Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

I have a lot of sympathy for Terri Schiavo's husband because I had to make a similar decision about my mom who was 91 and severing from dementia. The different is the the hospital could not

insert the feeding tube without my position because I had power of attorney. My mom had voiced similar sentiment as Terri Schiavo. As with Terri, my mom did not put anything in writing. The hospital insisted that I was wrong and tried every guilt trip possible. Luckily, I had my mom's doctor on my side and supportive family and friends. But, it was still awful week (can not imagine what all these years have done to the family members and the husband in Florida).

Today we have the Congress taking the desperate step of stopping the court ordered action of the feeding tube being removed by subpoenaing Terri Schiavo to testify. I have followed this case very closely and have sympathy for both sides, but in the final analysis the husband should make the decision (or so the courts have ruled).

For the record, I just called my senator (Rick Santorum)'s office to give a lengthy dissent to his part in all this (using my vacation time to come home from work to make the call). I also made the point that Santorum too often seems to make decisions without listening to constituents (like me) with different points of view. Of course, Rick's staff was very nice to me because the early polls show him behind in his reelection race for the senate and I was more polite than most anti-Santorum folk may be.

Given his various motives for wanting her dead, how do you know that Terry Shiavo´s husband is telling the truth?

It´s amazing - and quite revealing - how often liberals find themsleves on the side of arguing in favor of death.

The question of whether someone lives or dies is a rather weighty decision. If someone truly wants to die instead of having extraordinary means used to keep them alive - and I think that should be a choice everyone has- it´s really not asking too much that they put that wish in writing before we let them starve to death, precisely so that disputes like this one are avoided.

It´s quite easy - and quite meaningless - to spit out at the dinner table some casual statement about how you´d rather die than live on a feeding tube. But it´s a lot more difficult - and a lot more meaningful - to execute a legal document directing that be done.

Before we as a society start causing disabled people to starve to death, we should at least be SURE that that´s what they really want.

It´s hard to believe that´s such a controversial position, but the eagerness to watch this woman starve to death is really rather unseemly.

>Given his various motives for wanting her dead

What motives are those?

In my mom's case, she had prepared a statement, but in the confusion of moving from a nursing home in Massachusetts to a nursing home in Pennsylvania, it was lost. That may seem strange. It isn't if you have ever moved someone with demetia and all her belonging 300 miles with minimal help from your siblings.

In the Schiavio case, I hope we get to a place where people in 20s, 30s and 40s write up statement of intent. We are not there yet.

I understand that every person is different. However, my seven day experience with the hospital where may mother was receiving care was pure hell. There may be a money motive on the part of the husband, although didn't he just turn down a million dollar offer from someone like Gloris Allred to divorce his wife? Having gone through a somewhat similar experience, it is difficult to believe that he would endure all these attacks for so many years if he did believe in carrying out Terri's wishes.

Finally, I'll say the same thing that he said to Sen. Santorum's staff -- this is a very different situation when it moves from theory to you having to make the decision.

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

>>Given his various motives for wanting her dead

>

>What motives are those?

Gee, what a surprise that a person like you who thinks that a woman´s right to slaughter her innocent baby is somehow central to the preservation of liberty would also be against efforts to save the life of an equally innocent disabled woman. Does it bother you at all how frequently and vigorously you advocate the death of innocent human beings?

Sucking the brains out of babies. Sticking needles in their heads. Starving innocent woman to death. Keeping homicidal dictators in power. You´re for it all. That should tell you something.

As for Terry Schiavo´s husband, there are lots of questions that were never answered as to how she became brain damaged in the first place; as her parents have suggested, it´s quite possible that he doesn´t want her to ever be able to speak for fear of what she will say about that. Moreover, until she´s dead, he can´t remarry. Most guys would prefer not to stay married to a woman in a coma.

People like you are willing to let a woman starve to death based on the say-so of her husband that, despite being quite young, she expressed a deliberative, contemplative, and resolute wish to die in this situation. At the very least, there´s some serious doubt about that. Given that doubt, any responsible human being would err on the side of letting her live, not starving her to death.

>In my mom's case, she had prepared a statement, but in the

>confusion of moving from a nursing home in Massachusetts to a

>nursing home in Pennsylvania, it was lost. That may seem

>strange. It isn't if you have ever moved someone with demetia

>and all her belonging 300 miles with minimal help from your

>siblings.

We should simply have the same exact rule for these situations as we have for wills. If you want to die in this situation, you have to put it in writing and comply with basic legal requirements to make that instrument binding.

Society has a very important interest in not killing innocent people - let along hideously starving them to death - unless we´re sure that it´s the person´s desire.

If the person´s desire to die is important enough, they´ll put it in writing, and have copies with relatives or lawyers. That´s not that hard.

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

>Keeping homicidal

>dictators in power. You´re for it all.

No, I did not vote for Bush.

As for the Schiavo case, I believe in the sanctity of marriage, the sacred bond between a man and a woman. Every man should have the right to decide the fate of his female mate. ;-)

>Given his various motives for wanting her dead, how do you

>know that Terry Shiavo´s husband is telling the truth?

>

I knew you shared Bush's messianic complex......I guess that's why you attribute omniscience to yourself and want us to believe that you somehow know the motives of Terry Schiavo's husband.

You don't know his motives, nor do I. And until I see news reports of Doug69 walking across Lake Erie, I'm not buying your delusions of grandeur.

You always piss and moan when liberals lump all Republicans into the same basket of crazed conservatives, but you seem to have no problem doing the same thing in speaking of liberals as if they were some monolithic entity. Pull your hypocritical head out of your bung hole and take a look at how utterly foolish you look when you do this.

I agree with your comments concerning what should happen, except that life is not always so neat and tidy. In my case, I was great at visiting and making sure the nursing home care was excellent and not as great on handling the finances and this subject. I did hire accountants to help me with the finances, but there was nothing I could do on the issue we are discussing because my mother's demetia was too severe.

On your comments about Terri's family's allegations about the husband, no court has found them credible. Doctor after doctor has said that Terri has no life and no chance for a life after examining her. The courts have ultimately sided with the husband. I agree that all life is dear and that most husband move on in situation like this (as opposed to most wives). I am concerned about taking a first step on what could become a slippery slope. But this is hardly a casual decision, which is what we both fear.

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

>>>Given his various motives for wanting her dead

>>

>>What motives are those?

>

>Gee, what a surprise that a person like you who thinks that a

>woman´s right to slaughter her innocent baby is somehow

>central to the preservation of liberty would also be against

>efforts to save the life of an equally innocent disabled

>woman. Does it bother you at all how frequently and

>vigorously you advocate the death of innocent human beings?

>

>Sucking the brains out of babies. Sticking needles in their

>heads. Starving innocent woman to death. Keeping homicidal

>dictators in power. You´re for it all. That should tell you

>something.

What was the purpose in lashing out at Rick for asking a simple question? You presented a statement as fact (his various motives for wanting her dead) that is without documented support and he asked you to substantiate it. Is that not the very same thing you are advocating in regards to someone putting it in writing that they want to die if they end up in a ceratin state?

For the record, I agree with you, Doug. Without a legal and binding document, Terry Schiavo should be kept alive until she dies of natural causes. Starving someone to death when it can be prevented is cruel, inhumane and immoral.

Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Guardian hasn't forgotten time with Schiavo, and never will

BY CARA BUCKLEY

Knight Ridder Newspapers

TAMPA, Fla. - (KRT) - Two dark scenarios haunt Jay Wolfson even now, a year and a half after his brief appointment to be a neutral arbiter, a guardian, an unbiased observer, the one man asked by the state of Florida to stand in Terri Schiavo's shoes.

One is that the severely brain-damaged woman is in a terrible lightless place, aware of nothing but a yawning, endless hopelessness.

The other is that even though he never elicited a response from her, despite all the pleading and cajoling he did at her bedside, that he might have missed some subtle, nearly invisible signs that she was somewhere in there, aware.

"Imagine not having hope and being aware that's all you had was no hope. The horror. It's like not being, but knowing that you're not," said Wolfson recently in his Tampa-area office. "That's one thing. The other is, what if she's knocking on a door somewhere and I was walking through all the wrong corridors and I missed it. What if?"

Wolfson was appointed by a Florida court in the fall of 2003 to be Schiavo's guardian ad litem, or guardian at law, to deduce Schiavo's best interests and represent neither her husband nor her parents but Terri Schiavo herself.

This makes Wolfson one of the very few people to have spent extended time with Schiavo and gauged her level of awareness without having a vested interest at stake.

In the end, after long hours at Schiavo's bedside and after poring over 30,000 pages of legal documents, Wolfson concluded that Schiavo was indeed in a permanent vegetative state.

It wasn't the conclusion he'd hoped to make.

"You want to weigh in on life as opposed to death," Wolfson said. "You want some way to elicit a response."

Wolfson was appointed Schiavo's guardian after the Florida Legislature passed "Terri's Law" in 2003, a move that allowed doctors to reinsert her feeding tube, despite a judge's ruling that it should be removed. The law has since been struck down as unconstitutional.

Wolfson, who has a law degree and a PhD and is a distinguished service professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, was asked to decide whether Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed and whether more tests should be done to assess her ability to swallow.

He scoured 13 years' worth of legal documents and extensively interviewed Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. His time with Schiavo was spent trying to determine whether she was aware of and interactive with the world.

At first, walking into Schiavo's room, he was struck by her presence, even though he knew in advance that she drifted between wakefulness and sleep.

"She's a person, like you or I, and the first disconcerting part is that she's awake," said Wolfson.

When awake, Schiavo's eyes rolled about the room. She made random noises that sounded like groaning or the start of a laugh or cry.

But court documents said Schiavo's cerebral cortex, where reason and emotions are housed, had degenerated to fluid. So Wolfson set about trying to determine whether Schiavo's noises and jerks were merely reflexive or if they indicated something more.

He played Elton John CDs for her, and Bach and Mozart and music from the late 1980s, when she was in her 20s, prior to her collapse. He held her hands, squeezing them, and stroked her hair and face.

He put his face close to hers and tried to make eye contact, pleading desperately, trying to will her into giving him any kind of sign.

"I would beg her, `Please, Terri, help me,'" he said. "You want to believe there's some connection. You hope she's going to sit up and bed and say, `Hey, I'm really here, but don't tell anybody.' Or, `I'm really here, tell everybody!'"

But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson's pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign.

"I felt like there was something distinctive about whoever Terri is," said Wolfson. "But I was not clear that it was there, inside the vessel."

Wolfson was dismayed to learn Friday that Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers, claimed that Schiavo tried to speak. "Terri does not speak," he said. "To claim otherwise reduces her to a fiction."

One thing Wolfson never doubted was that for all their intense, mutual antagonism, both Michael Schiavo and Terri's parents love and adore her.

She was cared for incredibly well, Wolfson said. Her hair was always combed, and after 15 years of being incapacitated, she never developed a bedsore. In fact, Wolfson said until about seven years ago, Michael Schiavo had Terry's makeup and hair done regularly, and her clothes changed every day - to the point that hospice staff protested that he was being overly demanding about her care.

Also, Wolfson concluded, Schiavo would never have tolerated the enormous, "omnipresent" acrimony between her husband and parents.

In the 38-page report he wrote afterwards, Wolfson said the best decision for Schiavo could be made only if both sides agreed to fresh, independent medical testing. If the new testing showed she couldn't swallow on her own and that Schiavo had no hope for improvement, then the feeding tube should be pulled.

Both parties were on the verge of agreeing to these new conditions, Wolfson said, but once the Florida Supreme Court struck down Terri's Law his efforts were moot.

Wolfson still refuses to give his personal opinion on whether Terri's feeding tube should or should not have been pulled.

But he will say, as a parent of three sons, that after doing everything one can, sometimes the time comes to let go.

"When it evolves beyond that person into issues that are other people's issues or are broader issues, it becomes less objectifiable," said Wolfson. "It's hard to be objective anyway. This is the kind of thing you don't wish on anybody."

---

© 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RE: Terry Schiavo Must Die:

3/18/2005

Terry Schiavo Must Die:

The time has come for the inevitable end of this story, this miserable lot of the last fifteen years for Terry Schiavo. Brain-damaged and rubber-boned, barely human anymore, Schiavo has the indignity of having her nerve-reflex smile paraded out every time the moment comes close for her to have to sink or swim, to learn quickly to feed herself or starve. She is the unfortunate child of narcisstic parents who have pathetically deluded themselves into believing that, at some point, the rock that rolls around in her head will once again become a brain. She sadly lives in a culture so driven mad by religion that people will gather and pray for her to go on "living" (if by "living," you mean "devolving into a gelatinous mound with a nerve-reflex smile"). Anyone even barely touched by the rationality that is supposed to mark us as the most advanced creatures on the planet know this to be true: She must die.

And it doesn't matter at this point how. Take out the feeding tube. Wheel her into the alley behind the hospice and put three bullets into the back of her foamy skull. Put her on a raft on Tampa Bay and send her out to the lovely Gulf of Mexico. Hell, a merciful nation would rejoice at this act and make sure there's fireworks and live music on the bayfront to accompany her on her last journey. A merciful God would have sent avenging angels to smite all those preening idiots outside the hospice with Gabriel announcing, "Are you all out of your fucking minds?" before setting the whole place, Schiavo and all, on fire.

But we are not a merciful nation, for we believe that suffering is a gift from God or some such bullshit, and if you are chosen to suffer, then suffer you must. If you're dirt poor, single, and homeless and you get pregnant, you must keep your baby, even though the overwhelming chance is that you and your baby will be hungry, cold, and miserable for the rest of both of your lives. Despite the fact that virtually every competent medical person who has walked into Schiavo's room and smelled the shit-scent of death has declared Schiavo a cabbage or, on a good day, a pea pod, the right smells opportunity to distract people from the gutting of programs that actually do good for the living . Other "experts" who have witnessed Schiavo's eyes follow a balloon on videotape are nonsensical idiots (and that includes Senate Majority Leader and noted cat-disemboweler Bill Frist).

Way back in 2000, before Schiavo became the rallying call for people who have nothing better to do, here is how the St. Petersburg Times described Schiavo's end: "If [the feeding tube] is removed, Mrs. Schiavo would die painlessly in a week or two. She does not feel hunger or thirst, and she would just drift away, doctors say." That fact, that Schiavo will not actually experience anything differently, is now left out of most media stories on her. The distorted face of Terry Schiavo is now merely a canvas upon which ideology has been writ large, where the notion of "life" has been perverted to mean "a heartbeat," and where the cruel vicissitudes of politics now rear their ugly, hydra-heads.

The right loves this. This is better than Elian Gonzalez. The National Review's Andrew McCarthy (who was so good in Pretty In Pink, but has really let himself go) rants like a baboon about to tear out the liver out of a fallen baboon enemy about Schiavo, saying that "she'd be better off if she were a terrorist." Schiavo's fate is like manna from heaven because anyone who dares to say, for instance, "Terry Schiavo Must Die," can instantly be labelled as uncaring and cruel and then you can go on Fox "News" and Hannity'll show that reflex-smile of the damned and everyone can say they are doing "what's best" for Schiavo.

Terry Schiavo was a vain woman, driven to bulimia by a sad desire to be thinner and thinner, afflicted, as so many women are and so many women aren't, by pop culture standards of thinness. Chances are it was the bulimia that led to the heart attack that led to the brain damage that led to the gooey being that is Schiavo being prayed over by the President and his brother. Now ask yourself: if Terry Schivao saw herself right now, knowing what we know about who she was and how she felt about looks, would she want to stay alive? You who know men and women like the pre-gelatinous Schiavo understand of what the Rude Pundit writes.

Now the Congress is involved. And the Republicans want Schiavo brought into the hearing room. What a spectacle that's gonna be. What a fucking horror show. What an embarrassment to this nation. All those righteous members of Congress, weeping because Schiavo can't answer their questions, listening to her machine sounds, the suckings, the gurgles. They called Schiavo before the committee in a little over a week because "it is a federal crime to harm or obstruct a person called to testify before Congress." Another person, another prop. Those fuckers in the GOP know what they're doing: force Democrats to vote against the bowl of jello in front of them and then use that as immunity in elections against charges that the Republicans are eliminating Social Security. What these disgusting, dirt-covered worms won't do to eat the flesh off the body politic.

The only comfort in any of this is that Schiavo won't know a fucking thing that's going on. She is an object, not a subject. She is acted upon. If Bill Frist wanted to test her reflexes by pulling up her gown and raping her in front of the gathered media, she would not care. If Tom DeLay wanted to pick her up and dance her around like a puppet, she would not care. She will never, ever care again. There is only one caring solution. She must die.

// posted by Rude One @ 9:57 AM

Time to let go

I have been in a slightly similar positon with my mother. She was taken into hospital from a nursing home after suffering the last in a series of strokes. After the initial one she had been in hospital for months and was unable to look after herself, something that she hated as she had always been independent. Her last concious action was to beg not to be taken to hospital because she did not want to go through the indignity of rehabilitation again. As a family we decided to authorise that she received only paliative care so she did not suffer while nature took its course. She was on a morphine pump to stop any pain and she was kept comfortable and free from distress for the 30 hours or so I stayed by her bedside until she died. I have no doubt whatsoever that we took the right decision.

The tragedy of the Florida case is that the parents cannot recognise that their daughter is not there. From what I understand, all her higher brain functions have been absent for over a decade. What is left is a shell kept alive by the autonomic systems. Her heart beats, her body takes breaths and digests food but she does not hear, see, feel or think. Everything that made her human is dead. There have been cases of brain injured patients recovering some function after 6 or even 12 months in a coma but always there were some signs of improvement in the intervening period and no-one has recovered from the state this woman is in for the time she has been in it.

Anyone in the position of being pressurised to allow medical procedures they know their relatives would not want in the circumstances should remind them of the version of the Hypocratic oath that goes:

Thou shalt not kill

But shall not strive

Officiously to keep alive

>I knew you shared Bush's messianic complex......I guess that's

>why you attribute omniscience to yourself and want us to

>believe that you somehow know the motives of Terry Schiavo's

>husband.

You´re confused, Bucky. I don´t claim to know whether or not the husband is lying. He may very well be telling the truth. But he does have motives to lie. Saying someone has a motive to lie isn´t the same as saying that they´re lying, just like saying that someone has a motive to murder someone isn´t the same as saying they murdered that person.

The whole point is that we DON´T know what this woman would have wanted in this situation. The only way to have known for sure is if she executed a written document.

And unless we know for sure that someone actually wants to die of starvation and thirst, it´s repulsive to starve that person to death. Is that really that controversial of a proposition?

>You always piss and moan when liberals lump all Republicans

>into the same basket of crazed conservatives, but you seem to

>have no problem doing the same thing in speaking of liberals

>as if they were some monolithic entity. Pull your

>hypocritical head out of your bung hole and take a look at how

>utterly foolish you look when you do this.

I´ve adopted a policy of not responding here to statements containing childish epithets involving: (1) accusing someone of being or eating shit or (2) eloquently telling someone that their head is stuck up their ass, their bung hole, their shit hole, etc.

That covers about 80% of your contributions here.

Having had to make a similar decision about my mother, I can understand the hesitation to take the final step even when logic tells you it is correct. Thank goodness in my case, my mother's physician (she had been one of his patients since he started his practice) said that if we wanted to hook her up to all the devices we would have to find another physician. He knew her wishes and was going to follow them. After discussing her condition with me at length, he finished with the statement "there are worse things than death." I also knew that my mother did not fear death but did fear becoming an invalid. Even with all this, it was a hard decision to make.

Fortunately, I didn't have a group of sanctimonious assholes second guessing me for their own political benefit. If you want to question motives, look at the politicians such as Tom Delay (diverts attention from his possible indictment in Texas). As for Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, a physician who seems ready to diagnose this woman's condition from a short video tape, I certainly wouldn't want him treating me for a hangnail.

>Fortunately, I didn't have a group of sanctimonious assholes

>second guessing me for their own political benefit. If you

>want to question motives, look at the politicians such as Tom

>Delay (diverts attention from his possible indictment in

>Texas).

So, now we´ve arrived at the point where people who try to prevent innocent people from starving to death are ``sanctimonious assholes.´´

I assume that in your mother´s case, there were no close relatives of hers - such as, say, her husband or sibling or other child - contesting your right to make this decision or claiming that your choices were against her wishes. If that had been the case, wouldn´t you agree that your situation would be dramatically different?

As for Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, a

>physician who seems ready to diagnose this woman's condition

>from a short video tape, I certainly wouldn't want him

>treating me for a hangnail.

Say what you want about his politics, Senator Frist is one of the most accomplished surgeons in the country. He did not diagnose her from a videotape. He said that there had to be some question about whether she was truly in a coma or persistent vegatative state given her movements, which are highly uncommon for a coma.

There´s certainly some questionable behavior going on by religious conservatives who want to exploit this case for their own agenda. Having Congress pass a law for the sole purpose of intervening in a medical case already decided by multiple state courts is definitely unseemly, and some of them are motivated not by concern for Terri Schiavo, but by a general opposition to allowing people to choose to die.

Nonetheless, anyone who spits out insults at people who, in this case, find it highly objectionable to sit by and watch a woman starve to death - the judge even prohibited any ice or water being given to her as she wastes away - is beyond reason. There´s definitely something quite morally and psychologically defective with someone who would claim that this is an easy case where it´s obvious that the right answer is to just let this woman be starved to death.

We don´t even treat dogs that way.

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

Thanks for this post Jeff. It very much helped me sort out what I thought about this.

And on a related subject can't the husband divorce her if he wants? Would a court deny a divorce under these circumstances?

Jeff

RE: Terry Schiavo Must Die:

>She must die.

>

>And it doesn't matter at this point how. Take out the feeding

>tube. Wheel her into the alley behind the hospice and put

>three bullets into the back of her foamy skull. Put her on a

>raft on Tampa Bay and send her out to the lovely Gulf of

>Mexico.

Hitler thought the same thing about the disabled.

Any liberals here willing to condemn this filth posted by JeffOH?

I asked the same question when JeffOH posted repulsively racist cartoons about Condaleeza Rice, but I know racism is acceptable when directed at conservatives, so I wasn´t surprised by the silence.

But read what this Ohio prostitute just posted about this innocent disabled woman. None of you liberals finds that repugnant?

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

>What was the purpose in lashing out at Rick for asking a

>simple question?

No matter how much money I had in the world, I´d be willing to bet every last cent of it that Rick is in favor of having this woman starve to death. Rick´s tactic of posting every moveon.org/leftist cliche while pretending not to have any opinions is so old that it really doesn´t even need to be pointed out anymore. Few things are more predictable than Rick´s view on every single issue.

Besides, you yourself, to your credit, just said that ´´starving someone to death when it can be prevented is cruel, inhumane and immoral.´´ I agree.

So I think that Rick is being cruel, inhumane and immoral. Under the circumstances, I wouldn´t think you would need to ask why I was ´´lashing out.´´ I hope I always lash out at people when they´re being ´´cruel, inhumane and immoral.´´

As for the bit about making assertions about the husband lying, I´ll tell you what I told Bucky:

I don´t claim to know whether or not the husband is lying. He may very well be telling the truth. But he does have motives to lie. Saying someone has a motive to lie isn´t the same as saying that they´re lying, just like saying that someone has a motive to murder someone isn´t the same as saying they murdered that person.

The whole point is that we DON´T know what this woman would have wanted in this situation. The only way to have known for sure is if she executed a written document.

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

I hope I always lash out at

>people when they´re being ´´cruel, inhumane and immoral.´´

>

If that's the case, then why are you so deafeningly silent about the Bush Administration policies that support the use of torture, locking people up without benefit of legal counsel, and a host of other activities that the civilized world characterizes as "cruel, inhumane, and immoral"?

Why all the moral outrage in support of "rights for the unborn" and utter silence about poverty and the need to give such children a fighting chance once they are born?

RE: Last Minute Maneuvers in Schiavo Case & Santorum

>So I think that Rick is being cruel, inhumane and immoral.

>Under the circumstances, I wouldn´t think you would need to

>ask why I was ´´lashing out.´´ I hope I always lash out at

>people

You always lash out at people here because that's how you get your kicks.

You & your ilk claim that Mrs. Schiavo isn't capable of feeling the tortured pain of starvation & dehydration, yet you think she somehow feels some abstract hopelessness?

RE: Time to let go

>Anyone in the position of being pressurised to allow medical

>procedures

Nourishment & hydration are now medical procedures? Odd... I always thought they were food & water.

Several people, including me, have posted about the agony they went through in deciding not to take extraordinary measures to keep a parent alive.

Others, again including me, have agreed with at least parts of your argument. Yet your postings have not acknowledged any of this. I have not visited this forum very often, but how can I not conclude that you view the forum as a Internet version of CNN's "Crossfire,"

where you never give an inch in a discussion. If I am correct, how can you be critical of Rick for, in your view, putting his political ideology above all else?

>Several people, including me, have posted about the agony

>they went through in deciding not to take extraordinary

>measures to keep a parent alive.

>

>Others, again including me, have agreed with at least parts of

>your argument. Yet your postings have not acknowledged any of

>this.

That´s just not true. For instance, in response to the post of BewareOfNick -- with whom I almost never agree -- I wrote this:

´´Besides, you yourself, to your credit, just said that ´starving someone to death when it can be prevented is cruel, inhumane and immoral.´ I agree.``

Is it possible to use clearer language to acknowledge common ground in a discussion? Similarly, in my response to your post, I implicitly acknowledged the common ground of our positions by offering a summary of what I thought the law should be that seemed to be consistent with what you said.

I agree this is a difficult issue. The only aggressive criticism I´ve made is of people such as JeffOH -- who posted that we should shoot Terri Schiavo in the back of the head head or just snuff her out as quickly as possible -- and people like Randy, who said that anyone who wants to prevent Terri Schiavo from starving to death is a ´´sanctimonious asshole.´´ Those arguments are repulsive and idiotic, respectively.

But I´ve had quite civil exchanges with people in this thread, including those who don´t agree with all of my views on the issue, and have expressly acknowledged when others have expressed agreement. Why are you saying that I didn´t do that?

>If I am correct,

>how can you be critical of Rick for, in your view, putting his

>political ideology above all else?

I don´t have the same view as many conservatives on this issue. As I said, I think people should have every right to have feeding tubes removed and even have active euthenasia if thats clearly what they want. I also think, as I said, that what the Republicans in Congress are doing in passing legislation to, in essence, override the court´s decision in the Schiavo case is unseemly and, given their position on federalism genearlly, quite hyopocritical.

It´s hard to see how that is consistent with placing ideology above all else. By rather stark contrast, people like Rick and the other far leftists here NEVER EVER EVER criticize liberals or deviate from the liberal line of the day EXCEPT to say that it´s not sufficiently liberal. That´s called being a mindless, boring automaton.