[Peace-discuss] Liberals and Schiavo

[Morton K.Brussel]

Is 15 years, including innumerable court decisions where many medical 
experts testified, "eagerness"?
Are all those judges wacky? Do we hand over the decisions to the soi 
disant "pro-life" crowd?

Hentoff is disgraceful, twisted, and doesn't know what he's talking 
about, as his recent article confirms.
Jesse Jackson is a grandstander, and must be losing his wits---he's too 
ego ridden to figure out.
As for Nader, who knows (Please give reference so I can see what he's 
up to.); he soiled himself in the last election? But most people, as 
the polls indicate, think the courts acted reasonably.

Clearly, this crazy campaign, overwhelmingly carried forth by the 
fundamentalist right, is all about the rights of the unconscious, but 
too bad they don't give a damn about the rights of those who are 
conscious.

This is not a subject pertinent to our website, but I couldn't restrain 
myself from responding.

--mkb


On Mar 30, 2005, at 8:35 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [Why are some soi-disant liberals so eager to have Terri Schiavo "made
> dead," as Ralph Nader puts it?  Because they don't like the people 
> (like
> Tom Delay) who are saying publicly that she shouldn't be starved to 
> death?
> The view that my enemy finds inimical is my friend? That's a pretty 
> weak
> argument.
> 	Democracy Now ran a shameful segment today in which they pointed
> out that Tom Delay and Schiavo's father both took dying parents off
> life-support systems (a respirator in one case, dialysis in the other, 
> I
> think) -- without once pointing out the difference: Terri Schiavo 
> wasn't
> dying.
> 	I'm glad to see that Ralph, Jesse Jackson, Nat Hentoff and others
> are willing to speak out against this judicial murder.  As Ralph said, 
> "If
> this were a death penalty case, this evidence would demand
> reconsideration"; or Hentoff: "In this country, even condemned serial
> killers are not executed in this way."
> 	Here's a brilliant piece by Harriet McBryde Johnson, a
> disability-rights lawyer in Charleston, S.C., who is herself disabled. 
> Her
> memoir, Too Late to Die Young, is in the bookshops.  --CGE]
>
> 	Not Dead at All
> 	Why Congress was right to stick up for Terri Schiavo.
> 	By Harriet McBryde Johnson
>
> 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 belovedfreakishly
> perhaps but genuinely soliving 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 effortas
> with most death-penalty habeas petitionsfederalism 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 fearslike 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 
> deadeven
> if I think so myselfI 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.
>
> 	###
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>