Molly on Schiavo

[Igor Loving]

This is a subject I believe we all face. Some of us die young of course and 
don't have to face the prospect or question but othesr due to all the 
advances in modern medicine will linger and linger.

I should have died back in 1966 or there abouts in Viet Nam but didn't then 
again in 1973. I am glad that I did no, of course because I have had a hell 
of a good time since those events.

But the future is coming and I hope that there will be someone that will 
pull that plug when and if I lapse into being a carrot or beet.

My elderly mother didn't want  to be kept alive and I faced that one alone. 
When asked the queston by the doc wether or not to continue, I was lost. 
There was no family to help out it was up to me. And of course I made the 
wrong call. My mother screamed at me  for being so stupid. Her body was full 
of cancer but her mind worked and she knew that I had fouled up again.

So it is indeed a big problem this live and die thing.

The Sioux knew when their time was up and went off into the desert or 
wilderness. We seem to be reticent to allow them what want to quit go out 
into the wilderness?

Aloha:
Igor



>From: Harry Edwards <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
>Reply-To: survivors' reminiscences anobout Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s 
<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
>To: ghetto 2 <ghetto2 at lists.whathelps.com>
>CC: ghetto survivors <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
>Subject: Molly on Schiavo
>Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:56:08 -0600
>
>
>Published on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 by the Daily Camera (Boulder,
>CO)
>
>Fatuous Politicians Have No Business Here
>
>by Molly Ivins
>
>  I write about the Terry Schiavo case both as one who has
>personally confronted the "pull the plug" question on several 
levels
>in recent years and as a staggered observer of this festival of
>political hypocrisy, opportunism and the trashing of constitutional
>law, common sense and common decency.
>
>  Look, the fundamental question in such cases is, "Who 
decides?"
>Preferably, the dying themselves, with a living will. In this case,
>evidence that Terry Schiavo did not want her life continued in its
>current pitiable state has been offered and accepted in several
>courts of law. Next, the next-of-kin, though in many cases someone
>else may be closer to the dying person, such as a longtime lover,
>and should be legally designated to make the decision through power
>of attorney.
>
>  Bad cases make bad law, and this is a bad case. In the tragic
>cases where a family splits on the decision, the case goes to court,
>where there is a well-established body of law on the subject. The
>Schiavo case has been litigated for seven years now, the verdict
>upheld at every level (including the U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing
>to hear arguments). It is beyond comprehension, not to mention the
>Constitution, that the Congress of the United States and the
>president should have involved themselves at this point.
>
>  What on earth makes them think they have the right to do so? Both
>libertarians and constitutional conservatives, including Justice
>Scalia, should be having fits over this push by the federal
>government into a private family matter. Congress has no power to
>overturn judicial decisions, nor has it any role in such painful
>personal decisions. This is as arrogant a usurpation of power as we
>have had since FDR's court-packing plan.
>
>  As Barney Frank, D-Mass., so trenchantly put it, "This is a
>terribly difficult decision which we are, institutionally, totally
>incompetent to make." George W. Bush is neither a neurologist nor a
>medical ethicist. What on earth is he doing in this case?
>
>  For your information, while he was governor of Texas, George W.
>Bush signed the Advanced Directives Act in 1999, which gives
>hospitals the right to remove life support in cases where there is
>no possibility of revival, when the family cannot pay, no matter
>what the family's wishes are in the matter. In Texas, you can only
>live in a persistent vegetative state if you are accepted in one of
>the few institutions that provide such care or if your family is
>both willing and able to take care of you. And if Bush is so
>concerned about the right to life, why didn't he give death-row
>inmate Carla Faye Tucker more than 10 minutes consideration and some
>cheap mockery?
>
>  The very Republicans who pushed for this arrogant, interfering
>bill, which if used across the board would take away everyone's
>right to make their own decisions in these awful cases, are the same
>people who voted to cut Medicaid, which pays for the care of people
>like Terry Schiavo across the country.
>
>  That the main player in this fiasco is Majority Leader Tom DeLay —
>who is in the midst of yet another scandal himself — is enough to
>make anyone throw up. This is a man whose sense of morality is so
>deformed that upon being chastised three times by the House Ethics
>Committee, his response was to change the rules and stack the
>committee.
>
>  What a despicable display of pure political pandering. What an
>insult to everyone who has faced this decision without ever
>considering asking 535 strangers in Washington, D.C., what to do.
>
>  How can anyone want to cede that authority to a bunch of
>politicians?
>
>  I am indebted to the blogger called Digby for the following
>points: Those who passed this bill are the same politicians who want
>to outlaw medical malpractice suits like the one that provided the
>care for Terry Schiavo for many years while she was in "a 
persistent
>vegetative state." They are the same politicians who have just
>finished changing bankruptcy law so that it is now much harder for
>families hit by tragedies like this one to get out from under the
>staggering medical bills. How dare they talk about morality?
>
>  How can a bunch of blowhard television pundits with no medical
>training whatsoever conclude anything about Terry Schiavo's
>condition from watching a few seconds of edited videotape? Where on
>earth do they get the nerve to make any pronouncements about her
>condition?
>
>  Who are these professional anti-abortion activists who think they
>have the right to make decisions about someone else's life? Those
>who think letting someone who is critically brain damaged die is the
>same as Auschwitz are incapable of making moral distinctions.
>
>  I watched one of the dearest men who ever lived, who had no chance
>of regaining consciousness, toss for hours in relentless pain before
>he escaped because the state of New York had such draconian drug
>laws the doctors were afraid to give him enough morphine to kill the
>pain. The New York legislature, in all its majesty, made sure the
>76-year-old, 90-pound man dying from cancer did not become a
>morphine addict. Political bodies have no business making medical
>decisions.
>
>  Do I believe in miracles? Yes, I do, and I'm praying for one that
>will let the sanctimonious phonies in Washington realize the gross
>moral error of their presumption.