Hope I didn’t spell the woman’s last name wrong.
Anyway, what’s your stance on it?
Let her die. I would hope that were I in that situation, my wife would have the same decency.
Murder is killing a human. A human is a being possessing both a human body and a consciousness. Schiavo has no consciousness, therefore she is not a human and killing her isn’t murder. End of story.
The republicans are making a big deal out of it though because they want the christian vote and heavily advertised themselves as being “pro-life” and “anti-gay” last election, but they haven’t actually passed any sort of pro-life or anti-gay legistation. Blowing the Schiavo case out of proportion lets them get the best of both worlds - they don’t have to actually pass any legistation that might get struck down in the supreme court, but they still get the christian vote because they have the appearance of doing what they’ve promised. It’s all a sick game designed to lead the christans around like cattle with rings in their noses. Hope it gives you christians out there a warm feeling inside.
Never heard of it. What is it?
It’s been the number one story for the last week, because somehow killing an anencephalic woman with a death agreement is more important than sending conscious soldiers to their unwilling deaths.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7293186/
There’s the most recent report on it, you can find older reports through that link.
Anyway, I believe I said it in the chat the other day. If I’m ever in a vegetative state, I want it known right now that any one of you fuckers can kill me. Pull the plug if you must, but I think if one of you has a lot of rage and needs to take it out on someone, you have full permission to brutally slaughter me if I’m in a vegetative state.
The thing that pisses me off the most is that congress rushed to try to get a law passed, and Bush cut short his vacation for the first time during his 5 years in office to sign it. That’s insane. They went WAY out of their way to try to keep a woman who’s practically been dead for 13 years from being officially dead, but they won’t do a damn thing now that there’s been another school shooting. I mean, that’s hard. What’s more, stopping school shootings is non-partisan, so it doesn’t look good to your voters.
Despite all this, 70% of Americans think that congress shouldn’t have gotten involved, some 65% or so of Republicans felt they shouldn’t have, around 60% of conservatives, and about 55% of evangelical christians didn’t think congress should have done anything about it. So who were they trying to impress? Anyone?
This poor woman has been dead for 13 years. Her mind can’t comprehend pain anymore, so she wont be able to feel it if she’s dying. There’s no reason for the feeding tube to be reinserted.
Basiciall, Terri Schiavo is a woman who, 15 years ago, suffered from a severe case of Bulemia. It got so bad, that her body ceased to function, and she put herself into a state of persistent vegitation. For the next seven years, her husband and her parents worked together in efforts to bring herback to conciousness. After those seven years however, her husband stated that it had been her wish that if she was in the state she was in and couldn’t be brought back - that she wanted the plug pulled.
Well, her parents didn’t like this idea at all, and for the bast 8 years have been fighting over who has the right to terminate her life - her parents or her husband. In every law in every state in regards to this situation, the spouse has the right to “pull the plug”. The parents disagreed and it has become a huge court battle over whether or not she has the right to die.
It has recieved national attention because, as people who live, shouldn’t we have the right to accept death when it comes knocking? I mean, she’s been sitting there for 15 years in a state of persistent vegitation - the womans a carrot. Her muscles have shrunken to a state of almost inexistence. The tissue around her brain stem, which has also shrunk, has become small enough that her spinal fluid is leaking into her neck.
The Republicans are really just trying to fight for her life, but they’re almost entirely ignoring the fact that she should really just die and let the matter be done with. If she were ever to miracurously snap out of her conditiobn, it would take years and years of intense physical therapy for her to regain her former state - and like I said, her spinal fluid’s all over the place, so she could very well become paralyzed.
For gods sake, just let her go.
I’m all for letting the poor woman rest in peace.
For the love of God just let the poor woman go, there is a line between “living” and “existing”. And just for the record, I have the same mind as Saturn about this: If I go veg, you can all have fun killing me.
The paper says that Bush’s approval rating actually took a drop from this, however, this is a Canadian paper so I can’t say if it’s absolutely true or their polling is slightly innaccurate.
Thats messed up. Bush’s approval rating soars when he authorizes the invasion of a foreign land for no real reason except to stir up trouble, and plummets over the life of one already-mostly-dead girl.
NBC/Wall Street Journal poll says that it dropped, so does the CNN / Gallop poll. Don’t know where Fox News stands. They still refuse to report that she doesn’t have enough feeling left to even notice pain. They just talk about these murderers who want to kill her.
And I’m all for his approval rating dropping. It’s ridiculous that he’d try to save a dead woman. I mean, wow.
Not to mention that her brain has decayed so much in her current state that it’d be literally impossible for her to remember anything about her previous life. At this point, it truly would take a miracle of nature for her to even become cognizant of reality. Some grand force would have to individually rebuild her synapses from scratch.
They can at least kill her more humanely. If she were a minor people could be charged with failure to provide the necessities of life.
- She’s not a minor
- What option do you have that’d be more humane? Seriously, she’s been dead for 13 years. No matter what we do, she’ll feel absolutely nothing. No pain, no anguish, no suffering. She won’t be hungry or thirsty or anything. I don’t think there is a humane way to kill someone. If we try a faster method of death, we’d be executing her, and far more people would be against that (as she’s not guilty of any crimes). This way, we’re simply letting nature run its course. There’s no chance in saving her, and, mentally, she’s been dead for over a decade. Let the poor woman’s body join her “soul,” if you believe in such things.
- Before becoming President of the United States of America, George W. Bush signed into law in Texas a law that states that, if a hospital feels it can do nothing more to save a patient, they’re allowed to let it die. Last week, a hospital in Houston made that decision based on that law, and allowed a 6 week old child to die, against its mother’s wishes. That’s a minor, and no one can be charged with failure to provide the necessities of life. I can further understand why that mother’s upset than the parents of Terri Shiavo. This mother had her baby taken from her by a hospital staff after just a few weeks and (seemingly to her at least) without consulting other hospitals across the country or the world. Terri, however, has been there for 13 years, they’ve tried everything they can, specialists have come from around the world, and they truly can say that nothing can be done. Keeping her alive at this point would simply be a bigger financial burden on the family, the hospital, and the tax payers. I’m not saying “kill her,” I’m saying “allow her to die.”
I’m not in any way religious (seriously, not in ANY WAY), but a friend of mine who is told me how she feels about this; she says that, in the eyes of God, Terri Shiavo died years ago. Terri is already “with God.” Thus, we, as humans, are trying to tamper with His delicate balance by keeping her body alive even when she’s gone.
To kill someone (1) is to force them to die, when their body is perfectly capable of keeping them alive without outside interference.
To keep someone in a vegetative state with a feeding tube (2) is to force them to stay alive when their body would otherwise not survive.
To pull the plug is NOT synonymous with (1), as the so-called “pro-life” advocates seem to believe. The concept of “quality of life” appears to be completely lost to them; there is no way this woman has enjoyed being a vegetable, nor will she ever enjoy being a vegetable, yet these people seem to insist that (2) is the “moral” thing to do. Last time I checked, being a moralist included showing mercy for others, and clearly these self-proclaimed do-gooders would rather force her to live in such a state, just so long as she’s still technically alive, than to let her go peacefully and with dignity.
I understand why Terri Shiavo’s parents would want to keep her alive; obviously, no one wants their child to die before they do. But this is something they will have to accept. Whether or not she actually said 20 years ago that she wanted to die if this sort of thing ever happened to her doesn’t really matter. How many people actually even think about that without provocation such as a news story or personal experience? I think almost everyone, if not everyone, would agree if they just imagined themselves in that situation, that they would NOT want to live their life on a feeding tube. It is simply not the natural order of things. Perhaps one day, hopefully soon (and definately before any of these crazy activists ever will), her parents will come to this realization and accept that this is just how it’s going to be.
As for the politicians… fuck 'em. I really can’t say much about them, except they’re sons of a bitches for turning this personal, private issue into a tool for their next campaign.
I’m pretty sure the bill Dubya signed was passed bipartisanly. I remember hearing CNN saying something like that. It was still rather close to a Bill of Attainder, but at least they were bipartisan in a pretty unconstitutional bill. >.>
Sure, it was passed bi-partisanly after many congressmen had already left town for the weekend…
A quorum was still present. If not, then the opposition (I assume there was some opposition) was stupid not to call for a quorum to be present.
I can’t say I’ve researched the particular vote, but from the news coverage I’ve seen, the vote was rushed to some degree, due to someone’s “life” being on the line. I’m not sure if that got them around anything or not, but I imagine that no one really lied or cheated their way into this bill.
Oh, it was rushed, yes. It was originally meant to be a more sweeping bill dealing with all cases when someone didn’t have a living will of some sorts. However, that got bogged down in the typical political morass, so a compromise was reached with a bill affecting only Schiavo.