Terri

Want to be safe from death by starvation? Kill someone. That was Terri’s big mistake. Being a wife and beloved friend was what doomed her.

Take any of the arguments being put forward to justify the slow starvation death of Terri Schiavo to justify the execution of a murderer and you would be—what—called a murderer yourself. We are told without a trace of doubt that a convicted murderer put to death on the word of a jail house snitch who testifies in exchange for a lighter sentence that society is executing an innocent man. But question whether the word of an estranged husband (living with his new “wife” and two kids) who stands to gain a cool million that had been awarded to him to pay for Terri’s care and you are given a tired lecture on the importance of states rights.

Of course I can believe that Mr. Schiavo has her best interests at heart, I could even believe he did suddenly remember the little snatch of conversation that justifies the claim that we are only carrying out Terri’s wishes in starving her to death. But what I can’t believe is that a reasonable person can’t have some doubt. And that is the standard that we apply to murderers before we subject them to a painless death. Why is the bar so much lower to subject someone to this agony. And the person I saw on TV definitely looks like someone that can feel pain.

What is so striking is the seeming rush to judgment. To act when there is no necessity to do so. Her loving and distraught family ready to take all the responsibility and expense of her care.

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We want this to be about living wills. What nonsense. What can hardly be less than clear is that there was a decision made. The judge and Terri’s husband decided the outcome they wanted and looked for a way to get it. They found it in some imagined statement that supports the argument that Terri would have wanted it this way. They ignored evidence on the other side of the proposition that was clearly stronger.

But the idea that a living will would stop the professionals from doing what they want to do is fanciful. Remember the first the issue in the case was whether the husband of the family had the right to make the decision. When that stopped working the TV utterance was discovered. And it happily jogged the memory of The husband’s sister and old friend. The legion of Terri’s friends and family that remembered the exact opposite views from this devout Catholic woman were found to be not credible (if he bothered to pronounce on them at all). But if it had been the other way around, if the parties on the side of death and raising the bar to a be considered a living human being had been reversed is there any doubt that the exact opposite parties would have been found to be credible? Or that some other principle in the law would have been found to make the parents the final arbiters?

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What is happening in this country. The judge orders death and no pictures. No recording devices. No way are we allowed to judge for ourselves. The pictures that we see of Terri and her eyes watching the balloon were taken illegally, against the judge’s orders. If the evidence in a murder case were kept away from the public like this we would be outraged. If the judge’s decision, the precious words of his opinion that are the really important thing nowadays, were kept from the public the outrage would be palpable. The people cannot be deprived of moral instruction, but evidence—that is for the important people to see.

But what is so disturbing is that people don’t seem to mind the evidence being kept from them. They want to keep this out of sight.

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Mickey Kaus:
“One way of putting it is that the end of life is so messy, and riddled with potentially guilt-inducing glitches, that nobody wants to be judgmental about it (as the pro-tube position requires).”
But that is the key thing. How is it that the life side is the judgmental one? What has happened that not wanting to starve a person to death is judgmental? It would seem that the people wanting to end a life on the reasoning that the life in question is not worth living are at least as judgmental as the ones that want to give a person food and water.

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We have unknowingly decided to change what medicine is. We have changed it from being a group of people that try to keep you alive to a profession that decides whether to keep you alive. We have changed the hospital to a place where they decide whether your life is worth living. People think that will make things better. I think they will be disappointed.