it happens all the time, klim. you just don't hear about it on the news.

most of her brain is gone. the 'experts' say she's not feeling anything. hopefully they're right.

Bush signed a law in Texas 6 years ago that makes it to where if a panel of medical experts say there's no hope, they can remove a person from life support even if the family is against it. that's why i think the whole thing with the bill they ran through congress was so hypocritical.

A great philosopher once said, "When you hate the food that comes from a pipe, you will turn to drugs to help you sleep."

I think it's clear what needs to happen here.

BigJohn

exactly.

wow bigjohn
that was nicely put

Damn assisted suicide laws. I think Terri should be allowed to die, but taking out her tube and letting her body eat itself is one of the most inhumane ways to do it. They really need to either take her behind the barn or send her down the morpheus river and just end it. But, the laws don't allow it, so she's gonna suffer either way.

I don't think the husband's decision was as easy as everyone makes it out to be. Sure, he's a bit of a scuzball, but he commited his life to this woman. It's hard for me to believe that he feels no sadness about letting her die.

Patricia Heaton should shut her fucking mouth about it. I hate how celebrities have to make their sides known like their opinion is more important than ours.

Legally, her husband is her guardian, he has the right to let her die, and every court in the country agrees with that. Unless ol' Jeb gets Florida to be her guardian (which isn't bloody likely), her parents are fighting an unwinnable war. It's about time they just stop the fight, and go be by Terri's side these last days. It seems to be the best outcome that can come of all this.

i don't think her husband wants to murder her. it couldn't be cheap to hire lawyers & go to court a dozen times. i think he truly feels that it's what she would want. i hate to say it, but a spouse generally knows you better than a parent. i know galoot knows tons of stuff about me that my Mom doesn't know.

i also think that everybody gets one life & he should be allowed to find happiness with someone else. it's been 15 years. that's an excrutiatingly long time to wait for someone who's never coming back. Terri's body is here, but Terri has been gone for 15 years. to him, she's suffering by living a life that isn't really a life.

grunting & staring & laying in a bed being fed by a tube & pooping in your pants is not living... it's dying.

anyhoo my point is that i don't think it's fair to villify him. i would hate to be in his shoes. i think he's doing the best he can, just like everybody else & i really think he's doing what he feels is the best thing for her in the long run.

One of the sites I go to for my news is WorldNetDaily -- they have been covering Terri's story for the past 3 years. In fact just recently they listed this article The whole story of Terri Schiavo.

Now I know many people have their opinions about this case, but I still believe that Terri should not have to suffer like this. Biff, I'm curious to know where you heard that she is receiving morphine -- not saying I don't believe you, but I haven't heard that.

When we start saying that Terri's life is not really a life -- laying in a bed for the past 15 years. When does a person's life lose it's dignity? When does it lose it's worth? Who decides what a life is worth? If her life isn't worth anything anymore and judges can say yeah let's remove her feeding tube, then where does it stop? Was Christopher Reeve's life any less worth living when he had his accident? What about Stephen Hawkins? He can't even speak without a machine and he has the world's highest IQ.

The issue with this case is not a clear cut case of just let her go. There is more to it, if you do the research. The media has already put such a slant on this story it's ridiculous. This wouldn't even be a case if we knew what Terri wanted. Michael Schiavo is not dedicated to this woman -- no matter what he claims.

There is no need to vilify him, the facts speak for themselves. He tried to take care of Terri for 2 years, he studied nursing and asked the courts to allow him to take her home so he could take care of her for the rest of her life before deciding she "claimed" she wanted to die. Second he has a mistress. Third he has kids with this woman, he has a whole new family. And next when she dies he stand to inherit a lot of money. If he were truly interested in being free from Terri then why not spend the $500 to divorce her and be done with it? Why spend all this time in court trying to fight for her? What better way to get rid of her and gain money at the same time. No matter how many times he claims it's not about the money. It's always about the money.

Schiavo case matters in symbol and substance
Cal Thomas

March 21, 2005

Why does Terri Schiavo matter? Why has Congress made a federal case out of her situation? Why did the president of the United States return to Washington from Texas in order to sign a bill created for the express purpose of inviting a federal court to review the case and likely requiring her feeding tube restored while the judge gathers information?

She matters, not only because she has an endowed, inalienable right to life, but also because she is a symbol - like Rosa Parks was a symbol when she refused to sit in the back of that Montgomery, Ala., bus; like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who symbolized freedom by defying Soviet authorities and chronicling the inhabitants and victims of the gulags; like astronauts who brave death to explore space. Symbols have meaning. Terri Schiavo is a symbol in the battle over life-and-death issues that inconveniently, but necessarily, confront us.

Opponents of federal intervention cry "hypocrisy" because conservatives pushing for a federal court review claim to support states rights on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage and think these matters should be left to the states under the 10th Amendment.

But the hypocrisy label can be turned around. Didn't liberals reject states rights when it came to civil rights for African-Americans four decades ago, and didn't they make federal cases out of such things as integrated restrooms and universities? They supported sending federal troops to force integration on unwilling states. They were right to do so then, and conservatives are right to ask the federal government to intervene when a Florida judge has, in effect, ordered the murder of Terri Schiavo by denying her food and water.

Then, as now, when an individual's civil and constitutional rights are denied by a state, there are instances when federal action is required. This is such an instance.

Terri Schiavo's life matters as symbol and substance. Her case is only the la-*test*-('") in a long series that forces us to choose between two philosophies of life.

One philosophy says we are mere material and energy shaped by pure chance in a random universe, evolving from slime with no Author of life, no purpose for living beyond what gives us pleasure and no destination after we die but the grave.

The other philosophy of life says we are created by an infinite, personal God who has a plan for every life in every situation and circumstance and that no one should take a life except under the most extreme circumstances and only through due process or in self-defense.

The Schiavo case should not be viewed in isolation. It is part of a flow that began in modern times with abortion-on-demand and will continue, if not stopped, with euthanasia. Once a single category of life is devalued, all other categories quickly become vulnerable.

Girls who became pregnant by a drunken father and sought abortions were the symbolic beginning of a process that has resulted in abortion for any reason at any stage. Now we are targeting the infirm, and soon the elderly will be in our sights because of the pressure on Social Security and Medicare. The "reasoning" will be: rather than raise taxes, reduce benefits or raise the retirement age, let's eliminate those who are the biggest "drain" on retirement resources - that is, the elderly and infirm.

Having been conditioned to accept killing, even killing by the state according to an arbitrary standard of who is "fit" to live and who is not, it will be a short step to killing Grandma and Grandpa in their "assisted living" centers, which quickly will be transformed into centers for assisted dying.

Someone will produce a document or hearsay -*test*-('")imony that the elderly person would have "wanted to die" in such circumstances and never intended to be a "burden" to their children. The lawyer will be called, the will read and the inheritance distributed. It will be larger than what would have remained had it been spent on the recently departed.

These are the stakes, and how the Schiavo case is decided will determine what many of us will face in the future.

i don't think her case has anything to do with abortion rights. i think she's being used in that regard. i think the anti abortion people will use anything or anyone they can to push their agenda.

it's only my opinion. you have yours & i have mine. everybody gets to have their own in this country. (so far)

As governor, Bush signed right-to-die law

By Knight Ridder Newspapers and Newsday


WASHINGTON — The federal law that President Bush signed early yesterday in an effort to prolong Terri Schiavo's life appears to contradict a right-to-die law that he signed as Texas governor, prompting cries of hypocrisy from congressional Democrats and some bioethicists.

In 1999, then-Gov. Bush signed the Advance Directives Act, which lets a patient's surrogate make life-ending decisions on his or her behalf. The measure also allows Texas hospitals to disconnect patients from life-sustaining systems if a physician, in consultation with a hospital bioethics committee, concludes that the patient's condition is hopeless.

Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said yesterday that if the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected.

"The Texas law signed in 1999 allowed next of kin to decide what the patient wanted, if competent," said John Robertson, a University of Texas bioethicist.

While Congress and the White House were considering legislation recently in the Schiavo case, the Texas law faced its first high-profile -*test*-('"). With the permission of a judge, a Houston hospital cut off life support for a badly deformed 6-month-old baby last week against his mother's wishes after doctors determined that continuing life support would be futile. The baby died almost immediately.

"The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head," said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University's Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. "This does appear to be a contradiction."

Bush's apparent shift on right-to-die decisions wasn't lost on Democrats. During heated debate on the Schiavo case, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., accused Bush of hypocrisy.

"It appears that President Bush felt, as governor, that there was a point which, when doctors felt there was no further hope for the patient, that it is appropriate for an end-of-life decision to be made, even over the objection of family members," she said. "There is an obvious conflict here between the president's feelings on this matter now as compared to when he was governor of Texas."

The White House said yesterday that Bush's position is consistent, and that the Texas bill focused on expanding the rights of the critically ill and their families to prevent hospitals and doctors from denying life-saving treatment.

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that Bush vetoed 1997 legislation that would have put into law Texas hospital policies that gave families virtually no protections and as little as 72 hours to find alternative care after a hospital decided to stop treatment.

Under the 1999 law, another White House official said, Bush expanded that time to 10 days and authorized family members to seek extensions in court, but acknowledged that if the challenges fell short, "under the legislation, the hospital still could authorize the end of life."

In Texas, Bush's position also had the backing of the Texas Right-to-Life Association, whose national headquarters, along with other Christian conservatives that make up a key part of the Republican base, has taken up the fight to prolong Schiavo's life as a cause célèbre.

Burke Balch, director of the Powell Center for Medical Ethics at National Right-to-Life in Washington, said he represented the Texas chapter in more than two dozen negotiating sessions over the 1999 bill. He acknowledged that the legislation could allow a hospital to move to end a patient's life over the family's wishes but denied that was inconsistent with Bush's positions now, or his own group's as well.

"Does this mean that we or Governor Bush are hypocrites because we supported that law? The answer is, it was the best we could achieve at the time, better than the existing state of the law. ... But when we have the ability to change the law to be more protective, certainly we would do that," Balch said.


~ there are articles all over the internet to support either side. i get a lot of my news from Fox, & everybody knows it's about the most conservative news channel there is. (i like Shepard Smith, i can't help it) i still make up my own mind.

i've followed this case for years too. i'm kind of a news junkie.

i heard on Fox that she was getting morphine. i don't know if it's true or not. you hear & read things that are true & untrue & slanted this way & that way all the time. who's to say which direction a story should lean? all i know is what i think in the end after i've seen & heard everything. i could be wrong, but i could also be right. who knows?

i think in America a persons religious beliefs cannot be imposed on others. if that were the case it would be no better than living under the Taliban.

ps...

i DO think it's about money. everything in this world is about money. Michael had the money to fight it in the courts, & her parents had the money to fight back. nobody ever woulda heard about any of it if not for money. that poor Mom in Texas didn't have the money to fight to keep her baby alive. all his medical bills were probably being covered by Medicaid. if the government had to pay to keep Terri alive, they probably wouldn't be fighting so hard for her to live either.

money changes everything.

That is an interesting article. I feel bad for that poor mom. You're probably right about the fact that since she had no money to fight for her child that is why the state just took over. But I do see that there is a difference between this 6 month old and Terri. The baby died immediately -- Terri is still alive.

You know I do understand why you say you're not living if you are just laying in a bed. *warning: spiritual moment * I do feel that God put me here for a reason. Now Terri lost out on 15 years of her life according to our standards, but perhaps this has happened to her for a reason. You know God may have been preparing the nurses, the doctors, her family, etc. to understand how to take care of a person, to have compassion on another person. To help us (the world) understand how the body works. You know I bet this has really helped many doctors learn how the brain works and aside from all the fighting that has happened, Terri's life has not been wasted. Now it just seems to be a waiting game. It makes me wonder what kind of lawsuits will be filed when Terri is gone.

there's no tellin. i never really thought about that one...

I'm thinking of it in the exact opposite way. When I see the story on the news I think her life isn't worth that of a dog. My cousin's dog was so sick a month ago that it couldn't even lift her head to look at you. We finally had to bring someone in to put her down. Terri can barely move at all and we're making her suffer by just letting her starve.

The difference is Reeve and Hawkins could still function. They could still talk and move around, even if they were helped along by machines. Terri's just trapped in her body. I'm assuming through this whole thing that she can see and hear everything around her, which must make not being able to move and respond all the more worse for her. Even if that's not the case, she still can't be having a great time just sitting there. It's time to just let her go.

It's already started. They're fighting about how to bury her now.