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A question for you Manny.
What is the difference between sentencing someone to death and allowing the removal of this womans feeding tube?
It may be possible...but the question was raised, and I don't have an answer for it.
A question for you Manny.
What is the difference between sentencing someone to death and allowing the removal of this womans feeding tube?
I just read the one that they tried to stop anointing of the sick, because they said you can only have it once, which is BS. It is the sacrement to prepare one's soul to meet with God, yet since we are fallible humans, we dont know the exact moment that we or anyone else is going to die so we may make a mistake. Ex. I received my last rights when I was 3 weeks old.
I find that many do not bother to find out much in the way of relevant information concerning the Catholic Church before committing authoritative thoughts to paper...
One is the forceible taking of life, One is the refusal of medical services.
Very different.
Several years? So, you believe it took Mikey 8 years to come to accept the irreversibility of his wife's condition?
I find that argument dubious, at best.
If the federal courts do decide to look anew at the facts of the Terri Schiavo case, one of the central issues will be the credibility of husband Michael Schiavo's claim that she made clear she would want to die under the cir stances. Monday or Tuesday, Mr. Schiavo appeared on "Larry King Live," and a comment by his lawyer, George Felos (who fielded all questions from callers, though Schiavo responded directly to questions from the host), gave further reason for doubt:
For eight years, in other words, Mr. Schiavo failed to carry out what he now insists -- and his supporters unquestioningly assert -- were her wishes.
Supporters of Michael Schiavo's effort to end his wife's life have asked how conservatives, who claim to believe in the sanc y of marriage, can fail to respect his husbandly authority. The most obvious answer is that a man's authority as a husband does not supersede his wife's rights as a human being--a principle I personally never thought I'd see liberals question.
But why do those of us who aren't right-to-life absolutists side with Mrs. Schiavo's parents, who want to keep her alive, over her husband, who wants her dead? It's a fair question, and it raises another one: What kind of husband is Michael Schiavo?
According to news reports, Mr. Schiavo lives with a woman named Jodi Centonze, and they have two children together. Surely any court would consider this prima facie evidence of adultery. And this is no mere fling; a sympathetic 2003 profile in the Orlando Sentinel described Centonze as Mr. Schiavo's "fiancée." Mr. Schiavo, in other words, has virtually remarried. Short of outright bigamy, his relationship with Centonze is as thoroughgoing a violation of his marriage vows as it is possible to imagine.
The point here is not to castigate Mr. Schiavo for behaving badly. It would require a heroic degree of self-sacrifice for a man to forgo love and sex in order to remain faithful to an incapacitated wife, and it would be unreasonable to hold an ordinary man to a heroic standard.
But it is equally unreasonable to let Mr. Schiavo have it both ways. If he wishes to assert his marital authority to do his wife in, the least society can expect in return is that he refrain from making a mockery of his marital obligations. The grimmest irony in this tragic case is that those who want Terri Schiavo dead are resting their argument on the fiction that her marriage is still alive.
He's not using any authority to "do his wife in". The State of Florida has ruled.
Why can't you (and the media for that matter) pick up on that?
This is not about the husband, it is about Terri Schiavo.
welcome back, Yoni
But they both have the same ends. And both of the people's lives hang on the judgments of the courts.
Chris, I already gave you the reasoning. In my eyes, that poses a enourmous difference.
I believe Charles Krauthammer, no stranger to suffering, has this one nailed.
Between Travesty and Tragedy
By Charles Krauthammer
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
If I were in Terri Schiavo's condition, I would not want a feeding tube. But Schiavo does not have the means to make her intentions known. We do not know what she would have wanted. We have nothing to go on. No living will, no advance directives, no durable power of attorney.
What do you do when you have nothing to go on? You try to intuit her will, using loved ones as surrogates.
In this case, the loved ones disagree. The husband wants Terri to die; the parents do not. The Florida court gave the surrogacy to her husband, under the generally useful rule that your spouse is the most reliable diviner of your wishes: You pick your spouse and not your parents, and you have spent most of your recent years with your spouse and not your parents.
The problem is that although your spouse probably knows you best, there is no guarantee that he will not confuse his wishes with yours. Terri's spouse presents complications. He has a girlfriend, and has two kids with her. He clearly wants to marry again. And a living Terri stands in the way.
Now, all of this may be irrelevant in his mind. He may actually be acting entirely based on his understanding of his wife's wishes. And as she left nothing behind, the courts have been forced to conclude, on the basis of his testimony, that she would prefer to be dead.
That is why this is a terrible case. The general rule of spousal supremacy leads you here to a thoroughly repulsive conclusion. Repulsive because in a case where there is no consensus among the loved ones, one's natural human sympathies suggest giving custody to the party committed to her staying alive and pledging to carry the burden themselves.
Let's be clear about her condition. She is not dead. If she were brain-dead, we would be talking about harvesting her organs. She is a living, breathing human being. Some people have called her a vegetable. Apart from the term being disgusting, how do they know? How can we be sure of the complete absence of any consciousness, any awareness, any anything "inside" this person?
The crucial issue in deciding whether one would want to intervene to keep her alive is whether there is, as one bioethicist put it to me, "anyone home." Her parents, who see her often, believe that there is. The husband maintains that there is no one home. (But then again he has another home, making his judgment somewhat suspect.) The husband has not allowed a lot of medical testing in the past few years. I have tried to find out what her neurological condition actually is. But the evidence is sketchy, old and conflicting. The Florida court found that most of her cerebral cortex is gone. But "most" does not mean all. There may be some cortex functioning. The severely re ed or brain-damaged can have some consciousness. And we do not go around euthanizing the minimally conscious in the back wards of mental hospitals on the grounds that their lives are not worth living.
Given our lack of certainty, given that there are loved ones prepared to keep her alive and care for her, how can you allow the husband to end her life on his say-so? Because following the sensible rules of Florida custody laws, conducted with due diligence and great care over many years in this case, this is where the law led.
For Congress and the president to then step in and try to override that by shifting the venue to a federal court was a legal travesty, a flagrant violation of federalism and the separation of powers. The federal judge who refused to reverse the Florida court was certainly true to the law. But the law, while scrupulous, has been merciless, and its conclusion very troubling morally. We ended up having to choose between a legal travesty on the one hand and human tragedy on the other.
There is no good outcome to this case. Except perhaps if Florida and the other states were to amend their laws and resolve conflicts among loved ones differently -- by granting authority not necessarily to the spouse but to whatever first-degree relative (even if in the minority) chooses life and is committed to support it. Call it Terri's law. It would help prevent our having to choose in the future between travesty and tragedy.
With all due respect, the State of Florida ruled the way they did because of his testimony.
In part because of his testimony. His was not the only testimony in the case. Also, the testimony that contradicted his and others was inconsistent and inaccurate.
For instance, the mother tried to use a conversation to prove that her daughte would not have wanted to die. First, she said the conversation occoured when Terri was an adult. Later, when confronted about the discrepencies in the timeline of her testimony, she admitted it hapend when Terri was 11-12.
And that's only one example of the kind of testimony the parents brought to court.
But, would agree that in both instances the lives of these people are decided by the courts?
I think he does too. I would agree that given such a distasteful outcome, the state of Florida needs to look at its laws with regard to how these decisions are made.
But we shouldn't just ignore or cir vent the laws because we don't like the way they are carried out. We live under the rule of law, not the rule of men.
President Bush should know this, since his election to his first term depended upon stopping Florida judges from throwing away the laws and making it up as they went along.
For Congress and the president to then step in and try to override that by shifting the venue to a federal court was a legal travesty, a flagrant violation of federalism and the separation of powers. The federal judge who refused to reverse the Florida court was certainly true to the law. But the law, while scrupulous, has been merciless, and its conclusion very troubling morally. We ended up having to choose between a legal travesty on the one hand and human tragedy on the other.
Gabriel Keys (foreground) is arrested by police officers for trespassing in Pinellas Park, Florida, March 23, 2005. The young protester attempted to take a glass of water into the Woodside Ho e for the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo. A federal judge rejected a request from the parents of Schiavo to order her feeding tube reinserted, dealing a blow to attempts by the U.S. Congress and the White House to prolong her life. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Currently on Drudge...
It's over.
No.
I already know where you're going with this.
Anyhow, No, because one takes testimony on the wishes of the person, while the other one hands down an abitrary judgement.
Once again, very different outcomes.
Yes, there are chances for error on both ends, but the 2 court systems are fundementaly different for many reasons.
Hey! Leave me out of this! :pSo, you believe it took Mikey 8 years to come to accept the irreversibility of his wife's condition?
Gov. Bush Seeks to Take Custody of Schiavo
2 hours, 45 minutes ago U.S. National - AP
By JILL BARTON, Associated Press Writer
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Terri Schiavo's parents saw their options vanish one by one Wednesday as a federal appeals court refused to reinsert her feeding tube and the Florida Legislature decided not to intervene in the epic struggle. Refusing to give up, Gov. Jeb Bush sought court permission to take custody of Schiavo.
AP Photo
AFP
Slideshow: Terri Schiavo Right-to-Die Case
Judge Won't Order Reinsertion of Feeding Tube
(AP Video)
The desperate flurry of activity came as President Bush (news - web sites) suggested that Congress and the White House had done all they could to keep the severely brain-damaged woman alive.
No. Without his testimony, this case would have never - I repeat, NEVER - been heard and she'd still be getting nourishment.
The court rulings are, in their entirety, a direct result of his statement seven years ago, eight years after his wife became incapacitated and (not coincidentally, I bet) about the time he took up with his current bed mate.
Sorry, the Florida courts are stooges to rule against Mrs. Schiavo's life under these cir stances.
Those Florida courts, if they are stooges, ruled by the law and the top court in Florida has judges who the majority were appointed by Jeb Bush.
I think the Supreme Court will say no and this will come to end, a tragic end because anytime a life is lost it is tragic.
And without the other testimony, it woudln't have happend either.
Read the judgement.
I'm tired of people pissed about this case.
This is about Terri. Not what you want, not what the parents want, not what her husband wants.
You are tired of people being pissed about this case????? Spare me your wonderful world of wisdom. After this woman dies, you can expect a HUGE outrage in this country and heads are going to roll. This country has stooped to an all time low when we sentence this woman to a slow aggonizing death when we afford more humane treatment to animals.I have read your posts over and over and I have yet to see one bit of compassion from you. You have a need to show your intellect by stating over and over that the final ruling came after the "facts" were considered. There hasn't even been an MRI done on her to determine how much damage was done to the body. You are certainly en led to your opinion but I am too. I'm done arguing this issue so don't even bother to reply to me. Just be prepared to see an outrage from a sad nation.
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