MaxedOutMama
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Calling You Out
I thought this post by Jim at Opinion Times was eloquent and appropriate:
The affidavits of the nurses and all the doctors who saw life and response in her meant nothing. The statements of two prominent forensic pathologists meant nothing. The testimony of Terri's friend that contradicted Michael's was found irrelevant and untrustworthy. The strict meaning of the laws of the state of Florida was ignored, and no other courts decided to intervene. Terri was costly and had nothing to offer us, and so Terri was declared dead.
Freedom, as Sigmund Carl and Alfred pointed out once, is not something one country can give to another. You can free a country from oppression, but that country will still have to claim its own freedom. Do we have the courage to claim our own freedom, when, as Jim points out in his post, freedom is never safe or comfortable? That is the question we must answer, because when we won our freedom we did it as a collective endeavor, and when we have defended it we have done it as a collective endeavor, and if we don't defend the rights of the vulnerable, somehow there will always be more and more vulnerable ones, until one day, we are all vulnerable.
Those who point out that such matters should be privately decided by family have a good point, but unfortunately family is not always loving and not always wise, and there will always be arguments. If the state offers a door out of such situations it seems to me that the state must also have a duty to ensure that the unwilling aren't shoved through the door, because everything we know about human history and human nature tells us that some will be.
This, to me, is so obvious that I can't believe there is a debate about it. Other obvious outcomes of this decision in Florida are that court has ruled that spoon feeding is a medical procedure, and gotten away with it. The definition of PVS in the Florida constitution has been rewritten by a judge. The definition of guardianship has been rewritten by a judge and a district court. The Supreme Court of Florida has ruled that a judge has the right to make such decisions. How can one not pity the old and the failing who find themselves in nursing homes in Florida and beg for food and water and are given none; the action of the family in this case has been made legal, and what has been made illegal are the actions of the nurses who surreptiously gave the woman food and water:
I'm warning you, this fight has just begun. No one who has been agitating for Terri on the left or right of the spectrum is willing to give up the battle, because they can't. Polls mean nothing because most Americans don't know the facts of this case or what is going on in Florida. They are going to find out though, because those who are appalled aren't going to shut up about this one. We can't because the question "How many more" is reverberating in our minds.
Though we don't fully understand it yet, we know as a culture that we prefer the death of uneasy things to keep things easy. Yet the bulk of our history is the acceptance of uneasiness as the price for freedom.He compares Terri Schiavo to Christopher Reeves and asks why Reeves was lauded and Terri has been derided. I think it is that in Christopher Reeves people saw the possibility of a momentous victory and for Terri there was probably only the possibility of happiness for her and uneasiness for us. People saw Christopher Reeves as fighting a battle with his own money and his own prestige and wanted him to win that battle to slay fear for us. To accept Terri as human would mean confronting our own fears. That path was one the media was not willing to walk.
Throughout history, despotism has always arisen out of the pursuit of peace and ease. And despotism is the power of the sword; it grasps within its hands the power of life and death. Free societies err on the side of life. I question at this moment whether we are truly free.
The affidavits of the nurses and all the doctors who saw life and response in her meant nothing. The statements of two prominent forensic pathologists meant nothing. The testimony of Terri's friend that contradicted Michael's was found irrelevant and untrustworthy. The strict meaning of the laws of the state of Florida was ignored, and no other courts decided to intervene. Terri was costly and had nothing to offer us, and so Terri was declared dead.
Freedom, as Sigmund Carl and Alfred pointed out once, is not something one country can give to another. You can free a country from oppression, but that country will still have to claim its own freedom. Do we have the courage to claim our own freedom, when, as Jim points out in his post, freedom is never safe or comfortable? That is the question we must answer, because when we won our freedom we did it as a collective endeavor, and when we have defended it we have done it as a collective endeavor, and if we don't defend the rights of the vulnerable, somehow there will always be more and more vulnerable ones, until one day, we are all vulnerable.
Those who point out that such matters should be privately decided by family have a good point, but unfortunately family is not always loving and not always wise, and there will always be arguments. If the state offers a door out of such situations it seems to me that the state must also have a duty to ensure that the unwilling aren't shoved through the door, because everything we know about human history and human nature tells us that some will be.
This, to me, is so obvious that I can't believe there is a debate about it. Other obvious outcomes of this decision in Florida are that court has ruled that spoon feeding is a medical procedure, and gotten away with it. The definition of PVS in the Florida constitution has been rewritten by a judge. The definition of guardianship has been rewritten by a judge and a district court. The Supreme Court of Florida has ruled that a judge has the right to make such decisions. How can one not pity the old and the failing who find themselves in nursing homes in Florida and beg for food and water and are given none; the action of the family in this case has been made legal, and what has been made illegal are the actions of the nurses who surreptiously gave the woman food and water:
I’m an RN who’s worked in the facility where Terry is. I’ve been working in Long Term Care for 20 years and have unfortunately seem quite a few Terry Schiavo’s. The latest patient I’ve had the pleasure to work with was a 76 year old woman with progressive swallowing problems.Nor is this a left/right issue, or a religious/rationalist issue. Jesse Jackson is joining the fray on Terri's side. The disability rights activists have been on Terri's side for a long, long time. See this column at The Harvard Crimson. It is written by a man with cerebal palsy who says he tries to wear his Harvard shirt when flying, because otherwise his speech difficulties cause people to assume that he's stupid:
It got to the point after extensive testing, that she was unable to take food by mouth without the risk of choking. She was aware of her surroundings but occasionally confused so her out of state family had power of attorney to make her medical/legal decisions. They denied doctors the right to place a feeding tube, saying she was “old, sick and tired.” We had instructions from the legal team to not give her food or water for fear of her choking. So we had a sweet little 76 y/o senior citizen that we were literally starving to death!! It was pathetic and pitiful. This poor soul would beg for food and water only to be told no. It was heartbreaking. Long story short, we nurses took the chance of her choking and gave her food and water when we could. The family knew something was up and came to move her from our facility to one near them. Found out she died 2 weeks later of dehydration. Her family threatened to sue all of us for not following their instructions. Hasn’t happened yet, we’ll see. It’s so sad to see someone pass away that way. It’s the rules of threes. Three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food. The patient really ends up suffering greatly.
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.See Mark Polit's article on Common Dreams (Mark Polit is a disability rights activist):
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.
The battle over Terri Schiavo has been framed as a battle between the radical right which seeks to uphold the sanctity of life, and the left which focuses on an individual's fundamental right to self-determination.Good question. If you believe that the procedures in this case protected Terri adequately, then I still think you have a moral obligation to inquire about the case of the the older woman who was deprived of food and water by an uncaring family. There is a blog called LiberalsforTerri. If you are on the left, please go there. This is about right and wrong and essential civil rights, not religion or politics.
In this case, however, the right has framed it correctly. There is no issue of self-determination, since their is no clear directive to act upon, and Terri is not able to express a preference. Even if Terri had made an off hand comment about what she would prefer, people who acquire a disability typically decide that living "that way" is far superior to dying. It is not up to a judge, a spouse, or a politician to determine when someone else should be rubbed out.
This has not been one of those "difficult cases" of end of life care, since Terri was not chronicly ill. She was not in pain (until they starved her). She was not kept alive artificially (unless you consider food and water artificial). She was not on a "machine" (a tube is merely a fork or spoon for people who can't swallow). Terri was a person with a disability. She was apparently conscious. And she was certainly alive. Since when has it become a progressive position to deny a person the right to their very existence?
I'm warning you, this fight has just begun. No one who has been agitating for Terri on the left or right of the spectrum is willing to give up the battle, because they can't. Polls mean nothing because most Americans don't know the facts of this case or what is going on in Florida. They are going to find out though, because those who are appalled aren't going to shut up about this one. We can't because the question "How many more" is reverberating in our minds.
