Posted on 03/27/2005 3:48:07 PM PST by Jim Noble
Of course she was. She was briefly in a coma before she emerged in a vegetative state. You have nerve being snarky after that comment.
Go back to the post to which you responded and read it more carefully.
PASSIVE?
The Judge removes her feeding tube and then issues an edict prohibiting anyone from any attempt at oral hydration/nutrition and you call this passive?
yes. it's semantics. take your meds.
Semantics? Get a grip.
If there was no judicial prohibition to feeding her orally, do you think that someone would have tried by now...like her parents?
Semantics does not explain this at all, and this is NOT passive denial of life any moreso than if the Judge had put a choked her to death which I suppose you would call 'passively' denying her oxygen.
no, that would not be passive. you need to get a grip homeboy and no pun intended.
Take your snide remarks and shove them up your a**. Two posts to you and I get a "take your meds" and "get a grip homeboy"? Are you always this much of an a**hole or am I just special?
If I locked you in a room with no food or water, would I be passively denying your life?
Wow, you sound like a conservative version of the DUmmies. Quite frankly I'm sick of hearing the same crap about Terri now. It's tragic, MS is a freakin monster, she's gonna die soon, update me whenever something new develops in this tragically overdone story.
dear thought tomato,
i'm sorry i missed your post. how are you! it's so nice to see you around... i appreciate your mind....many Blessing to you.
Knitting channel.. *LOL* Thanks for the humor break.. :-)
Guess you've already seen how quickly the Greer apologists come out of the woodwork as soon as one brings the full implications of this case out into the light.
I don't know the answers to your questions, though I figure if he can order that Terri's death be as drawn out and tortuous as being via dehydration and starvation, why would he not be able to order her shot, drawn and quartered, put in an iron maiden, etc.? Ah, yes, but that wouldn't be "civilized"..
Really?
How so?
As the Court notes, the liberty interest in refusing medical treatment flows from decisions involving the State's invasions into the body. See ante at 278-279. Because our notions of liberty are inextricably entwined with our idea of physical freedom and self-determination, the Court has often deemed state incursions into the body repugnant to the interests protected by the Due Process Clause. See, e.g., Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172 (1952) ("Illegally breaking into the privacy of the petitioner, the struggle to open his mouth and remove what was there, the forcible extraction of his [497 U.S. 261, 288] stomach's contents . . . is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities"); Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891). Our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has echoed this same concern. See Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 772 (1966) ("The integrity of an individual's person is a cherished value of our society"); Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 759 (1985) ("A compelled surgical intrusion into an individual's body for evidence . . . implicates expectations of privacy and security of such magnitude that the intrusion may be `unreasonable' even if likely to produce evidence of a crime"). The State's imposition of medical treatment on an unwilling competent adult necessarily involves some form of restraint and intrusion. A seriously ill or dying patient whose wishes are not honored may feel a captive of the machinery required for life-sustaining measures or other medical interventions. Such forced treatment may burden that individual's liberty interests as much as any state coercion. See, e.g., Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 221 (1990); Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 600 (1979) ("It is not disputed that a child, in common with adults, has a substantial liberty interest in not being confined unnecessarily for medical treatment").
The State's artificial provision of nutrition and hydration implicates identical concerns. Artificial feeding cannot readily be distinguished from other forms of medical treatment. See, e.g., Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, American Medical Association, AMA Ethical Opinion 2.20, Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment, Current Opinions 13 (1989); The Hastings Center, Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying 59 (1987). Whether or not the techniques used to pass food and water into the patient's alimentary tract are termed "medical treatment," it is clear they all involve some degree of intrusion and restraint. Feeding a patient by means of a nasogastric tube requires a physician to pass a long flexible tube through the patient's [497 U.S. 261, 289] nose, throat and esophagus and into the stomach. Because of the discomfort such a tube causes, "[m]any patients need to be restrained forcibly, and their hands put into large mittens to prevent them from removing the tube." Major, The Medical Procedures for Providing Food and Water: Indications and Effects, in By No Extraordinary Means: The Choice to Forgo Life-Sustaining Food and Water 25 (J. Lynn ed. 1986).
A gastrostomy tube (as was used to provide food and water to Nancy Cruzan, see ante at 266) or jejunostomy tube must be surgically implanted into the stomach or small intestine. Office of Technology Assessment Task Force, Life-Sustaining Technologies and the Elderly 282 (1988). Requiring a competent adult to endure such procedures against her will burdens the patient's liberty, dignity, and freedom to determine the course of her own treatment. Accordingly, the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause must protect, if it protects anything, an individual's deeply personal decision to reject medical treatment, including the artificial delivery of food and water.
CRUZAN v. DIRECTOR, MDH, 497 U.S. 261 (1990)
497 U.S. 261
JUSTICE O'CONNOR, concurring.
Which thread? There's thousands of them.
Seems pretty clear to me.
See 137
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