her into the perpetual little girl in the Peter Pan collar, gazing lovingly at Mommy. These same people, I suspect, would have been repulsed by the idea of a 41 year old man with a stuffed animal under his arm. A grown man “reduced” to a little boy would have induced an entirely different response, and more concern, I think, about the loss of his “manliness” or masculinity, which, of course, is defined as independence and personal autonomy. Since mature femininity doesn’t necessarily confer the same perks, the perpetually dependent, childlike female is an image people can rally around. Partly because it still exists as an ideal, either consciously or unconsciously.
Disputes the outcome in what sense?
Disputes the outcome in the sense of believing that the outcome was mistaken or unjust, no, I don’t think that shows contempt for science or the law.
Disputes the outcome in the sense of claiming that people can speak without a cortex; yes, I think that shows either ignorance of or contempt for science.
I think contempt for the science that led to the Carrie Buck decision is appropriate. However, it doesn’t follow that because people used faux-science to justify an evil decision in the past, we should therefore ignore everything that science tells us forevermore. If y0u want to make an argument that the science that tells us that identity and thought has something to do with the cortex, is the moral and scientific equivalent of eugenics, then make the argument. But unless you can prove that case, I maintain that just because eugenics was evil, it doesn’t follow that all science is evil.
As for the rule of law, I think we have to balance the costs of allowing courts to make decisions – even if they sometimes make bad decisions – against the cost of allowing congress to have extra constitutional powers to overrule unpopular court rulings. It seems to me that while neither option is perfect, the costs of the latter outweigh the costs of the former.
Both the judicial branch and the legislative branch are going to make decisions warped by whatever the current bigotries of the day are. But I don’t think that congress is likely to be less bigoted than the courts; on the contrary, I think history shows that congress tends to cling to bigoted ideas longer than many courts do. (Think of same-sex marriage, for example). If so, the proposed solution of many anti-Court people who have commented on the Terri Schiavo case – which is to give Congress the power to overturn any court ruling it dislikes the outcome of – would result in a net increase in bigotry.
Tell me, did Congress pass a special law trying to save Carrie Buck? Unless it did, the change in law some on your side are advocating, would not have saved her.
First of all: No one on my side is advocating “killing disabled people”; we are advocating letting Terri’s wishes rule the day. It’s intellectually piss-poor to reduce all positions that you disagree with to simplistic, morally idiotic clinches. So why do it?
I’d like to have a respectful disagreement with you, but I can’t do that if you’re going to imply that I advocate wanton killing off of the disabled.
Second of all, as I could document at much greater length than you probably want to hear, my position on fat and health is one side in a controversy within the medical community. There are many, many experts who agree with me and have said so in legitimate peer-reviewed journals, supporting their positions with studies published in other legitimate peer-reviewed journals.
There is a vast difference between saying “I think this side of a current dispute in the peer-reviewed scientific community is correct,” and saying “I think that the Earth is flat.” I’d argue that claiming that someone without a cortex can speak comes closer to the latter than the former position.
I agree.
However, I’m also freaked out by the prospect of keeping people alive for decades and decades against their wishes. Less so with Terri, who at least had the mercy of dying in every way that matters 15 years ago; but with “locked-in” cases, I can see either keeping them alive or allowing them to die as being equally horrific, depending on what the indivdual in question would prefer. Unfortunately, there’s no absolutely infallable way to know what they prefer, so no matter how we decide it’s possible we’re horribly wrong.
P.S. I used the example of Terri speaking a few times. I’m not saying that you, Sally, have made that claim; but many people have made such a claim.
Re post #24:
Really good post, Silverside. Thanks.