Posted on 07/08/2005 2:59:50 PM PDT by summer
It doesn't seem like much of a spouse who would choose to disregard what you want. The personal opinions shouldn't matter...what should matter is the willingness to follow what the incapacitated person would want! I would follow a spouse's wishes even if they were against my own preferences.
...clearly, her parents and her spouse had very different views on what they each believed she would have wanted.
True, but even partly irrelevant, as the Schindlers admitted that they would have disregarded Mrs. Schiavo's wishes even if they were known in writing. At least her husband based his claim on respecting what he believed her wishes would have been.
Yes, I know...I've read it when you've posted it before.
And that's exactly my point...that we should be honoring people's wishes, not just yelling "life at all costs" or asking for executive or parental intervention against a legal spouse.
Again, it's a Culture of DisrespectTM being pushed, where people are being used as pawns, rather than recognizing they are individuals who have individual desires. Let's respect Advance Directives/Living Wills/Spousal Proxy/Proxy Assignment, etc...all the tools to express our own wishes!
They recanted, but it was in sworn testimony, I believe. It was in one of the documents that Terrisfight.org removed, but if you go to one of the non-biased archives of the documents, you should find it.
Yes..that means that I or you have to provide proof now that I would want to live.
Your right to die is quite well protected don't you think? Set in stone at this point don't ya think?
It is my right to keep my elderly or disabled family members alive that is going out the window.
The misleading subtitle was in the original, so it is not Summer's fault that he paraphrased it without correcting the meaning. (The original subtitle was "The investigating state attorney tells Bush he found Michael Schiavo did not cause his wife's collapse.").
I would have just left it with the main title, and put the subtitle with the body.
The practice that prevails on FR is to use the original title (for archival purposes) but, if room permits, add something sarcastic in the parenthesis following that.
It is not a big deal. The media lies to us all the time. If I had a nickel for every misleading title they put out, I'd own St. Petersburg Times.
Hope you are feeling better.
"Testimony provided by members of the Schindler family included very personal statements about their desire and intention to ensure that Theresa remain alive . . . at any and all costs. Nearly gruesome examples were given, eliciting agreement by family members that in the event Theresa should contract diabetes and subsequent gangrene in each of her limbs, they would agree to amputate each limb and would then, were she to be diagnosed with heart disease, perform open-heart surgery. . . Within the testimony, as part of the hypothetical presented, Schindler family members stated that even if Theresa had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it. Throughout this painful and difficult trial, the family acknowledged that Theresa was in a diagnosed persistent vegetative state."The Schindlers reportedly recanted their testimony at a later date, but I don't have the reference to that.
Yes. Fuhrman looks at the accounts of all persons involved from the time of Terri's collapse to her arrival at the hospital. All the accounts, with the exception of Michael's, generally corroborate each other, ranging from Terri's parents (who Michael called, after which the parents called her brother who lived in the same apartment complex), her brother, the documentation generated by the emergency responders, police and the ER. Moreover, their accounts have not wavered over the years whereas Michael's has in the type of details one would be expected to remember upon finding a significant other or loved one in such a state...If you've ever lost a parent, sibling, spouse, unexpectedly, you may not remember the exact time, but you would most likely remember what you were doing when you were notified, and what you did immediately afterward.
Fuhrman makes the allowance that nobody looks at their watch and records the precise time one wakes up, but Michael provides different times with certitude during his accounts over the years rather than indicating that he was uncertain, or may have made a mistake in previous testimony.
In some accounts he indicates he woke up "for some reason," then heard a "thud," and at other times, he states he was woken by the "thud." His accounts vary by a matter of several hours as to what time he arrived home the evening / morning before the incident (he was working late at a restaurant), whether or not he interacted with Terri prior to going to sleep, who he called, in what order and when after he found her.
Michael was never called on the discrepancies, and during the later stages of the court proceedings, when a Schindler family attorney did subpoena him (four times, IIRC) he ignored all the subpoenas, and was never deposed with regards to the discrepancies. Greer stated something to the effect that, "While it may be interesting to determine why," she ended up in her state of diminished capacity, he indicated that it bore no bearing on the current status of her case.
Yes, had Terri lain there for 40 minutes she most likely would have not survived that morning. When her brother came to the apartment, she was gurgling and breathing abnormally. Fuhrman does not find him guilty of anything, and lays out several scenarios ranging from happenstance to horseplay (Michael did have a history of roughhousing with Terri, her sister and brothers) to deliberate criminality...all of which fit the known testimonial evidence. His conclusion is ultimately, there are a limited number of questions that need to be answered, and only Michael knows the truth.
I admire your attempt to find a solution for the future (that parents be allowed to sue for divorce.)
My objection to that is a little different than what others have written: if a law was passed to allow parents to sue for divorce if their child is incapacitated, you are assuming the parents would always be for keeping the child alive.
I am in the process of creating a living will right now because I realized, due to the Terri S case, that my husband would not be able to pull the plug, no matter how bad/hopeless my condition was. Whereas my father would hate to see me "suffering" and would have an "easier" time making that decision.
My case may be the minority, but I can only imagine the horror of parents suing for divorce so that they can end their child's life.
Yes, quite aware. Aware enough to know that you mischaracterized it.
What the AMA did was adopt a policy (they don't "rule") to oppose any proposed legislation that would presume patients would want life-sustaining treatment unless it is clear that they would not.
There are a lot of very bad proposals being made, and the AMA is right not to back presumptuous ones.
Wow that is powerful. Can I steal it for future use?
It reads like a well thought out recipe for the first steps toward legalizing euthanasia.
By all means, my FRiend, "bon appetit"!
You know that is simply a play on words to make it go down the public throat better.
It means they want us to prove we want to live first..period..
They don't want any know-it-all State legislators to get in their way of reining in their precious age of the presumption of death.
Just thinking of those banana republics where the emperor calls in the national guard to dissolve the courts when he doesn't agree with a judicial decision... you know, places like America. (...well, Mad Mammoth's version of America, anyway...)
They are not focusing on anyones right to die. That is already established after the Schiavo case..they are focusing on making sure we don't have any legal right to the presumption of the right to live.
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