NEWS: Bush Rushes Back To Washington to “Save” Terri Schiavo

POLITICS: Bush Rushes Back To Washington to “Save” Terri Schiavo

Terri Schiavo has been brain-dead for fifteen years. Yet the President of the United States is mucking with his schedule so he can be in Washington to sign “emergency” legislation that might – might – put her back on life-support.

Of course anyone who wants to pass a bill like this has to hurry. Schiavo has already been taken off life-support, after all. She wonÂ’t have long to live now.

Her husband has wanted to take her off life-support for years. Her parents have fought to keep her on it. Decisions like these are tragic and awful enough when they arenÂ’t turned into media and political circuses.

I have no doubt that many conservatives sincerely believe even a brain-dead person is worth trying to save. Peggy Noonan sums it up nicely: “Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life.”

Life is a good side - the right side - to be on. But thereÂ’s a compelling case to be made that life lost this fight long ago. Terri Schiavo is already dead in every sense that matters. Her consciousness, her intelligence, her awareness, her memories, her being are all gone and will never come back.

Tragic decisions like this are faced by somebody, somewhere, every single day. The only reason this particular case has come to President BushÂ’s attention at all is because the media refused to let go of it and political activists refused to stay out of it. If there was a good reason to enact legislation that would change the way these decisions are made, then and only then would this be the business of the White House and Congress. But micromanaging individual cases is not the business of the White House and Congress. There is no way it could be otherwise. The federal government exists to govern the country, not individuals, and not individual families. Local courts exist in part to intervene when cases like this one get deadlocked.

For the people directly involved, this issue is of extreme maximum importance. Everyone else – especially the media and the Republican Party – are exploiting this family’s tragedy for their own narrow and minimally important self-interest. The media exploit it because they need a story. And the Republicans think they will benefit from their grandstanding. For George W. Bush this is not about saving one life. I really truly hate to say this, but it’s true: he has more important things that he needs to tend to. For him this is all about politics.

Well that sort of works out since he is a paid politician.

i can't believe how selfish and selfrighteous these people are, have they ever stopped for a second to remember that they're actually trying to make their stupid point by screwing over a actual human being that's been rotting in a coma for years.

This whole story is really so sad. (sorry for stating the obvious). Let's say that we get the legislation passed to have her feeding tube re-inserted.

What if ( I know there's no chance of this, but what else must everyone be hoping for?) She miraculously returns to health and makes a recovery. Her memory returns, she wants to get back to her lif - then she finds out that her husband has essentially abandoned her and started a whole new life for himself - this includes a new wife and children.

After I got this blast of lovely news, I'd really want to live a long life with this horrible memory on my mond every waking moment.

If it were me, I think that I would kill myself as soon as I had the chance.

Ironic?

Oui.

[Edited on Mar 20, 2005 by azulsf]

Erm... "what if"? You know, maybe *if* she got her health back she could you know... deal with her personal tragedies the way millions of people do every day. Or if, in the end, she couldn't handle them, she could decide on her own if her life isn't worth living. I really hate when people try to decide others worth of life.

Of course, that isn't the real issue here. The issue is whether there is any reasonable likelihood of that happening.

Which there isn't.

"I'm outraged, and I think that every American in this country should also be outraged that this government is trampling all over a personal family matter that has been adjudicated in the courts for seven years," he told CNN. "I think that the Congress has more important things to discuss."
-Michael Schiavo

I agree. But that's Republican majority for you...

Probably not.

I was just sort of going off on that as an aside though. I hate when people do that "well their life wouldn't be worth living anyway" thing. If we could determine life and death by our own subjective views on someones quality of life well... I have the solution for homelessness, depression, the handicapped, etc... mass executions.

If the media hadn't turned this into a huge clusterfuck....i think the family would have gotten their way.

However, the media turned into a huge isue and forced the President to make a stance. Otherwise he wouldn't give two shits what happens.

Exactly, things like this can be a slippery slope. You start off with an extreme example, then slowly bring it into the mainstream.

Toss a frog into boiling water and hell jump right out. Put that same frog into cool water and heat it up...and youll have cooked frog. (Sorry if I butchered the maxim).

Well, I think this proves that you'd better have a living will, regardless of your age. The courts, so far, are actually trying to respect her wishes, but as Bush packs the courts with more ideologically "correct" judges, expect this to change, and expect to get a judge who will keep you alive unless you very clear about the conditions under which you want to be alive. (In mine, I'm going to put a line explicitly saying I do not want to be kept alive in a vegetative state.)

yeah, slippery slope!

next thing you know, send your 3 year old in with a cold, and doctors will kill her, no questions asked!

slippery slope...

also, war? slippery slope. start a war over wmd's today, start a war over the music of celine dion next. slippery slope!

death penalty? today its for scott peterson, next thing you know, its for committing an unlawful u-turn. slippery slope!

you never know! its a slippery slope, people!

I think the whole situation, though sad, is ridiculous. President Bush has just stepped in to try to play the savior so he can score some points in his political game. Honestly, I don't think someone's life should be turned into political cannon fodder or a bargaining chip between two parties for power. If you consider the side of Terri Schiavo's husband, to him it must seem like his wife is already dead and has been dead. I mean, I know it is terrible to say, but it's not like he can really communicate with her, or be intimate with her, or even have the comfort to think that she might remember who she is. From her perspective, no one knows how she's thinking or feeling or if she's doing either, and while the possibility for her recovery exists, it is very unlikely. It seems like she is suffering and being manipulated. And the parents, I think, are expressing a common reaction. They don't want to let go of their daughter even if she's essentially already gone because they gave life to her and put her into this world, but that's standard reaction. I know I'd want to hold on to my child as long as possible with the hope he/she'd recover, but after so long I think that everyone is just deluding themselves. Maybe that's a cynical remark, but I think everyone should do what has essentially been done anyways, and finally let her soul be at rest. The media and the politicians should move on to more important issues, such as the hypocrisy of "the value of life" when we send young men to die each day in a pointless war. Life isn't so valuable when it's for Halliburton oil.

Don't we slaughter, every day, millions and billions of animals with more conciousness than this woman? Do we not obliterate life as we see fit for our own purposes at our leisure?

I say that we should make hotdogs from her. Where's the legislation enacting humane treatment of agricultural animals? Where's the legislation preserving our massive wildlife preserves?

Mmm... People-bacon. This would give "Vegetable Stew" a whole new meaning!


[em]

If she was just in a coma (where there is recorded brain activity) I would be all for keeping her tube in, but in this case she has NO brain activity...brain dead....
Without science she would have died a long long time ago- add to that the fact that while she was alive she had discussed that she wanted em to pull the cord on her (though this info is from her hubby- but its reasonable to think they might have talked about this) if anything like this had ever happened.

I am off to rewrite my will to make sure this shit never happens to me and my loved ones don't have to go through all this drama and cost of keeping me a vegetable if I ever get konked on the head.

She's about as intelligent as a head of broccoli , and is nothing more than a sack of flesh , running on her automatic nervous system.

Terry and all she was is gone, and has been for 15 years... let her go already.

My father slipped into a coma , and I had to make the decision to DNR him when he coded for the last time...hardest thing I ever had to do, but he was gone at that point and
it would have been a mockery of his life to keep him hooked up like a fucking science experiment.

Bush is so concerned about lives , then why doen't he do something about the 21 murders we had in this city last week....

Bush has been brain-dead for about the same amount of time - and his advisors fear the precedent that pulling the tube on Terri would spell trouble for W.

With all seriousity, the situaiton is oh so sad. Let's assume for a moment that Terri is in fact fully alive and cognizant, but trapped in her body completely unable to communicate or have one iota of control over her life. My god, that would be the worst torture or imprisonment inaginable!

So if she is brain dead - let her body die. If she is not brain dead, in the name of sweet mercy, let her die.

One would think that the Republican Party, the party of small government, would stay out of such a case for it would create a sense of "Big Governemnt". Bush and his fellow Republicans are probably in it for religous reasons.

I wonder what George would say if Barbara was a pain stricken veggie on life support, or what any bible thumper would say if someone they loved was in the same situation.

Actually, they would probably let them suffer... nevermind...


[Edited on Mar 20, 2005 by n2ocowboy]

Maybe this can be explained to me here:
Why is it that Christians care so much about keeping this body (I'm not going to call it a person) "alive"?
Wouldn't they want her to go to God or something? Or are we doing God's work by using God's science to maintain an artificial pulse?
It would seem to me that Christians would be the first to pull the plug, being unafraid of death and all.

[Edited on Mar 20, 2005 10:42AM]

let the woman die. good lord.

"Be on the side of life." Ostensibly that sounds great, but in actuality is provincial thinking. If this wasn't disingenuous politics, I'd commend them for their ideas, naive as they might be. But she's not Helen Keller at the pump. The miracle is not coming. Her brain isn't going to magically regain functionality. Sometimes the most humane thing to do is just to let someone die, as unfortunate and sad as that is.

[Edited on Mar 20, 2005 10:50AM]

If they pass some sort of legislation requiring her feeding tube be replaced, I wonder what this will do for the organ donor system. If you sign up as an organ donor, but do not have a living will/advance directive, will the doctors them have to keep your body alive indefinitely, making it impossible to harvest your organs?

Medicare is already in pretty bad shape. Can you imagine if it had to support millions of braindead patient's bodies indefinitely?

Jeez, the last time Bush cancelled a vacation was because of 9/11...