[Works on book]
[Is bombarded with Terri Schiavo information]
[Tries to focus on book writing]
[People keep making stupid comments about the case]
Must...ignore...comments...
[Letters are written to the editor]
DAMMIT!!!! This is a right-wing conspiracy to stop me from working, isn't it!? {Sigh} Fine!
I first heard Terri's story while I was still a conservative. I was introduced to it on the Glenn Back Radio Program back in 2002. I still like Glenn, because like me he's a smart ass, and I'm going to give Glenn a lot of credit because he picked up on this when it
wasn't about partisan politics. You could tell Glenn just believed what he'd been told and wanted to see something done. For the record Glenn tells the story in much the same was as most Republicans tell the story:
"Terri's in a tragic situation. As a result of an illness years ago she went into a coma. Now her selfish bastard of a husband wants her dead, because he won't get a divorce. Doctors claim she's in a persistent vegetative state, but look at this video on my website! Does that look like a woman in a vegetative state to you? And this Nobel Prize nominated doctor says he can save her! This is a woman who wants to live! Won't you help us help her live?"
That's a great frame, isn't it? How can you argue with that? It's got all the elements you need to really get worked up about the story! Except it's missing one thing--the fact that Terri was bulimic. And the potassium imbalance that led to her heart stopping was because of her bulimia. Most conservatives don't know this. I don't think it changes a damn thing about the nature of her story (other than adding an overwhelming and unnecessary sense of irony), but for a lot of conservatives it does.
The `illness' they describe is Bulimia Nervosa as detailed in the DSM-IV. I'm glad they're willing to acknowledge the DSM-IV as a source of medical information. In one of my previous diaries (Chip-Busting Gay Adoption) some folks asked "What if my conservative friend says psychiatry is a bunch of crap?" Now you have your answer. "Terri Schiavo is brain dead because of bulimia. That's a mental illness. Are you saying Terri's persistent vegetative state is a bunch of crap?" As Glenn Beck would say, you may want to start wrapping their heads with duct tape, otherwise it's gonna explode.
The `Nobel Prize' doctor thing is as new as it is bogus. Glenn never mentioned it, but it's coming up in spades here lately. Dr. William Hammesfahr claims to have been nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine. He bases this claim on the fact that his congressman, a Republican, sent a letter to the Nobel committee recommending that he be nominated. Sadly it doesn't work that way. You can go to the Nobel website and see the selection process. There are only 3,000 or so people who are allowed to nominate recipients. Only winners are announced, and the names of nominees are kept secret for 50 years. So...he's a liar...and he's trying to make money off of his lie...and that's pretty bad in my book.
Actually, rather than debunk this, what I should be doing is trying to get Barbara Boxer to write a recommendation for me for the Nobel Prize. Sure, she's not qualified, but if she'd do it I could go on Hannity and Colmes as the `Nobel Prize Nominated author of "Confessions of a Former Dittohead", advisorjim.' Man...I hate when I get in too big of a `debunking' hurry.
Some of the wackier conservatives and their lazy accomplices in the mainstream media are calling this a `right to die' case. Really it isn't. The `right to die' has already been established. The Supreme Court put that issue to bed in 1990. If Terri had a living will (or `not enough money' in Texas) then this case isn't an issue. What this case is about is whether or not the husband has the right to make medical decisions for his spouse. And as tragic as this situation is, I don't want the federal government mucking around with who gets to make medical decisions.
I have a living will. I recommend one for all of my clients. In fact, I recommend if you don't have one that you stop reading this right now, and go get yourself a living will. They're not very expensive. My living will says that if I'm terminal, try to bring me back. But if I'm brain dead, let the ship sail. That's where I draw the line. I can be terminal and still be `me.' If I'm brain dead, then that's it. Let me go. I'm going to a better place anyway.
I don't like the idea of starving, but again if I'm brain dead "I" won't notice. Frankly I'd rather the hospital be allowed to administer a lethal dose of morphine, or some other humane way of letting me go. Why is it good enough for my cat, but it isn't good enough for me? But the legal climate doesn't exist to allow me to do that (at least not in my state), so I'm willing to allow myself to starve to death if necessary.
But therein lies the big difference. I have a living will. Terri did not. So we have to figure out what her `intent' was. What the Hell is it with Florida and `intent' anyway!? People of Florida, I beseech you! Write shit down!
I only have one conservative friend who has sought out an argument over this. Most of my dittohead buddies are with the overwhelming majority of Americans who say "let her go." But this one guy really had a bug up his ass about it, and I want to understand more about the other side of the argument.
His theory is that Michael Schiavo wants Terri to die because he won't get a divorce for religious reasons. I don't know if that's true or not. Could be. But to support his claim he explained that Michael has essentially `remarried' and has two kids with this other woman. I did not know that. He seemed to think that supported his argument. I thought it kind of destroyed it. If the guy didn't want a divorce for religious reasons, why would he commit adultery? It seems to make more sense to me that he doesn't want a divorce because then her parents become her guardian. And they've made it clear that they will do anything (amputate limbs, open heart surgery, whatever) to keep her alive...as any parent might. But he also claims that that isn't what Terri wanted.
See, this is where the whole argument falls apart for me. I see posted on right-wing blogs the question "Why won't this asshole just let her parents take care of her?" And the only answer I can come back to is that he honest to God must believe this is what Terri wanted. Some people say he's just doing it for `the money.' But Michael's been offered as much as $10,000,000 to walk away, and he won't do it. How easy would it be for him to walk away from this with $10 mil if he had even the slightest doubt in his heart about Terri's wishes?
Maybe someone can convince me otherwise. Maybe I'm just not seeing something here. But the only thing that makes sense to me is that Michael's integrity is worth more than $10 million, and he's not interested in selling out his wife. If it was my wife, and we'd had that conversation, I would fight just as hard.
There are some of the obligatory `wacky conspiracy theories' that Michael was abusive and caused her heart failure, but sadly there wasn't any credible (or otherwise) evidence to support it. Even with evidence it still wouldn't explain why he's turning down $10 mil. The abusive guys I've known ("ROD!"...Friggin' asshole) would probably put their spouses in a vegetative state for $10 million. They sure as Hell wouldn't turn it down if their spouse was already in one.
I'm particularly annoyed by the `spiritual advisors' who say Terri's mortal soul is in danger. If her feeding tube is removed she'll be committing suicide, and she won't get into Heaven! So if someone was in Terri's condition before the advent of the medicinal feeding tube, did they go to Hell? I've always tried to be very tolerant of other people's religion, but that belief is just laugh-out-loud stupid.
And then there's the Texas Futile Care Law and Sun Hudson. That one really agitates the dittiots. (By the way, when is the supposed `liberal media' gonna let fly with that story?) When I brought it up to the above religious conservative he responded with, "Yeah, well since when did you liberals care about dead babies!? I didn't see the loony left fighting to save Sun's life! And that law doesn't say it's okay to kill babies. You only wish that's what it said!" Whoa. Struck a never, did I?
For starters, you probably didn't see me fighting for Sun because I didn't know about Sun. I wish I did, but the lazy-assed media was more interested in Terri's case, so I never heard about it until it was too late. But there's a pretty big difference between Sun's situation and Terri's. More on that in a moment.
As previously detailed in a far superior diary, the Texas Futile Care Law does in fact say that after exhausting all other remedies, a hospital can disconnect a patient from life support if the family can't afford to pay, and they can do so even if it's against the wishes of the family.
There are as yet undiscovered tribes in the Peruvian outback who understand the difference between the Schiavo case and the Texas Futile Care Law, but sadly there appear to be some conservatives who don't. So here it is in a nutshell. If Terri's in Texas, and she runs out of money, then we're not having this conversation. Even if Michael and Terri's parents wanted her to live.
Scott McClellan trotted out at a press conference and tried to say "Hey, that bill ensured that patients and their families were protected, not harmed!" I guess maybe he's trying to say that hospitals could disconnect poor people anyway, and the TFC bill created an appeal process and 10-day waiting period. I don't know, but it doesn't matter. The bill Bush signed clearly states that hospitals have the right to let indigent vegetants die over the objections of the family. Whether that's at the end of an appeal process, or only after certain circumstances have played themselves out is immaterial. If you're going to say you promote a `culture of life,' then there's no way you can sign a bill with that language in it and not be a hypocrite.
As to the `baby killing' reference, we've got a long way to go on that one. I've talked about this before, but this is a classic example of Rush's `liberal hatred spillover.' See, technically the only people who think every baby should be aborted are `Feminazis' in Rush's vernacular. Rush gets all apoplectic when people use that term wrong. He's not calling all feminists Nazis. Just the ones who believe all sex is rape, and every baby should be aborted. That's good news, because it means `Feminazis' don't exist!
But the dittiots have no problem projecting that definition on all Democrats. "You're not Pro-Life, therefore you want every unborn baby dead." Um...not so. I just happen to believe that banning abortion doesn't stop the procedure any more than banning drugs has stopped their abuse. See, I'd like to see the number of unwanted pregnancies reduced, and thus the number of abortions. But you do that by treating the problem, not the symptoms.
According to the National Institute of Health, under President Clinton abortions went down. Under Bush, it appears as though the opposite is true. It would be easier for us to judge if the NIH still reported abortion numbers, but for some reason they don't do that anymore. Hmm...I wonder why? What changed? Let's see...we went from proactive sex-ed to abstinence only. And nowadays we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, and there's a sharp rise in the number of abortions in a majority of the states which still report those numbers. Ah, but why bother with science when you can get all caught up in emotion, right? I guess as a liberal I'm just more interested in results than emotion. I'll work on that.
Which brings us back to the enormously sad case of Terri Schiavo. The courts have, over the course of the last 14 odd years, decided that Michael was right. Terri wouldn't have wanted to live this way. The rule of law has been fully exercised and then some. The federal courts, including the Supreme Court 3 times, have decided that this is a states rights issue. I agree. The result appears to be final. But some conservatives are actually advocating that federal judges take on an activist role in this case. I thought `activist judges' were bad? I guess they're only bad when they don't agree with you. That seems like more of an emotional reaction to a really tragic situation.
And it is just that. Really, really tragic. Mrs. Schiavo may die today, she may die next week, or she may die in 20 years. Whenever it happens, Godspeed Terri. Yours was a sad life, and a sad passing. I'm sorry about all the fuss.
