My thoughts on this whole Terri Schiavo business

[judecorp]

I am so appalled that Congress will call all kinds of special sessions and be so passionate to get involved in the life and death of one random woman, while they could care less about the lives and deaths of thousands of US children, scores of people in poverty, and entire countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Where is the logic here, people??!? The dicksizing that runs rampant through this administration just plain makes me want to throw up. I am so fed up with seeing legislation proposed (and sometimes passed) to make decisions in affairs they have no business being privvy to JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN.

I wonder just one thing: If Terri Schiavo was using Medicaid to pay for her 15+ years of hospital care, would the government be so quick to keep her alive?

(Attention, friends: If you have not done so, MAKE YOUR LIVING WILLS NOW. No, not later. NOW! This could all have been prevented with a little legal blahblah.)

Comments

[eight.livejournal.com]

Agh, Jude, I would generally agree ... but ...

The thing that gets me about Terry is that she's not on a respirator. They're not asking to remove artificial breathing equipment ... they removed the feeding tube, the only artificial thing she was on, so she'll be slowly starving to death over the next few days. I just feel like that's murder.

I just can't see the good in that. And I know Congress shouldn't be poking their heads in, but it still doesn't make killing a woman right. With cases like these, everyone starts talking about getting government out of our private lives, and I'm generally all for it, but you have to think: what civil rights and other decisions would have been made and imposed if the government stayed out?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Hey, wait a minute...

Notice that nowhere in that post did I say that I have an opinion one way or another about whether her feeding tube should be removed. I can't make an opinion about that because I've never seen her, have never received information about exactly what her quality of life is aside from what the media tells me. (And I know better than to believe that.)

What is appalling to me is that this has become fodder for the House and Senate, when really it is such a personal matter. This is one person we're talking about, and all of these men-in-suits are working on saturdays to pass legislation just about her. But they could care less about the millions of other people they give the shaft to every single day.

That's all I'm saying here. (And the little reminder for people to draft appropriate documents so this he-said-she-said stuff doesn't play out in their own lives. If Terri Schiavo had a living will, this would be SUCH a non-issue. Just talking with your SO is not enough!!)

[eight.livejournal.com]

Maybe I misread, and I definitely think recommending a living will is the lesson we'll all get from this.

And I generally have disdain for the government today and I think you have a good point about the medicate thing, but for some reason, I just don't disagree with the House and Senate being involved. The thing is, they didn't get involved to pass legislation on only this one woman. That was a compromise they made in order to get the tube reinserted.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

But what I don't understand is that the ability to make these sorts of next-of-kin decisions is one of the government-mandated responsibilities/benefits of legal marriage. And now the government is taking one of the responsibilities away. Whatever happened to protecting the sanctity of marriage?

According to the law, it's the husband's decision, plain and simple, when there is no living will. That's just the way it is.

[eight.livejournal.com]

I guess my reservation in accepting that law is that he's started a new family with someone else and if the family was saying, "He's abused our daughter and he's trying to burn her to cover up evidence," I think it's good that it wasn't just ignored.

It doesn't mean that I agree with every politician and their mothers stepping in on this issue -- I think if judges had stuck with "this is the law, that's that" from the beginning and stopped taking out and then reinserting her feeding tube it would be less of an emotionally charged discussion.

That poor women, I just hope she's at peace.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think we can possibly assume to know the True Story with the way the media warps everything, but I read somewhere that Mr. Schiavo only started dating again after the legal fight to remove the feeding tube all started several years ago. AND he started dating again at the insistence of Terri's parents.

(I don't know if this is really true - who does? - but if so, it does make things look less heartless.)