[Peace-discuss] Liberals and Schiavo

[Dan Schreiber]

Having seen this page on her brain scan, which seems credible to me,

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/03/20/regarding-the-cat-scan-of-t
erri-schiavos-brain/

it seems to me that Terry Schaivo no longer exists in this world, has no
chance of coming back, and yet her body remains.  What does it mean to have
a body but no awareness, memory, cognitive, or any other trait that makes
one alive save biological functioning, and even that requires intervention
via a feeding tube to sustain?  For us, it is a philosophical question.  For
her husband and parents, it is about a person they loved, who have different
ideas about what life and dignity mean, and whose animosity towards each
other has dragged the whole country into the argument.

The issue of "being starved to death" may seem cruel, but we wouldn't be
arguing about it if Terri had a living will saying she did not want to be
kept alive by artificial means - it would have happened a long time ago
without any moral grandstanding.  If you believe she really wouldn't want to
be kept alive (as an overwhelming number of people say that is what they
would want if they were in her situation), then how can one argue against
it?  If she believes in an afterlife, there's no hope of recovering herself,
and doesn't want to be burden to her loved ones, it would make sense.   We
don't know of course, but the person closest to her says she would not want
to stay biologically alive in this circumstance.  People are throwing mud at
him of course, but they have about the same credibility as the swift boat
hucksters.

The bottom line though is that there are a lot of reasons other than not
liking Tom Delay to support the courts on this, many of which are not
immoral.

Dan




> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net]On Behalf Of C. G.
> Estabrook
> Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 8:36 PM
> To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Liberals and Schiavo
>
>
> [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.
>
> 	###
>
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