Posted on 07/13/2008 10:44:43 AM PDT by wagglebee
Michael is the widower of Theresa Marie Schindler “Terri” Schiavo, who died on March 31, 2005, after being judicially executed—as her husband wanted.
She had collapsed on February 25, 1990, having experienced a heart attack that caused respiratory and cardiac arrest, which resulted in extensive brain damage. She was diagnosed by several doctors to be in PVS—persistent vegetative state. She was placed in—and brought out of—several hospitals for 15 years.
In 1998, Michael, her husband and guardian, petitioned a Florida Court to remove her feeding tube. Robert and Mary Schindler, her parents, opposed the petition. They claimed that she was conscious and responded to their cooing and kissing. They saw her pucker her lips to kiss them back and could see that she was attempting to speak to them.
The court, placing itself in Terri’s place, ruled that if she could only speak she would tell everyone that she did not want to be kept alive. For seven years the legal controversy—between Michael and Terri’s parents—became an international affair. Politicians, expert doctors, pro-life and disabled-persons’ advocates debated with pro-euthanasia advocates, sometimes appearing on CNN, BBC and other globally shown TV programs.
Would you have petitioned the court to shut off her life-support system as Michael Schiavo did?
I wouldn’t.
Eulana Englaro of Milan
Something like the Terri Schindler Schiavo case is now rocking Italy.
This time it’s the father of a Milanese 37-year-old woman, Eulana Englaro, who asked the court for authorization to kill his daughter by removing her feeding tube. His request was granted.
Eulana has been in a coma, the result of a car collision, since 1992. She was 16. Her skull was smashed, her neck broken. Doctors thought she would soon be dead but she was breathing on her own less than three months later.
Italian bioethical and medical associations have criticized the Milan court’s decision. They call the decision a positive act of euthanasia and not merely one to stop an unnecessary and disproportionate treatment to keep her artificially alive.
Eulana will suffer a long and painful death—unless her death is hastened by large doses of morphine, which would then be even more active euthanasia.
The Scienza e Vita (Science and Life) association bitterly criticized the court for deciding to legitimize the killing of a human being by “depriving her of the most elemental things: nourishment and hydration.” It described the case as one in which “the community of healthy people has decided to stop taking care of a human being in a state of the greatest frailty and dependence, condemning her to an atrocious death by hunger and thirst.”
Scienza e Vita worries that the Milan court has set a legal precedent that will start a wave of petitions from relatives tired of caring for their former loved ones whom they now want to die because they have become helpless.
The Vatican paper L’Osservatore Romano published an article by Adriano Pessina, director of the Bioethics Athenaeum of the Sacro Cuore (Sacred Heart) Catholic University. He writes that “an ordinary treatment [nourishment and hydration] is being suspended following a court decision that has no clinical basis.”
The decision, Pessina explains, was based on the alleged desire of Eulana not to live in these circumstances and the alleged power of life and death in the hands of her father and guardian. But by Italian law, the Bioethics Athenaeum director writes, the “biological last will and testament” does not exist. So the court was forced to construct a case to indirectly prove its relevance.
As to the perceived power of a guardian to decide on the life and death of a ward, Pessina writes that the existence of that power is debatable. In fact a guardian’s duty is to act in the best interest of the person entrusted to him. “Decisions on a person’s life should be limited, and every citizen should be guaranteed that the value of his life will not be determined by a particular anthropological idea,” the Bioethics expert states.
Pessina further writes: “It isn’t necessary to take recourse to a religious concept of life, or to deny the legal and moral possibility of rejecting disproportionate treatments to dissent from this decision: Suffice it to stress that, in Eulana’s case, imposed in fact is the interruption of a long process of care, made up of attention, loving dedication and respect for her personal dignity, which the protagonists of the appeal themselves have always recognized.”
“The subject of consciousness is very delicate to address,” he adds. “However, if Eulana is truly not conscious of herself, then she doesn’t suffer, and it is hard to understand why the state must condemn her to death—unless it is because of an obstinate ideological plan of a state that calls itself lay and should be methodologically foreign to all religious confessions.”
Doctors have observed that Eulana has not been certified to be brain dead. They say it is incorrect to diagnose that she is, like Terri Schiavo, in “persistent or permanent vegetative state” because it has not been proven.
Perfect!
Pro-Life Ping
Ping!
This is a fantastic editorial!
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“Would you do a Michael Schiavo to your wife?”
If her brain degenerated into cerebral-spinal fluid, yes.
Keeping a corpse breathing for sentimental reasons is downright creepy.
For clarity, please explain this phrase. I don't understand what is involved in "keeping breathing." Your description of a corpse is fairly evident, albeit misguided.
You seem to be of the impression that Terri Schiavo was on life support. You are INCORRECT.
Terri’s breathing functioned the EXACT SAME WAY your’s or mine does. Terri dies because she was starved and dehydrated to death at gunpoint.
Determining death The traditional criteria for death in Jewish sources are cessation of breathing and heartbeat; however, the practice was to wait some time after determining that these signs had occurred before beginning burial procedures (SA Yoreh De’ah 338). However, soon after the Harvard criteria for brain death became standard medical practice, Conservative rabbis accepted brain death (including the brainstem) as fulfilling the traditional criteria of cessation of breathing and heartbeat. In 1988, the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel approved heart transplantation from accident victims, thus accepting brain death as well, but this decision remains a matter of dispute among Orthodox rabbis.2,5–11 Authorities in the various movements are now assessing the apnoea test to determine death on the basis of cessation of breath.....
http://www.aabioetica.org/docu/fin%20de%20la%20vida%20perspectiva%20judia.pdf
Again, you want to keep a braindead, yet breathing corpse alive.
No wonder we lost the 2006 elections. The religious right doesn’t care about federalism; they want socialism for God, which is still socialism.
Oh gosh not this again!
““Would you do a Michael Schiavo to your wife?”
Hmmmm,,, I’m now single again. Now if we changed that question to:
“Would you do a Michael Schiavo to your ex-wife?”
Hmmmm,,,,,,,,,,, Hmmmmmmm.(still thinkin’)
“If her brain degenerated into cerebral-spinal fluid, yes.”
That pretty much describes the ex on one of her good days.
Hmmmmmm,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Again, we ARE NOT talking about someone who was brain dead. Neither Michael Schaivo, nor the doctors or lawyers EVER suggest that Terri was brain dead.
A brain dead person CANNOT breathe on their own.
“She was conscious and responding to her parents and nurses.”
An attempt at humor, I suppose?
“... socialism for God, which is still socialism.”
Nope, that’ll be a monarchy.
And re: article - I wouldn’t do that even to my ex.
Let's see:
Raineygoodyear
Since May 15, 2008
Hey newbie, this is a CONSERVATIVE, PRO-LIFE forum. Perhaps you stumbled in here by accident.
Terri did not suffer a “heart attack”.
In fact, the reason she survived so long was because her heart was healthy.
The reason she lived for 2 weeks without hydration is because her heart was strong.
Terri collapsed for an unknown reason.
It was suggested bulimia, or some potassium deficiency was responsible - but that was ruled out.
What they do know is that her brain was starved of oxygen for a period of time prior to receiving emergency care.
Her heart did go into arrest because of the oxygen deprivation, but her collapse was not CAUSED by a heart attack.
Terri's brother and sister (Bobby Schindler and Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo) were more than willing and capable of taking care of Terri for the rest of her life.
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