Bobby Schindler Speaks Out

Deseret Morning News

Bobby Schindler says his memory is seared with images of his sister, Terri Schiavo, after courts approved removal of her feeding tube in a high-profile right-to-die/right-to-life battle he says wasn't always fairly portrayed in the media.

... "She was beautiful, she was alive, she was a human being and had a family willing to . . . show her compassion as every human being deserves. But the courts decided she would be better off dead."

About six months have passed since Schiavo died. And Schindler is on an international speaking tour of sorts, criticizing the right-to-die movement and, through the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, pushing for changes in federal and state laws to protect the lives of the elderly and people with disabilities.

He addressed about 150 people at Westminster College Wednesday night and spoke with the Deseret Morning News beforehand. Student leaders had invited him after learning he had spoken to another university, free of charge. His Salt Lake speech also included no honorarium, he said....

Read the rest at the link. (Hat tip: Blogs for Terri.

A couple of points I want to touch on here. The Terri Schiavo case never was about the right to die. It was about the right to live - without which the right to die is meaningless. A lot of liberals were just sure this was a case of some crazed right-wingers trying to keep a woman alive against her wishes. But the nature of Terri's wishes was - in my view, and in the view of many reasonable people - very much open to question. And to compensate for the weakness of the evidence for Terri's supposed wish to die, the kill-Terri side hedged their bets by inviting us to make assumptions about what Terri would want, or what we would want if we were in her place.

There's a lot more I want to say about this, but Shabbat is coming, so I'm going to stop for now.

Matters of Life and Death

Terri Schiavo. I cannot think of any single issue, ever, where my views have changed so profoundly and dramatically in such a short period of time. When I first mentioned the Save Terri campaign here, it was mostly as a freindly gesture to Sherri Reese, whose blog I've enjoyed greatly. Until I came across Sherri's post, I barely knew - or cared - who Terri Schiavo was. If I thought about it at all, I pigeonholed it as "some right-wing cause".

The more I learned, though, the more I realized that this case was NOT, as I had assumed, the case of someone living in excruciating pain; nor someone who had left explicit, written instructions that were being ignored by meddlesome right-to-life absolutists. I began to understand that this was a case too important to let my own prejudices and stereotypes about social conservatives cloud my judgment. Like the liberation of Iraq, it was a case onto which the Left had, for the most part, projected its own ideas - and had gotten it all wrong.

After reading Blogs for Terri, liberal "save Terri" sites like Liberals for Terri and Kesher Talk, and the pro-death side's feeble justifications for its position, I realized that I needed to re-think a lot of my assumptions about life, death, and culture. My previous Terri roundup is here.

Abortion. I have always been, and remain, a fence-sitter on the abortion debate. I have never formed a strong opinion on the subject one way or the other; although I will say that I have come to view the pro-life side with greater respect in recent years. I found this pro-life post from Sherri, which focuses on women's empowerment and responsibility, especially persuasive. There's also a gay pro-life organization called PLAGAL.

I'm not ready to sign on with either side in the debate right now, but I do want to mention one thing about the abortion debate. I can't imagine how the experience of having an abortion - however compelling the circumstances may be - can be anything but traumatic for the woman. And I wonder if pro-choice groups have sometimes downplayed this factor in the interests of making abortion seem more palatable.

Death penalty. I'm against the death penalty in all but extremely rare cases (e.g. Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden). I do not subscribe to the slogan that "capital punishment is murder" because I think it's a stupid moral equivalency. There is, after all, a difference between what the state is empowered to do and what citizens are allowed or forbidden to do. (The state has a duty to impose unpleasant consequences upon people who commit crimes, in order to make crime less attractive. "Death penalty = murder" makes as much sense as saying "prison=kidnapping" or "fines=theft".) But a death wrongly imposed cannot be revoked or commuted; and I do not see what an execution accomplishes that a life sentence - a REAL life sentence - does not. I think a death penalty puts too much power in the hands of the state.

"Matters of Life and Death" is a new feature and I hope to explore these issues and others in greater depth, in future installments. For now, I need to take a break. Stay tuned.

Schindler Family Releases Statement

The family of Terri Schindler Schiavo has released a statement in response to the medical examiner's report:

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., and SEMINOLE, Fl., June 16 /Christian Wire Service/ -- On June 15, 2005, the Pinellas County IME has released his report regarding Terri. We would like to thank the IME for his time and effort in making this report. We are not challenging the findings in his report, but we would like to make a few comments publicly. We do not intend to take questions afterwards.

First, the IME's report confirms Terri's physical condition and disability. We all knew Terri was seriously brain-injured before the IME report. This is nothing new. The IME's report also confirms that TERRI WAS NOT TERMINAL. THAT TERRI HAD NO LIVING WILL, THAT TERRI HAD A STRONG HEART, and THAT TERRI WAS BRUTALLY DEHYDRATED TO DEATH.

Second, our family would encourage the media to remember that this case was allegedly about "Terri's choice." There is absolutely no evidence that Terri wanted to die of dehydration, or that she believed that that the level of one's disability gives anyone the moral and legal right to end another's life.

Third, the IME said clearly that dehydration, not her brain injury, was the cause of her death. Terri was dehydrated to death before our eyes The moral shame of what happened is not erased because of Terri's level of disability. No one would say that "blind people" or "brain-injured" people should be put to death. That would be an irresponsible and heartless position to take. Tragically, that is what happened to Terri. As a society, it seems that we have lost our compassion for the disabled.

We asked our attorney, Mr. Gibbs, to meet with the IME prior to the press conference, to attend the IME's press conference, and to speak to the media for our family afterward. In our opinion, some of the significant items from the IME's report are as follows:

-- Terri had a strong heart according to the IME. In addition to her strong heart, Terri also demonstrated a very strong will to live.

-- Terri was not terminal. The IME said with proper care Terri would have lived at least another 10 years even in her disabled condition. Terri's case was NOT an end-of-life case. Terri's case was about ending a disabled person's life.

-- Terri was brain-injured. This does NOT mean that she was brain-dead. Many seem to not understand this absolutely critical distinction.

-- The IME essentially ruled out bulimia and heart attack as causes for Terri's condition. In one sense the IME's report created as many questions as it may have answered. The major question for our family that now remains is what happened? A troubling 70-minute gap appears in the timeline on the day Terri collapsed in 1990: ...

Read the whole thing at the link.

Let's blogroll!

GayPatriot - the original GayPatriot - is back! Go to the post at the link to learn everything you always wanted to know about GP ... and don't forget to visit the main page for current posts.

A Jayhawk in Longhorn Country has a few choice words for message boards. Jayhorn speaks my thoughts on Free Republic, and on longwinded message threads in general.

"Chernobyl is Open." When Michael J. Totten begins a post with these words, you know it won't be long until you read the words "I have to go there." Go to the link to find out why Portland's intrepid travel writer wants to put Chernobyl on his itinerary (which recently included Lebanon and Libya).

Beth is on blogging vacation and enjoying the Southern summer. But don't let that stop you from visiting My VRWC and reading Jody's guest post on Terri Schiavo and Merri's guest post on teen abortion.

Homecomings are the subject of this post at Neo-Neocon. A reflection on some of the ways we've changed since Vietnam ... and some ways we haven't. Read the comments for some words from a Vietnamese Iraq vet.

Shavu'ot fell, appropriately enough, on 6/13 this year; Judith at Kesher Talk posts on Jews by choice - people who choose the Torah.

Terri Schiavo resources ... and a few final comments.

I'm posting a list of links that have helped me to better understand the Terri Schiavo case. I do not have the time, space, or energy to post a full-length analysis of the case as I see it; and I don't expect to post regularly on it after today. (I will post, however, if something new comes up. So if you're tired of reading about it, don't get your hopes up.)

If you have a constructive, intelligent point to add, whether you agree or disagree with me, you are welcome to do so. If you wish to post a link, please provide some context. Certain readers have taken a page from the Iraqi blog trolls and started pasting "here-look-at-this" links in my comments section. Don't waste your time and mine. If you want to advertise your inability to form your own arguments (or even your own sentences), that's your business. But don't fancy that you have the one bit of information that's suddenly going to change my mind, especially if you're too lazy to explain why you think it's credible and why I (or anyone else) should give a damn.

No two people think alike, and you and I may not assign the same level of credibility to this or that piece of information. You may find one argument more persuasive, and another less so, than I do. That's human nature. It's called having a conversation, and it's what blogging is all about. Please keep this in mind when commenting.

I've come to believe that the Terri Schiavo case represents questions we should all be concerned about: What is the value of human life? Does our society do enough to safeguard the lives of the sick, the elderly, and the vulnerable? Who decides when a life is worth saving? I don't expect that there will be any easy or conclusive answers to these questions, which is why I will continue to address them regularly in this blog in the future.

And now for the Terri links:

Blogs for Terri - Homebase for activists. Now carrying updates on other endangered lives, like Mae Magouirk and Clara Martinez.

Liberals for Terri - "But I'm not gonna go along with a bunch of right-wingers!!!" Oh, please. Haven't we heard that before? After you read the intro, go to their current posts.

In Love With Death - Peggy Noonan's column about the pro-death people. If the link has expired, you can find it here.

Deroy Murdock: Not Just the God Squad and Deroy Murdock: Schiavo's Struggle.

CNS News: "Some Kind of Trauma" - New York forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden on Terri's injuries (2003)

Straight Up With Sherri - Sherri Reese was a tireless activist in this case. Her February and March archives have lots of information.

Kesher Talk - Judith Weiss has been on the Terri case too; this recent post on The Right to Eat connects to the others.

The Redhunter - Tom is a regular reader and commenter here. He wants to know: Are human beings Disposable When Broken?

Keep watching this entry for updates and additions.

Allegations of Husband's Intimidation

Allegations of intimidation by Michael Schiavo ignored.

The judge presiding over the life of Terri Schiavo has ignored potentially explosive claims detailing what those making them believe is a pattern of unusual and allegedly perhaps even violent behavior by her husband, behavior they fear may have factored into the demise of the Florida woman to begin with.

The allegations are just that: assertions by a number of people who are on the opposite side of the debate over the fate of Michael Schiavo's wife -- who has languished in a severely disabled but hardly vegetative state since February 25, 1990, when she was found in a collapsed state between a hall and bathroom during the early morning hours. As allegations, they should be held with a degree of circumspection that provides a presumption of innocence until more evidence is brought to the table.

Moreover, it must be remembered at each turn that there is a bitter dispute at the heart of the issue.

But they are serious allegations, and it was apparently these assertions that caused the state's Department of Children and Families to ask for a 60-day delay in the March 18 date for removal of Terri's feeding and hydrations tubes, saying it wanted time to investigate allegations of "abuse" and "neglect" against Michael, who has since taken up with another woman with whom he has two children.

The judge, George W. Greer of the Sixth Circuit in Pinellas County, has denied that request for a delay, as he has denied virtually all substantive motions by her parents, the Schindlers -- who are desperately fighting to keep their daughter alive and who have now called for the judge's impeachment on the grounds of partiality. ...

Read the whole thing. Source: Spirit Daily via Blogs for Terri. See also Liberals for Terri.

A Few More Thoughts on Terri Schiavo

Terri Schiavo is dead but the questions surrounding her killing remain. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that, more than any other news event since 9/11 (and perhaps even more than that), this has caused me to re-examine some of my basic assumptions. As I've said here before, I am not a pro-life absolutist; at least, not yet. I believe in the importance quality of human life, not just the fact of its existence.

But even as I write these words, something in me grows uneasy with this facile formulation. Who decides what is a desirable "quality" of life? How do these decisions get made, and for whom? We can all agree that a patient writhing in pain on a hospital bed, with no hope of relief from their pain and a certainty of imminent death, does not have a good quality of life. Perhaps one could even reasonably argue that a patient, having explicitly enunciated his or her wishes, might be allowed an early death - either passively (through the withdrawal of artificial life support) or even actively (through a lethal dose of painkiller).

But none of this applies to Terri Schiavo. She was not in discomfort - at least, not until she was sentenced to a slow death by the Florida courts. She had not left a living will. She was killed solely as a result of the determination of her so-called "husband", over the agonized objections of her blood relatives. If there was any doubt in my mind as to the reality of the "slippery slope" principle, this atrocity has removed all trace of it.

Why Terri Schiavo Matters

The April 11 print edition of National Review carries a good analysis of the Terri Schiavo controversy beginning on p. 14. One thing they point out (as I've argued here - scroll down to point #3) is that the many questionable aspects of the Schiavo case lend substance to the "slippery slope" argument of pro-life absolutists. NR says it better than I can:

Opponents of assisted suicide have good reasons for persisting in efforts to save Terri Schiavo's life. But supporters of assisted suicide may have even better ones.

The opponents have always asserted that allowing assisted suicide at all, while bad in itself, would lead to further evils: that we would start by allowing people who want to die to kill themselves, but end up allowing the killing of people who do not want to die. If we were supporters of assisted suicide, we would want to disprove these predictions. We would want to make sure that safeguards are in place to prevent such abuse. Even if we granted that she said both that she did not want to be on life support and that she did not want to be in a coma, it would not establish that she would not even want food and water when she is not in a coma.

Terri schiavo has had no MRI or PET scan. Only a CT scan has led some neurologists to conclude that her cerebral cortex has liquefied; other neurologists [and radiologists - aa] dispute the possiblity of reliably making that inference from CT scans. Many of the initial demonstrations of fact under Judge Greer relied on the testimony of Dr. Ronald Cranford. He is certainly a medical expert; but he is also a right-to-die zealot who advocates the removal of feeding tubes for patients with Alzheimer's dementia. ...

I'll be posting some final thoughts on Terri Schiavo this Sunday. There is more to talk about here. It's not just Terri. There are people in nursing homes whose lives and well-being depend on our willingness to affirm the value of life. And yes, that is exactly what this is about. You do not have to be a pro-life absolutist (I am not) to sense that there is something very wrong here. I used to think the talk about a "culture of life" versus a "culture of death" was just a lot of right-wing rhetoric. Now I'm not so sure.

Update

I'm back in Portland after a short visit to St. Louis, due to a relative's sudden illness. Will be resting up today, maybe posting a little. Expect to resume regular posting Sunday.

Back to serious mode ... I needed a break, and April Fools' day seemed as good an excuse as any. Now it's back to the issues of the day. My general policy is to cover anything I think is interesting or important, whether international or domestic. I will be watching the Mideast, and especially Iran, very closely in the coming weeks. Also expect more posts on Terri Schiavo and the implications of her death.

Arts and letters dept. As I've mentioned before, I also plan to spend more time writing about cultural stuff - arts, spirituality, and other things. After all, the fight for freedom is also the fight for the spirit.

Nat Hentoff on Terri Schiavo, 2003

Nat Hentoff: Lying About Terri Schiavo

By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice | November 10, 2003


I have covered highly visible, dramatic "right to die" cases—including those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan—for more than 25 years. Each time, most of the media, mirroring one another, have been shoddy and inaccurate.

The reporting on the fierce battle for the life of 39-year-old Terri Schiavo has been the worst case of this kind of journalistic malpractice I've seen.

On October 15, Terri's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, ordered the removal of her feeding tube. As she was dying, the Florida legislature and Governor Jeb Bush overruled her husband on October 21, and the gastric feeding tube has been reinserted pending further recourse to the court.

So intent is Michael Schiavo on having his wife die of starvation that one of his lawyers, after the governor's order to reconnect the feeding tube, faxed doctors in the county where the life-saving procedure was about to take place, threatening to sue any physician who reinserted a feeding tube. The husband had immediately gone to court to get a judge to revoke what the legislature and the governor had done.

The husband claims that he is honoring his marriage vows by carrying out the wishes of his wife that she not be kept alive by "artificial means." As I shall show, this hearsay "evidence" by the husband has been contradicted. The purportedly devoted husband, moreover, has been living with another woman since 1995. They have a child, with another on the way. Was that part of his marital vows?

For 13 years, Terri Schiavo has not been able to speak for herself. But she is not brain-dead, not in a comatose state, not terminal, and not connected to a respirator. If the feeding tube is removed, she will starve to death. Whatever she may or may not have said, did she consider food and water "artificial means?"

The media continually report that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, and a number of neurologists and bioethicists have more than implied to the press that "persistent" is actually synonymous with "permanent." This is not true, as I shall factually demonstrate in upcoming columns. I will also provide statements from neurologists who say that if Terri were given the proper therapy—denied to her by her husband and guardian after he decided therapy was becoming too expensive despite $750,000 from a malpractice suit—she could learn to eat by herself and become more responsive. ...

Read the whole thing at the link.

Terri Schiavo, 1963-2005

She died today.

May she rest in peace.


This is not over.

Terri Schiavo: Judicial Murder

The well-known right-wing Christian fundamentalist Nat Hentoff has this latest piece on Terri Schiavo:

For all the world to see, a 41-year-old woman, who has committed no crime, will die of dehydration and starvation in the longest public execution in American history.

She is not brain-dead or comatose, and breathes naturally on her own. Although brain-damaged, she is not in a persistent vegetative state, according to an increasing number of radiologists and neurologists.

Among many other violations of her due process rights, Terri Schiavo has never been allowed by the primary judge in her case—Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, whose conclusions have been robotically upheld by all the courts above him—to have her own lawyer represent her.

Greer has declared Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state, but he has never gone to see her. His eyesight is very poor, but surely he could have visited her along with another member of his staff. Unlike people in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo is indeed responsive beyond mere reflexes.

While lawyers and judges have engaged in a minuet of death, the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die. ...

RTWT.

Terri Schiavo

How much is a human life worth? That's the question posed by this article by a Harvard student with cerebral palsy:

“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.”

—a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

The case of Terri Schiavo has been framed by the media as the battle between the “right to die” and pro-life groups, with the latter often referred to as “right-wing Christians.” Little attention has been paid to the more than twenty major disability rights organizations firmly supporting Schiavo’s right to nutrition and hydration. Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a severely disabled woman, is being starved and dehydrated to death in the name of supposed “dignity.” Polls show that most Americans believe that her death is a private matter and that her removal from a feeding tube—a low-tech, simple and inexpensive device used to feed many sick and disabled people—is a reasonable solution to the conflict between her husband and her parents over her right to life.

The reason for this public support of removal from ordinary sustenance, I believe, is not that most people understand or care about Terri Schiavo. Like many others with disabilities, I believe that the American public, to one degree or another, holds that disabled people are better off dead. To put it in a simpler way, many Americans are bigots. A close examination of the facts of the Schiavo case reveals not a case of difficult decisions but a basic test of this country’s decency. ...

Read the whole article at Discarded Lies.

Also read Victory Soap to find out what this is not about:

Here is a review, in case people need a refresher, of the many side issues that have nothing to do with Terri Schiavo's case:

Your aged and terminally ill relative who voluntarily refused food and nutrition and so died "peacefully" a couple of days later has nothing to do with the Schaivo situation. People dying of terminal diseases reach a point where they can no longer take in nutrition; in fact, it becomes a torment to them. Terri Schiavo was not dying from a terminal disease.

Your dying relative/friend/patient who was hooked up to a heart/lung machine but who showed no signs of brain activity after extensive tests, and who therefore had their "plug pulled" because they were not going to recover, have nothing to do with the Terri Schiavo case. Terri Schiavo's heart and lungs worked just fine.

The many people talking about how awful it would be to live "like that." Since none of these people really have any way of knowing exactly how awful life without much of a brain would be, this sort of speculation comes down on the side of "idle notions" and we should not be basing life and death actions on such twaddle. ...

Read the whole thing at the link. Also please read this post which takes up Victory Soap's last point on "idle notions".

The Peace Movement

"So beautiful, so at peace." American Digest comments on the creepy "she's going to be at peace" meme.

American Digest has this:

Once it became clear that there would be no reprieve for this woman, but that the sentence of death-by-starvation-for-her-own good was set in stone, the entire country was condemned to be tainted by the unfolding spectacle.

If I had any doubts about this, they were swept away yesterday when watching one of the "reporters" on the scene tell us yet again that Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos -- the now superstar of Right-to-Die lawyers -- said, yet again, that he'd "never seen Terri look so beautiful, so at peace." Within a few minutes, the same or another reporter (it really doesn't matter, does it?) felt compelled, utterly compelled, to tell us that Mrs. Schiavo was receiving morphine, a substance well known for putting the recipient 'at peace.'

(And if you are wondering how the patient, forbidden all food and drink, was able to ingest the morphine, read the post at the link.)

AD responds to the killing of Terri Schiavo with a very simple question - and a simple and inescapable answer. Myself, I am wondering: what, exactly, is this "peace" that reporters seem so eager for? It is the peace of death, clearly more desirable than life.

Terri Schiavo

What are radiologists saying about Terri's brain scans? Not neurologists, but radiologists - the people who look at brain scans for a living. To find out, take a look at Code Blue Blog.

Disabled Queers In Action (DQIA) released the following statement:

In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled early this morning that Terri has no right to eat, thus no right to live. Although our justice system presumes innocence until proven guilty, Terri has been tried and convicted without any charges against her -- for the capital offense of being disabled. Society and the courts have deemed her "better off dead than disabled". America was built upon presumed checks and balances, yet for people with disabilities like Terri, those balances failed again and again.

Today is one of the darkest hours in disability history for three reasons: ...

Read the whole thing at the link. Hat tip: Straight Up With Sherri

Judith has excellent coverage at Kesher Talk. Via Judith, Wittingshire quotes John West on the tendency to presume in favor of PVS diagnoses.

On Terri Schiavo

NOTE: I'm re-posting this earlier piece on Schiavo, which I had temporarily pulled in the hopes of putting together something a little better. At the moment, I'm unable to devote the attention to the matter that it deserves, due to various personal factors including a serious illness in the family. I believe the issue is important and needs to be discussed freely and intelligently. My own position has not changed; however, please see Kai Jones' and Joshua Gibson's responses in the Comments section. I look forward to rejoining the Schiavo discussion at a later date.

I don't have time to write a full piece on Terri Schiavo at the moment, but I do feel I need to say a few words on the case - and to say why I am convinced that Terri's life must be preserved.

I am not a right-to-life absolutist. Nor does one need to be, to see many gravely troubling aspects to the Terri Schiavo case. In fact, I would argue that those who do believe in "death with dignity" should look at this as an example of all that can go wrong without proper safeguards.

Terri Schiavo left no "living will". A "living will" is a document spelling out instructions for the family as to what to do - or, in particular, what not to do - in the event that an individual becomes permanently incapacitated or comatose. My mother took great care to draw up a living will in the last months of her life; she explained its provisions to me, asked me to repeat the instructions back to her, and showed me where the document was kept. (Another copy was on file with her lawyer.) But if a living will is to have any meaning at all, surely its absence, too, must mean something.

I'm worried by what I've read about Michael Schiavo's financial interests, allegations of his abuse and neglect of Terri, and indications of a premeditated killing.

I used to think the Terri Schiavo case was "some kind of right-wing cause". I'm no longer thinking of it in these terms. (Andrew Sullivan, for example, sees the case as a sign of the demise of conservatism.)

The following blogs have information on the Terri Schiavo case:
Straight Up With Sherri
Discarded Lies


UPDATE: Reader Kai Jones has contributed some very enlightening links on the other side of the debate.

Respectful of Otters - "A court has determined, based on the testimony of several witnesses, that Schiavo's wish would have been to remain unviolated by a feeding tube if she had no hope of recovering. That ruling has been affirmed and re-affirmed. It is our best estimate, our only estimate, of what Terri Schiavo would have wanted. If we want our own rights to bodily integrity preserved, we have no choice but to uphold hers." Rivka notes that she is " strongly opposed to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide."

Obsidian Wings -

In 1990, Terri Schiavo suffered cardiac arrest, probably as a result of bulimia. (If any of you have been wondering why a woman in her twenties had cardiac arrest, that seems to be the answer. The underreporting of this aspect of the case is a real missed opportunity to educate people about the consequences of serious eating disorders.) As a result of the cardiac arrest, her brain was deprived of oxygen, which caused severe brain damage.

Eight years later, after various attempts at therapy and a successful malpractice suit (based on the doctors' failure to diagnose Terri's eating disorder), Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to determine whether her feeding tube should be removed. Many press reports talk as though he just decided that it should be removed; in fact, he left that decision to the court. He and others testified that Terri Schiavo had said that she would not want to be kept alive in a condition like the one she was in; her family of origin testified that she had said that she would. The judge found (pdf) that there was 'clear and convincing evidence' that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to receive life-prolonging care in her current condition, and ordered that the feeding tube could be removed. (If you are wondering how the judge could have found 'clear and convincing evidence' given conflicting testimony, I urge you to read the pdf, which explains why the judge did not find her parents' testimony credible. In one case, for instance, they testified that she had made a remark supporting their position when she was an adult, but it turned out that she had said it when she was 11 or 12.)

I'll take some time to read through the materials on both sides, and will post again when I get the chance.

Liberal Hawks Meet-Up

The Portland meet-up was a resounding success, attended by no fewer than three people! We met at a local pub and schmoozed over beer and dinner. It was great to meet other similarly-minded folks in person. Conversation was warm, interesting, and pleasant. (I had promised myself in advance that I wouldn't talk about Terri Schiavo, and I didn't.)

Thanks to the others who attended - all two of you - and also (especially) to those who said they would like to come but weren't able to make it. Hopefully we'll be able to get another one together before too long. I'll be looking forward to it.

Readers, there's a lesson here for all of us! You may think you are alone, but you're probably not. Judith got a group together in New York; I figured we'd never be able to get anything together in Portland, but I'm pleased to say I was wrong. Just goes to show.

Best Anti-Feeding-Tube Post So Far

You already know I'm on the "Save Terri" side. But just so you know I'm keeping an open mind, I'm posting this Terri Schiavo FAQ page presented by the always sensible Ocean Guy. It addresses many of the questions raised by the "Save Terri" people. Who's right? I honestly can't say for sure. But why couldn't more of the "pull the feeding tube" folks have started with this?

I didn't start following the Schiavo case with any preconceptions or sympathies. As I've said before, I'm not a pro-life absolutist. But some serious questions were being raised about the Schiavo case, and they deserved serious answers. How hard could it have been for the other side to say, "Look, we understand your concerns, but it's not what you think. Here's why ... "

Ocean Guy doesn't spend a lot of time pontificating, he just says, "Go read this - you'll learn something." That's what I appreciate, and would have liked to see more of. Meanwhile, I'll be interested to see what the "Save Terri" side says in response to this.

Still More on Terri Schiavo

As you may have already figured out, I'm declining all those kind invitations to shut up.

I'm glad that MJ at Friday Fishwrap finds this amusing. I don't. In fact I think it's disgusting. Jon Stewart (consistently referring to "Terri Shyvo") thinks it's cute to comment on how many people are calling Terri by her first name, and wonders what all those people would call her if they actually knew her. Well, I don't know, but I bet they'd at least pronounce her f*cking name correctly. Moron.

Cox & Forkum disappoint as well.

On the bright side, Peggy Noonan has a splendid column about the culture of death. I really want to talk about this more (it'll get its own post), because I think it's critical for all of us liberals to understand the danger posed by those destructive demons that live at the heart of the far left. To want to reform society because you have a vision of a better world is one thing; to try to throw civilization into the abyss is something else. Here's Peggy Noonan:

I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people. What is driving their engagement? Is it because they are compassionate, and their hearts bleed at the thought that Mrs. Schiavo suffers? But throughout this case no one has testified that she is in persistent pain, as those with terminal cancer are.

If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo's death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans "brain dead." Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "a slithering snake."

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo's right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having "kicked the sh-- out of the fascists." On Tuesday James Carville's face was swept with a sneer so convulsive you could see his gums as he damned the Republicans trying to help Mrs. Schiavo. It would have seemed demonic if he weren't a buffoon.

Why are they so committed to this woman's death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

Please go read the whole thing at the link.

And that's all I have on Terri Schiavo.

For now.

Terri Schiavo and Persons with Disabilities

From someone who knows a thing or two about disabilities, there is this:

Healthy people have a horror of disability. I feel this horror myself, and I am the parent of two children with autism. When my first son was diagnosed, my immediate reaction—this is intimate, but I have published one article revealing this—was that I needed to kill him and kill myself.

The thought that ran through my head, over and over again, was: “He has no life, and neither do I.”

I was in a clinical depression. By the next morning I was still in a clinical depression, but at least my mind had cleared on the rationality of two people needing to die because one small boy had been diagnosed with a developmental disability.

My psychiatrist talked me through.

“Why would you assume that your son will have an unhappy life?” she asked me.

...

My psychiatrist told me that there had been a fair amount of research done with disabled & mentally ill people—she had done some of it herself—and they all have the same level of well-being anyone else does. (People with clinical depression, she said, are the one exception. Extremely low ‘quality of life’ is almost the definition of depression.)

Since then I’ve followed this research, and it’s true of suddenly-disabled adults as well. After they adjust to their injuries, which seems to take two years’ time, they are as happy as anyone else. A healthy person will say that he would rather die than live life as a quadriplegic. But in life, people who become quadriplegics are like Christopher Reeve, not like the character in MILLION DOLLAR BABY.

The mistake we make is to experience our horror of disability, which I share, and our concern and care for their condition, which motivates those who wish to see Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed, as the emotion felt by the disabled person himself.

But ‘quality of life,’ like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The fact that we are horrified by the sight of Christopher Reeve does not mean that Christopher Reeve is horrified by the sight of Christopher Reeve. And it is Christopher Reeve’s opinion that counts.

The same can be said of my own life, as a matter of fact. When people realize I have two children with autism they react with horror. I would, too, in their shoes! But I myself am not horrified. I’m as happy as anyone I know, and happier than some. This strange life I lead, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone else, is normal to me.

This is from Catherine Johnson's guest post at Kesher Talk. I immediately thought of this post when I read Charles Krauthammer's column this morning. Even more interesting is something Catherine says elsewhere - and I hope she won't mind my paraphrasing it here: That even severely disabled people, after that two-year adjustment period, consider themselves fortunate by comparison with people even more gravely incapacitated. Now think about that and read the quadriplegic Krauthammer's opening sentence in his column:

If I were in Terri Schiavo's condition, I would not want a feeding tube.

Krauthammer makes this assertion with absolute confidence - as many of us would - because, like almost all of us, he shares this wonderful basic trait of human nature. He has the ability to see his life as blessed. And so, with almost no use of his arms and legs, he can look on Terri Schiavo and say: "Wow ... she's really got it bad! I wouldn't want to live her life!"

But Krauthammer possesses two other beautiful human traits as well: humility and compassion. He knows that he is not Terri Schiavo, and he wants her to have what is best for her. And so he immediately continues:

... But Terri 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.

And if you haven't yet, go read his full column.

What Charles Krauthammer and Catherine Johnson both understand is that, no matter how unbearable another person's life may look to us, it is only the person living that life who actually knows.

Neo-Neocon
Kesher Talk
Charles Krauthammer