Hello, Kossaks. I'm the latest emigré from
Blog for America. I will be an oddity among you: an evangelical Christian card-carrying Democrat progressive.
Let me wade right into the deep water, this being World Water Day and all. The sad saga of Terri Schiavo is proof that society has progressed very little since the Dark Ages.
What Hasn't Changed, Part 1: Women are still property. Why has our court system failed to provide her with her own attorney, independent of either her husband-in-name-only or her parents?
What Hasn't Changed, Part 2: I have heard people say that if Ms. Schiavo had lived before technology was available to prolong life, she would have starved, so therefore, she should now starve. Why don't we just put her on an ice floe and push it out to sea while we're at it?
Back to World Water Day. At least in the 2001 videotape, Terri isn't drooling. That means (drumroll) Terri was swallowing as recently as 2001.
The question on which this entire case hinges is, "Is Terri Schiavo swallowing her saliva in 2005?" If she is, then there is a real possibility she can learn to swallow food, as she could in the 1990s. On the other hand, if she can no longer swallow, then the feeding tube is truly necessary for her to live and the discussion changes.
The Karen Anne Quinlan case provides some precedent for this one. Recall that Quinlan was also in a Persistent Vegetative State (due to a drug and alcohol overdose) when her parents pettioned the court to have her removed from a ventilator in the 1970s.
The medical establishment deemed the ventilator essential to keeping her alive, and they were wrong. She was able to breathe on her own and lived another nine years before dying a natural death from pneumonia.
Note also that her parents never petitioned to have her feeding tube removed. So what is different today that it is not considered cruel to deprive a patient of food? My answer is, we are not living in a progressive time, but in a throwback to an era of cruelty.
I could rant on about this for hours, but instead I will shrug and say, "When in cruel times, live as the cruel do." So therefore, let's say that removing this tube and starving this woman are on the table as acceptable measures. Hey, it's only natural, right?
Correct -- IF (and this is a big "if") if it can be shown that Terri Schiavo is incapable of swallowing.
Terri Schiavo is no one's property but her own. She needs her own attorney. That attorney should determine if she is currently swallowing her own saliva and if it is realistic to assume that with therapy she could be fed by mouth.
If not, then the attorney needs to argue for her right to an assisted death. The medical establishment does not know what goes on inside the brain of someone in PVS. Heck, the medical establishment doesn't even know whether coffee is good or bad for you.
(By the way, the breathtaking disingenuousness of the argument that weaning her off the tube and onto food is cruel because she could aspirate and choke to death is barely worth any more keystrokes. If, as they say, she's unaware that she's starving, then she would also be unaware she was choking. What a bunch of dunces.)
What is obvious, though, is this. We don't treat our pets the way Terri Schiavo is being treated. If she can no longer swallow, then at least put in a call to Dr. Kevorkian for her and leave the ice floe for some future episode of "Survivor".