Posted on 01/29/2006 10:06:22 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who took a leading role in the Terry Schiavo case, said Sunday it taught him that Americans do not want the government involved in such end-of-life decisions.
Frist, considered a presidential hopeful for 2008, defended his call for further examinations of the brain-damaged Florida woman during the last days of a bitter family feud over her treatment. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state.
The case became a rallying point for right-to-life advocates, an important segment of the Republican Party. It also drew interest from those supporting the right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment and led to charges that the GOP was using a family tragedy for political gain.
Asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" if he had any regrets regarding the Schiavo case, Frist said: "Well, I'll tell you what I learned from it, which is obvious. The American people don't want you involved in these decisions."
Schiavo, 41, died March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed and 15 years after her initial collapse and hospitalization. Courts in Florida had supported her husband's contention that she would not want to live in such a state. Her parents and siblings disagreed and for years fought efforts to remove her feeding tube.
An autopsy later showed that Schiavo had suffered severe, irreversible brain damage and was blind.
Frist, R-Tenn., said in the full Senate that he supported what he called "an opportunity to save Mrs. Schiavo's life." A heart surgeon, Frist had viewed video ordered by a court and taken by a board-certified neurologist who had concluded she was not in a persistent vegetative state.
Congress passed a bill to allow a federal court to review the case, and President Bush quickly returned from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law. But a federal judge refused to order the tube reinserted, a decision upheld by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court.
Frist was later mocked as having made a diagnosis from his office using a video screen. "I didn't make the diagnosis," Frist said Sunday. "I raised the question of whether or not she was in a persistent vegetative state."
Looking back, Frist said, "When you're taking innocent life, with parents who want that life preserved, you've got to make sure, and therefore stepping in to say, let's take one more review, that's what we did."
He added: "I accept the outcome. I don't agree with the moral sense of it."
Frist plans to leave the Senate when his second term expires in January 2007. He said Sunday he will return to his home in Tennessee and decide whether to seek the Republican nomination for president.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., discusses the Republican 2006 Senate agenda during a news conference on Capitol Hill Friday, Jan. 27, 2006. Left to right are Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., Frist, Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
That's something that bears repeating......
Americans do not want the government involved in such end-of-life decisions.
I don't want the government taking my tax money and giving it to the Palestinians but it does that too.
And because government does so then means that it should do so?
PING
Mandates come from the people -- by definition a solid majority, if not an overwhelming majority. In this case there is no mandate -- but in fact just the opposite -- for government to be involved in end-of-life decisions.
So, do you think the government should just stay out and allow spouses and relatives to murder their inconvenient spouses and relatives without government interference?
Let's have anarchy, let's allow the strong the murder the weak without interference.
THIS is the logical consequence of what you are saying. Are you sure this is really your position?
Americans do not want the government involved in such end-of-life decisions.
>>>
Tough. The prevention of murder is Job #1 for any government.
Twenty five years ago it was 'Americans do not want the government involved in the right to abort.' Now that 40 million Americans have been mass murdered, America is changing its mind.
Sometimes the will of the People is evil, and the job of a just goverment is to turn away that evil will and do what is just, regardless. It's called "leadership."
THIS is the logical consequence of what you are saying.
It's just the illogical inference you're making.
Would you accept it if the husband/wife had no say ... but rather the patient only?
It was the government of Florida that declared she must starve.
Are you saying, Mary, that if, say, a member of my family starves my mother to death, I should stand by and let it happen? And that I should have absolutely no recourse whatsoever?
Bill Frist is a gibbering coward. White House? Forget it, dude, you're history.
Government should be involved in some end of life situations.
We need a l-o-n-g discussion, to determine where to draw the line.
If governments were bound by imputed mandates, we wouldn't need the courts.
It's called dictatorship. In a representative democracy when elected officials don't follow the will of the people they are replaced. That's just how it works. As for the "will of the people" involving abortion, it wasn't the will of the people, it was the will of nine people -- or was it five of nine people? Get your facts straight.
If it weren't for advances in medicine in the first place these "decisions" would have never come about.
How about everyone just write in the wills never whether or not they want to be "brought back".
Then we can let people die when they were suppose to right?
Hopeless Presidential Candidate Frist is overlooking the involvement of the government in the person of a certain probate court judge who somehow found himself an authority on matters of life and death.
So if the majority mandated you to die, it's your duty to comply. Get real. History tells us over and over again how these scenarios play out.
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