Those on the left are not the only individuals intent on seizing control of language to achieve their political goals, and this weekend a perfect example of this phenomenon took place in my neck of the woods. Gov. Manchin attended a pro-life dinner at Lakeview Resort at Cheat Lake, WV (about 15 minutes from my house), where Bobbi Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, had the following to say:
“The medical community wants to refer to people like my sister who are disabled as vegetative because it dehumanizes them, it takes away their personhood,” Schindler said.
“PVS is a very dangerous term, one that I believe should be eliminated, and we should refer to these people as people with disabilities or people with profound brain damage, not in this very damaging, offensive persistent vegetative State that we all hear in the media,” he said.
Putting aside the fact that the autopsy verified that Terri Schiavo’s personhood had long since departed and that she was well beyond what would even be described as ‘profound brain damage,’ what is alarming is the continued effort to avoid dealing with the sad realities of the case, but instead to villify the medical community for daring to have the audacity to name a condition, to attack ‘activist judges,’ and to pretend that somehow, if only we had a different word for Terri Schiavo’s condition, the outcome might have been different. According to Mr. Schindler, had the medical community just used a different term, Terri would today still be gleefully whiling away the hours tracking balloons across her hospice room, engaging in light banter with her pro-life attorneys.
If these people were not trying to wrest away control of my end-of-life decision making rights to cede them to some other entity (the church, the courts, who knows?) all because of their personal religious beliefs, I could probably manage to find a way to tolerate them. Right now, I can not, as too much is at stake.
*** Update ***
As a side note, why is it always the case that groups with names like ‘The Society for Truth and Justice” are usually not interested in either truth or justice:
With the death of Terri Schindler, we have just passed through one of the most ethically horrifying moments in an entire generation of American history. An innocent, handicapped woman was starved to death while the entire world watched. A runaway judiciary successfully carried out her death sentence while the Florida governor, the Florida legislature, the Federal legislature, and the United States President wrung their hands in distress, while pretending that there was nothing more they could do. Simply put: we are ruled by judges; the rule of law and self government are dying.
Brad R.
And don’t forget the effort to turn “torture” into “enhanced interrogation techniques!”
John Cole
Or ‘sound science.’
ppGaz
Why don’t we ever hear the good things about Terri’s brain?
[ DougJ is my master ]
Mike S
This fits in nicely with Randall, “We will execute you,” Terry’s “Terry Followup.”
Lines
When does Michael Schiavo get his Judith Miller moment?
Steve
Remember, Michael Schiavo is just a grieving husband.
DougJ
Far be it from me to moralize, but cheap shotting Michael Schiavo is just wrong. He did nothing wrong. To my eyes, he respected his wife’s wishes.
Take shots at Cindy Sheehan all you want. She has made herself a public figure. But those who smear Michael Schiavo are beneath contempt.
StupidityRules
So for instance paraplegics should be grouped together with people who have mush for brains…
That’s just sick.
DougJ
One of the funniest things you’ve ever written, John. Good work.
ppGaz
That’s right. Once you make yourself a public figure, you are no longer entitled to be treated with any respect whatsoever.
That privilege is reserved for blog owners.
phil
Terri’s dead and she ain’t coming back. Lets move on. Here, try this…
On Veterans Day we gather (mentally, at least) to honor those among us who served in defense of our country. But in a larger sense, our thoughts and words provide faint honor; the brave men, living and dead, who fought on behalf of our country have honored themselves far beyond our poor power to add or detract.
History shows that some wars are more noble than others. This fact is generally lost upon those fighting; their job is not to question the nobility of the cause but rather to do their duty. The fundamental nobility of the cause does nothing to add or detract from the nobility of the duty done and the sacrifices made by our soldiers. It is that duty and those sacrifices we honor today.
Rather it is for the rest of us and for the historians to question the nobility of the cause for which we have sent our young people off to fight and die. After all, they are fighting for us, in our name, for our country. In that sense we, all of us, have sent them off to fight and die.
The fact that our involvement in Viet Nam was immoral and in retrospect a colossal blunder both politically and militarily in no way devalues the service of those who fought and died there. Those soldiers were simply doing their job. The fundamental immorality of the cause however puts their deaths on the conscience of all of us (or at least those of us with a conscience).
In like manner, history will show that our involvement in Iraq was based a preconceived plot hatched among the neocons in the White House, none of whom had actually served in the military themselves. It was a preconceived war looking for a cause, and though 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, it provided the people in the White House with the cause they needed. Through trumped up “intelligence” the Bush team justified going to war; who cares who else believed the incorrect justification for going into Iraq, the blood is on their hands too. The bottom line is that the plot was hatched inside the White House.
Now 2065 of our young men and women have died over there, more die each week. Over 15,000 have been permanently disabled in the war. The result of the war thus far leads to the inevitable conclusion that the world is far less safe as a result of the operation.
This is in no way to devalue the duty and sacrifice of our young people fighting in Iraq, we should honor them, and we must.
But by simply mouthing empty words in praise of those fighting for us and waving our flags harder without understanding for whom they are fighting and why, we don’t honor them, we dishonor them. They fight for us, they fight in our name, and they fight for our country.
The light of history will show that the war in Iraq was begun on false pretenses and was therefore fundamentally immoral. We will be forced to acknowledge that the blood of the dead is on the hands of those in the White House who hatched the plan and who sold it to their countrymen as a response to 9/11.
By denying ourselves this fundamental truth we must acknowledge that we’re at fault too. Our freedoms extend…they MUST extend…to the right, duty and obligation of the citizens to hold accountable those who wage an immoral war in our names.
These are our soldiers, living and dead. They fought for us. As our soldiers their blood is on our hands, their deaths and injuries on our conscience, all of us. Can you look yourself in the mirror and be certain that you have done right by them? Should they expect any less?
Steve
DougJ just yelled at me for DougJing. That’s cold :(
DougJ
Ahh! Hoisted by own petard!
Good work, Steve.
ppGaz
It’s “hoist”.
Mike S
jg
Screw baseball, wordsmithing is america’s pasttime.
Pasttime doesn’t look right. Is that the right word?
kenB
The more pressing question in my mind is how the Society for Truth and Justice can be so at odds with the People for the American Way.
Anderson
The classic examples being the Holy Roman Empire and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (led, recall, by an Austrian).
ppGaz
The “Society for Meddlesome Self-Righteous Busybodies” wasn’t getting a lot of membership buzz.
Mike S
Phil
Just so you know, it wasn’t what you wrote (although attribution would have been nice, it was where you wrote it.
DougJ
Here’s an angle we haven’t explored: could Joe Wilson have been involved in Terri Schiavo’s murder? Rumor is, he and Michael Schiavo were pretty tight.
ppGaz
Good points, DougJ. Also we have to explore the remarkable similarities between the cognitive abilities of poor Terri at the end, and those of Judy Miller.
jaime
No. That’s Michael Schiavo and Vince Foster who were tight.
ppGaz
C’mon, this might be the funniest thing I ever wrote.
Where’s the love?
DougJ
You wrote something better a few days ago. I can’t remember it now, but it was very good.
Retief
Let’s not forget “Homocide Bombers.”
Or the Bush administrations word for Bupkis: Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Program Activities.
DougJ
BTW, everyone should go over to that Emily Mesner blog that thought John Cole was Juan Cole and write crazy stuff. I’ve already got someone writing 300 word replies to my claim that you can’t say we’re a nation of torturers because the CIA only represents a small fraction of our population.
ppGaz
Well, when you’re right, you’re right.
Jeff B
When did Terri Schiavo legally change her name back to Terri Schindler. Just another attempt to take the husband out of the equation.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Remind me again, what fraction of Germans were employed at Auschwitz?
DougJ
And doesn’t the fact that she did prove she wasn’t brain dead?
Mike S
Is today non-sequiter day or what?
Perry Como
I take offense to your revisionist pastime.
Horshu
Maybe Dr. Frist can take a look at a photo of her tombstone and diagnose her as “soul alive”.
Sojourner
I’m just glad it’s not me who took the bait.
RSA
They would all be called just “people” in a liquified-brain-and-non-functioning-limb-blind society.
a guy called larry
How many untruths are contained in the boxquote of the “Truth and Justice” Terry?
ppGaz
Every word of it is untrue.
Other than that, though, it’s fine.
DougJ
They aren’t lies, though, ppgaz. They’re just based on the flawed intelligence of the members of the Society for Truth and Justice.
ppGaz
Oh, I know! A “lie” only exists when the teller knows the thing is untrue, and says it anyway, and then laughs with his friends about it later, and then gets a big check and parlays it into a trifecta at the horse track.
So, (lack of truth) != lie.
How much of a Darrell-debater would I have to be not to know that?!?!? Duh!!!
Perry Como
From their Articles of Incorporation:
DougJ
I’ve decided that I won’t mark my students’ answers as wrong but simply indicate that they may have been based on flawed intelligence.
JWeidner
That’s what the school boards in Kansas and Dover, PA thought, too.
RSA
That, or your interpretation of their incorrect answers is “unduly restrictive”.
scs
I think the larger issue still not resolved is what rights does a spouse have against his or her spouse? Is a spouse just marital property, as we have seen in the Terri case, or are they individuals who deserve to have their voice and best interests taken into account by the law? I strongly object to this absolute right of spouses. Even children get to have their day in court and have a judge look into their BEST INTERESTS, not just give the parents always the supreme right to decide. Why don’t wives get the same rights? It just goes back to the times when women were by law property of their husbands – and in fact seems like not much has changed since then. Very sad that so many people don’t get that that is the main issue and are letting themsleves be blinded by their right-to-life stance. Oh well, partisanship – what else is new?
DougJ
Actually, not partisanship on this, scs. Republicans and Democrats felt more or less the same way about this: (1) Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die, as she most likely would have wanted and (2) that if they were in the position she was in, they would like to die.
The thing to remember here is that millions of Americans have had to make similar decisions about elderly relatives. Tom DeLay is one of them, for example (he made the decent decision and let the elderly relative die in peace).
No offense here, but it seems like you are blindly hewing to what you believe to be the Republican position here. In fact, though, the Republican position (aside from a few dead enders in Congress) is the same as the Democratic position: brain dead people should be allowed to die in peace.
scs
Wrong. I am pro-choice, and mostly, right to die as well. It seems that most people wanting Terri to die were pro-choice and somehow tied her death to safe-guarding pro-choice rights, and the opposite to the right. I think the main issue in this case was women’s rights – and that is a democratic issue usually. Hence I don’t consider myself partisan on this issue.
I just think this whole case was boiled down to -“Well Michael can legally do whatever he wants cause he’s her husband.” In other words, she was his property. No matter that she may have planning to divorce, or he may have been mentally abusive. None of that even matters under the law. Whereas in a child custody decision, a judge can take into account the quality of a relationship a child has with a parent, and where the childs best interests would be served. But a spouse doesn’t have that same rights. Marriage = property in this case.
ppGaz
I seriously doubt that any case in US history, of this type, had more “days in court” or more court-appointed representation of the patient’s interests than this one.
I think you’d have a hard time convincing anyone who knows the facts and the legalities of this case that “marriage = property.” If anything, the case and its history demonstrate the opposite.
jaime
A child is technically a parent’s property until they turn 18.
joshua
Well, she was more or less furniture at the time of her death.
Seriously, though. Who was supposed to make the decision? It had to be made by someone at some point, either Michael or her parents. No matter who made the decision, she was going to be treated as someone’s property. The courts reviewed the facts and came to the conclusion it was his choice to make. Had they found for the parents, they would have left her hooked to a feeding tube, but they would have been making the decision for her as if she were their property all the same.
And that’s part of the point of marriage: a legal contract requiring certain obligations and granting certain priviledges. It was an unfortunate choice that Schiavo had to make, but far, far more has been made of it by people on both sides.
scs
Well her parents tried, but legally they had no leg to stand on. From the beginning, each review was based on -“Does Michael have the rights?” And legally, the answer is “yes”. They could have spent an eternity in court, but the laws were stacked againt them. I repeat, marriage=property.
joshua
“than is neccessary” should finish the last sentence in my last post.
Jcricket
Nice strawman scs. It’s not about property. It’s about settled case law regarding spousal privilege. Once you get married, your spouse has the power to make medical decisions for you if you are incapacitated. There are all sorts of reasons why spousal privilege is a “bright line” and inviolate.
If you are worried about your spouse’s ability to make medical decisions in accordance with your wishes, you can create a durable power of attorney assigning that duty to someone else and a healthcare directive making your wishes crystal clear. In the absence of those items, the law does not recognize the legal standing of concerned citizens, politicals, Randall Terry or even the parents due to the “strengh of their emotions”.
The only thing that can revoke a spouse’s privileges are clear evidence of illegal activity on their part (see Scott Peterson being denied Laci’s life insurance pay-out) or the absence of a generally accepted medical agreement (note: this doesn’t mean everyone who calls themselves a doctor has to agree). This is exactly why the Schindler’s spent so much time trying to attack Michael Schiavo and the PVS diagnosis. They never succeeded, despite their willingness to go completely to any lengths with spurious charges, charlatans and quacks at their side.
I don’t doubt the strength of Terri Schiavo’s parents convictions, but they are wrong about her condition, wrong about Michael Schiavo’s role in it (which is none) and wrong about how the law should work. This may be less clear, but there is good evidence they are also wrong about what Terri expressed as her wishes when she was alive – perhaps their inability to deal to accept the death of their daughter has blinded them to that.
Life isn’t always fair, and the law isn’t always set up to give everyone an equal say in every decision.
JohnGalt
As I recall, Michael Schiavo did not arbitrarily “decide” to allow his wife to die. He had to prove to a judge’s satisfaction that Terri had previously expressed a desire to die should her condition ever be that in which she found herself.
I think that one needed only to see the enormous sacrifices Mr. Schiavo made over the time his wife was in a PVS to determine the quality of their relationship. As for the “marriage is property” argument, I think that’s rather overstating the case. Marriage is, however, a contract. And with that contract comes both benefits and responsibilities, of which this decision to be made was not, I’m sure, a “benefit”.
ppGaz
Well, you’re wrong, and repeating it doesn’t make it so.
Examine the record of the case. The case work was about the the rights and interests of the patient, not of the relatives.
Offhanded blathering about it now doesn’t change that fact or that record.
scs
And another thing. Terri told her close friends and family that she was thinking about getting a divorce, even going so far as to look for apartments to live in without him. She told friends and family he was controlling and mentally abusive. Now you all are going to argue over that, I’m sure. Fine. But let’s take a theoretical case.
Let’s take a case where a woman tells EVERYRONE she knows she is afraid of her husband and wants to divorce him. She even says her fears on the radio, and puts it in writing, let’s say. Then on her way to the courthouse to file divorce papers, she passes out due to some mysterious cause, perhaps poisoning, on the courthouse steps as she is going in, and falls into PVS. They can’t prove where she was poisoned however. You know who will legally have control of her for the rest of her life? Her husband.
Is that justice?
Jcricket
Geez, scs. Did you read the court reports? Sure, you can’t “prove a negative”, but there was no substantiation that she wanted a divorce or that Michael was in any way abusive.
Those allegations were simply made up years into the case in a desperate attempt by the Schindlers to throw up some roadblock in moving forward with the case.
The people that chose to make this case a national tragedy are the Schindlers, Jeb Bush, Bill Frist and Randall Terry. Had they accepted the completely medically certain diagnosis of PVS 10 years ago, and respected her husband’s rights and (apparently) Terri’s wishes as well, none of this would have happened.
Those of us on the left did not choose to make this case a bellweather for disabled rights, the “culture of life”, or bring Michael Schiavo into the limelight. What this case has done, though, is exposed the dirty underbelly of the “culture of life” movement – namely that there’s nothing they won’t do to intrude into your life if it suits their political motives.
Anyone who’s a true libertarian who still votes R after this mess is a hypocrite.
scs
Please. Let’s not even go there. I hate to reargue this whole thing. Michael did not tell anyone that until SEVEN YEARS after her collapse, and in fact had told people for years before that he “had no idea what Terri wanted”. But you all thought that anyone who was witness to that was lying.
Either way, the standard is very low, and the judge, short of some overwhelming evidence, ie, writing, doesn’t have much choice but to take the husbands word, no matter what character or motives he appears to come with.
scs
Yes Michaels word was gold, but her friends and families were all ‘lies’. I remember how that all worked. Lot’s of objectivity. Let’s not even go there again. There’s no point.
ppGaz
Hell, it’s not even a decent made-for-tv movie plot.
The man arranges to have “control” of a braindead wife for the next fifty years? Wow. What an arch fiend.
Here’s the bottom line, aside from the fact that you are now reduced to making up grotesque stories to puff up your argument….. the whole thing is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. These cases happen every day, in every imaginable arrangement of circumstances .. and none of them are your business. When it’s you or your family, then it’s your business.
Jcricket
Geez, scs. Try doing a little research. Read the report of the guardian at litem appointed by the courts. See page 11 and 34. The Schindler’s allegations have been dismissed, with prejudice.
Please also note that this is not the first court-appointed Guardian to basically state that the Schindler’s, while obviously emotionally upset, are 100% wrong about just about everything. So either we believe you, and say, the courts are performing some miscarriage of justice because of property rights, or we believe 15 years of litigation and medical testimony showing that this brain-dead woman in a PVS was being kept alive against her wishes and the wishes of her spouse.
Your hypothetical case does not apply here, although it reminds me of your supposed support for ID mainly because it raises “interesting questions”
Richard Bennett
I think history will record the moment that Bush flew back to DC to sign the Schiavo bill as the official jumping-the-shark moment of his administration. It’s been all downhill since then: Katrina, Libby, Miers, etc.
StupidityRules
I’m wondering how the Let Terri “Live” crowd would handle these cases:
A man murders his pregnant wife and their four children and then shoots himself. He survives but are in a state not very diffrent than Terri Schiavo, his parents want to keep him alive. Being unable to communicate with the world there obviously was no trial.
Or he doesn’t shoot himself, get caught and sentencted to death and while being on death row has an accident and ends up in a state much like Schiavo. Also here his parents want him not taken of life support.
Jcricket
Oh, and in that guardian’s report scs, it will be clear that it’s not just Michael’s word taken as gospel by the courts. Independent findings, multiple court cases, court-appointed guardians, etc.
Read the part where the Schindler’s admit that even if Terri had specifically requested, in writing, that the feeding tube be removed, they would not do it.(page 14). Throughout that portion of the trial, they still admitted Terri was in a PVS.
There’s only one side that has a documented case of lying to support their case. That’s the Schindlers. It’s not simply a matter of he-said, she-said, unless all you do is read a blog or three.
scs
Well it should. I am not afraid to take “uncool” positions and like to think for myself.
My approach to law, isn’t, is it my business? My approach is, what is fair? If, god forbid, that admittedly Hollywood type scenario I described would happen to me, I would have no rights under the law either, just as my fictional woman.
scs
The court-appointed guardians found there was no evidence found to support Michael statement that that she wanted to die, as they had interviewd many people who had said he had said the contrary during the seven years prior to his statement.
Listen, I don’t want to argue the specifics of this case, as I know how it’s going to turn out. It’s like arguing with a brick wall. That’s why I brought up a hypothetical. Try to stick with that, why don’t you.
scs
To play along, I would think they would hold the trial anyway, without his participation, and if there were enough other evidence to prove him guilty, then sentence him to death. Even though they can’t execute mentally retarded people, he wasn’t at the time of the crime, and hence I think his death penalty would hold.
I think they would repeat the execution, to fullfill his sentence. But I am not a lawyer, we need one who knows more about it to chime in.
Mike S
scs is the type of person who reads the NewsMax article John linked to in the original post and thinks it’s fact. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
DougJ
Scs, it’s a bit more complicated than you’re making it out to be, the judge’s decision. Schiavo’s court-appointed guardian described the parents’ attitude to Terri Schiavo as “grotesque”; they said they’d have limbs amputated if she developed gangrene.
One thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that our system is built to a certain extent on judicial discretion. The idea that laws are simple black and white, yes and no is a common misconception of the naive and misinformed. Yes, judges have authority, but let’s not forget that lots of judges heard this and all found for Michael Schiavo. Probably part of the reason is that he came across as more credible than the parents. If the court had decided that Michael Schiavo wasn’t acting in her best interests, they could have had him removed.
But think of it this way: you have a husband saying that his wife wouldn’t want to go on in this condition (a poll showed that 80% of Americans would not want to go on if they were in this condition, so that’s perfectly reasonable) and then you have two religious extremist parents brandishing videotapes of random eye movement and talking about amputating their brain dead daughter’s limbs. Who would you believe? Not you, maybe, but try to imagine who a reasonable person might believe.
It might be a good idea for you to try to learn something about how courts and laws work and what responsibilities judges have rather than saying simplistic things about spouses being property.
scs
Fuck off. You don’t know anything about me.
Krista
Damn, I wish more teachers were like you. :)
In regards to poor Terri Schiavo, I don’t know what the woman wanted. I DO know that it was wrong for all of these politicians to make hay over the issue. I do know that it was wrong of Frist to make that “diagnosis”. If her doctors said she was in a persistent vegetative state, after having treated her for years, then that should have been that. Can anybody honestly think that the woman had any kind of quality of life? I can feel for her family, not wanting to let her go, but letting her go would have been the right thing to do — long before it turned into a frickin’ circus.
Perry Como
What if a not-Terri Schiavo had a sworn affidavit that said her husband was trying to kill her and if she ever slipped into a persistent vegetative state that she should be kept alive at all costs and Randall Terry should be called on to speak for her? And what if a not-Michael Schiavo found that affidavit and flew Vince Foster in from the Mena Airport to bump off Terri Schiavo? And what if Sandy Berger then took that affidavit and stuffed it in his sock?
Try to stick with that, why don’t you.
ppGaz
Well you’re not going to find out on the blogosphere, man. The case has a years-long record. Are you familiar with that record?
Is the case typical or nontypical of right-to-die cases? What’s the case law? How was the patient’s interest represented to the court?
Spouse= property?
How about child = property?
How about ward-of-state = property?
When a person is brain dead, what the hell do you WANT to happen? And back to my point …. what business is it of yours anyway? If your child is brain dead, do you have a right to cruelly demand life support to assuage your own fears and grief?
Go away please. You are not serious about this at all.
scs
Dougj, your point that there is a lot of discretion in the law by judges is true in a lot of cases. But not so much in this one. The standard for relieving a husband of control is very very high, practically insurmountable, short of documented crimes. Even if the judge were predisposed to feeling and siding for the parents, he would have little legal right to do so. That’s where I think the unfairness in the law comes in.
Sojourner
What is with this female victim thing you have going? Miers wasn’t unqualified, she was a victim of sex discrimination. Schiavo’s husband wasn’t permitted to act in what he believed was his wife’s best interests, he was exercising his domination over his property.
An unqualified woman should be rejected just as an unqualified man should. And a cognitively dead woman should be allowed to die just like a cognitively dead man.
Krista
If that is true, then no bloody wonder the courts ruled against them. That’s horrible.
scs
Dougj, I’ll bet a hundred bucks you are Perry.
DougJ
Okay, reasonable reply. Sorry I was a bit rude in mine.
It seems hypothetical, though, given that the parents had zero credibility with their (false) claims about brain function and so on, though. Maybe there will be another better test case.
Mike S
Did I hit a nerve? And I know plenty about you from your comments on this blog.
Richard Bennett
No, they wouldn’t hold a trial because the defendant would not be capable of participating in his defense, so the question of execution is moot. We don’t execute people who are found to be of dimished capacity at the time of the trial, we at most find them criminally insane and sentence them to the loony bin.
A court found that Terri’s wish was to die, and that finding was upheld by all sorts of appeals courts, and that’s the end of it. Our law doesn’t demand unanimous agreement by all the charlatans from Jesse Jackson to Randall Terry before a decision is carried out, fortunately.
John Cole
Everyone calm down.
Mike S
Sorry. I’ll sign off now.
scs
Look, I shouldn’t be annoyed because you may not have enough sense of IQ to stick to arguments and instead dabble in cheap attacks. I apologize for reacting to someone who doesn’t know any better.
Krista
John, I think it’s time to post some Tunch photos again so that we can all think serene thoughts while looking at the lovely kitty.
scs
What about trials ‘in absentia’? Are you a lawyer, or are you just guessing like me?
Richard Bennett
That circumstance doesn’t relate to this one.
ppGaz
Again I agree with R. Bennett.
Goodbye, cruel world …..
Mike S
Excuse me? This from the person that said:
As well as a few other Randall Terry talking points.
scs
Did you read this, Mike? Does this sound like a Randall Terry follower? I know you read a lot by me, but seemed to have comprehended little. Try to reading slooooowly next time. Maybe sound out the words. It may help.
Richard Bennett
If the roles were reversed, and it was husband in a PVS rather than a wife, the law and the outcome would be the same. It has nothing to do with property, and everything to do with the status of modern-day marriage as a partnership of equals.
Krista
And if the roles were reversed, the spouse would have been equally vilified — I can already envision the Black-Widow-spider-themed caricatures.
Mike S
Better advice for you, little one. Your understanding of this case and how it ended up where it did are saddly lacking.
scs
I think the issue has more relevance for women as women are more likely to be mentally abused, physically abused, and murdered by their husbands. Murder by a husband or a boyfriend is the number one cause of death for pregnamt women, as well as a top cause of death for all married young women. But yes, theoretically, in a very unusual case, it could be the same if the roles were reversed.
Richard Bennett
scs lives in a very interesting world, which unfortunately has not much to do with the real one, a place with different laws and customs, difference science, and different facts.
Krista
Source, please.
scs
Krista, look it up. Should be easy to Google. It was all over the American media about a year ago after a study came out. Probably never hit Canada the same way. If you can’t find it, I will try to look it up later for you.
scs
Well I do tend to think for myself and try not to belong to a “cult” or join in group think. You might that is “different” in your world.
Sojourner
Why is this relevant to the Schiavo case? There was absolutely no evidence of abuse and the Schiavos were trying to get pregnant before she collapsed.
Krista
Sojourner — good point. If there was no evidence of abuse, then why are we even down this road. Just for shits and giggles, though, I decided to look up the US stats on this. And homocide is a leading cause of death for women aged 20-24, but is number 2 by a fairly large margin. And amongst women 25 – 34, it’s pretty far down the list. Not to minimize abuse, or the fact that too many women are murdered by romantic partners (one woman is too many), but if EVERY SINGLE COURT kept ruling in Michael Schiavo’s favour, doesn’t that say something?
scs
Krista asked me a question, I answered it. Anyway, if you don’t consider testimony by her friends and relatives evidence, and I know you don’t, then yes, there is no evidence in this case. And plenty of abused women get pregnant – happens everyday, so I don’t know what relevance that has.
But anyway, I don’t want to argue specifics in this case anymore, even though I find myself doing so now. Just consider this question, what rights does a spouse, short of a finalized divorce and/or proven crimes, have against their spouse? Seems to be none. Is that justice?
Richard Bennett
I wrote my last comment before scs wrote his last comment. Let’s see how many “facts” are manufactured out of thin air:
This wasn’t a case of abuse, it was a case of excessive dieting.
More men than women are murdered, and murder by husbands and boyfriends is not a “top cause of death for all married young women”; car accidents, cancer, and suicide are all more common, and the homicide rate for women is less than a third what it is for men.
Women outlive men by an average of 5-7 years in the US, so one can reasonably conclude that more women are making end-of-life decisions for their spouses than men are.
scs, come on over to the real world sometime, you might like it.
scs
The number one cause of death of pregnant women is murder. I’m sure of that, as that statistic was a big deal here. My larger point is, relationships can be a very dangerous situation sometimes, and more often for women than men.
Krista
En tous cas, this argument has gone on for waaaayyyy too long, and I don’t think that anybody will ever know the “right” answer. Only Terri would have known, and she was (and is no longer) in any condition to tell anybody.
The moral of the story, kids? Make thee a living will, unless you want Bill Frist diagnosing you via satellite.
Sojourner
This question is meaningless without context. What kinds of rights are you talking about? Under what circumstances?
This seems to be a bigger issue for you than is warranted by the Schiavo case. Perhaps you’ve had something bad happen to you or someone you know. The law does not always protect those who deserve its help. But don’t assume that happens in every case.
As to Schiavo, did you really want the physical shell of a long-gone woman kept alive? For what purpose?
Krista
And in my smug Canadian moment, I’m pleased to announce that homicide didn’t even MAKE the top 15 leading causes of death, for either gender.
scs
Richard, don’t bore me.
1.)Murder by a husband or a boyfriend is the number one cause of death for pregnamt women,
True.
2.) as well as a top cause of death for all married young women.
A top cause I didn’t say THE top cause – number two in some age groups according to what Krista just looked up.
I’m sorry that your command of the facts leave you in such a confused state.
scs
Krista, that’s what I thought. I know Canada has a much lower murder rate. Why do you think Cops is filmed here?
Oh and Richard, to add on, your comment about men being murdered more than women is true. But when women ARE murdered, they are overwhelmingly most likely to be murdered by a “loved one”. Men are most likely to be murdered by other men.
scs
Sojourner, I can’t say anything really bad has happened to me, just a lifetime of perceiving unequal treatment of the sexes and a strong interest in feminism. So you’re right, it is a larger issue to me.
scs
Anyway, on that note, I have been on here way longer than I wanted to and must go do more errands. Thanks for all the fun Terri talk! Cheers.
DougJ
Only because there are fifteen forms of fatal frostbite in Canada.
Richard Bennett
Homicide is the second or third leading cause of injury-related death for pregnant women, depending on age group and ethnicity:
Source: Homicide: A Leading Cause of Injury Deaths Among Pregnant and Postpartum Women in the United States, 1991-1999, By: Chang, Jeani, Berg, Cynthia J., Herndon, Joy, Saltzman, Linda E., American Journal of Public Health, 0090-0036, March 1, 2005, Vol. 95, Issue 3
scs, this is data from the real world, not the uncited world of your NOW-shaped delusions. The other element of the top three injury-related cause of death for pregnant women were car wrecks and suicide, and these deaths compete with AIDS and cancer for their spots in the top five overall killers of pregnant women.
Sojourner
I have been a feminist for the vast majority of my 51 years. During those years, I have seen a lot of discrimination. I have also seen reverse discrimination, where women were put into positions in which they were destined to fail. For the simple reason that they lacked the skills to do the job. I suppose one could argue that incompetent women should be promoted just as are incompetent men. But my preference is to see competent people promoted.
Clearly, abuse does occur against women. However, every tragedy that involves a woman does not necessarily have a guilty male involved. The bottom line is shit happens.
If we are to make progress in achieving equality, we have to fight the real fights. You’ve heard of the boy who cried wolf. You undermine your fight by finding a female victim in every story. And you can be completely confident that Randall Terry would not involve himself in a fight for the rights of women.
james richardson
one of my daily blogs commented on the terri case, and her post made the most sense to me. i’m paraphrasing, as it was a while ago obviously:
“i was talking to my mother about the terri incident, and she said that if it were me in terri’s position, she’d keep me alive, no matter what. and that is why i am glad that that decision does not belong to my mother, but to my spouse. as much as i love my mother, she would be acting in her own best interests and not mine.”
john wrote not too long ago about another topic (maybe it was katrina/NO) and said some in this country simply want to say you’re on your own, and if it’s god’s will that you died from helplessness than so be it. i think it was katrina actually. anyway, it is often a religious view that being alive is absolutely the most important thing, period. everything is god’s will and how dare you interfere with his plans.
those who wanted to keep terri alive certainly didn’t do it for her benefit. she died long ago. and the limits they were willing to push for their misguided cause was disgusting. in the end it was terri’s husband’s right, and no one elses. judge after judge agreed with that. terri’s husband seems to be the only one in her circle that wanted her to be at peace. i agree with him on that issue.
Richard Bennett
Check the CDC for leading causes of death among men and women and you’ll see that homicide doesn’t make the top twelve list.
Diseases of heart
Malignant neoplasms
Accidents (unintentional injuries)
Cerebrovascular diseases
Chronic lower respiratory diseases
Diabetes mellitus
Influenza and pneumonia
Intentional self-harm (suicide)
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
Alzheimer’s disease
Septicemia
But again, this isn’t scs’s world.
ppGaz
Uh, call me crazy, but those two sentences are contradictory.
StupidityRules
scs said:
I agree about it would be better to get information from lawyers regarding these two cases. In the same way it would be good for you to listen to what the majority of doctors have said about Teri Schiavo being in a PVS or not. It would also be good for you to listen to what the judges have said about who should decide for her if she’s in a PVS. They are the experts you know.
ppGaz
Again, soup sprayed on the laptop.
I can’t afford much more of this. Please, take it easy.
DougJ
Bennett, you make a lot of sense sometimes. You’re quite perplexing, sometimes a Rovian wingnutter, other times a sensible centrist. It’s confusing. Maybe you *really* are me.
a guy called larry
Gee, I live north of Canada, and I’ve never been bitten by a frost.
a guy called larry
So… We torture guys just to stay in shape while we’re waiting for the city-saving senario to come along? What if we don’t have the seemingly popular 24 hours to find it? What if we get the guy when we only have 3? We torture him, he tells us some bullshit place where the bomb isn’t, time we get back to torture him some more, it’s too late. Damn. Bang.
There are just as many situations that won’t work as there are that do. How will we know that torturing the guy is heroic?
a guy called larry
Shit. Wrong thread.
Darrell
Very well said scs. In most cases, it makes more sense for the spouse to be making such life or death situations rather than parents, as typically the spouse does know best. Hence, the law giving that decision to the spouse. But in this case, Michael had long since ‘moved on’ and her parents were the ones doing all the day-to-day caring of her, yet their wishes were legally trumped by the husband.
Darrell
life or death decisions, not situations. Gotta use preview
Baron Elmo
In my fantasies at the time of the Schaivo flap, I liked to change Terri to a gay man named Terry, who happened to be in a similar vegetative state, with a similar significant other who wanted to end his partner’s suffering. Then I would sit back, place my hands behind my head and, in my mind, watch all that right-wing concern for the “sanctity of life” vanish… into… thin… air.
a guy called larry
But sanctity is so fluid, you can’t possibly think it applies to all…
StupidityRules
Darell said:
And so had also Terry Schiavo…
—
I probably would be a better husband to Britney Spears than that Federline guy. I should drag them before court and hopefully I’ll get a judge who will both feel and side for me and make me her husband… And after that I should sue for Tom Cruise’s kids.
Perry Como
Alot of Republicans had that same fantasy, but the situation was a bit different.
JohnGalt
This is where you’ve completely lost me. Are you suggesting that the majority of people that are in a PVS, male or female, are in this state as a result of physical violence by another? Does this assertion have any basis in fact? If you aren’t asserting such, then what does this have to do with envisioning a female deciding end-of-life issues on behalf of her husband?
Personally, I can think of all types of blunt-trauma (car accidents, athletic injuries, beating head against the wall after arguing with Darrell) that could result in PVS that had nothing to do with being beaten up by a spouse. Can you please clarify the point you were trying to make here?
james richardson
i was voicing the religious views of those who supported keeping terri alive, no matter what… so… you’re crazy?
ppGaz
Can you pass a message to Santa?
DougJ
THAT was the best you’ve written in a while. Not sure why but it really made me laugh.
ppGaz
Did your great big belly roll like jelly?
I’d like either a BB gun, or else a 40″ plasma tv.
Yore frend,
Paul
SRN
You should listen to an interview with Dr. James Bernat, a professor of neurology at Dartmouth Medical School, on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4555767) about 4:35 in. He talks about how the term “Persistant Vegitative State” came into medical definition about 30 years ago and was used because of the definition of “vegatative” in the oxford english dictionary (which I can’t get, but is ” Spending much time sitting or lying down; physically inactive” the #3 definition in the American Heratige Dictionary.
Guesst
The site mentioned above looks like the same site run by a nut from Free Republic.
A lot of this is being driven by the Alan Keyes crowd, because fringe fanatics have proven they have money to give “supporting” causes like Schiavo.
IOW, it keeps his bills paid.
Krista
They can be tamed quite easily…evidently, hollowed-out apples stuffed with peanut butter do the trick.
And Santa, send Paul the TV…for everybody’s peace of mind. :)
Faux News
“Murder by a husband or a boyfriend is the number one cause of death for pregnamt women, as well as a top cause of death for all married young women”.
Really? I thought the Homosexual lifestyle was the only one that was violent and led to premature death according to Randall Terry et. al.
You mean Domestic Violence between Heterosexuals is a real problem in our country? Hmm, well if it is then it is OBVIOUSLY due to Gay Marriage.
SCS keep up the good work!
scs
Richard, are you this dense or are you just trying to twist my words and the facts to save face? You said this:
I NEVER said ALL men and women. I said YOUNG married women. Obviously as people age they are more likely to die of diseases, and I’m guessing probably less likely to get murdered. I’m talking about young women, 20-24, young women close to Terri’s age. We have found murder is the second leading cause of death of all young women, and I believe the top cause of death of pregnant young women. Of course I’m sure these stats vary slightly on when study is done as figures may fluctuate.
Here’s what I found after a 10 second search in this ABC news article.
a guy called larry
The Canada south of me is, unfotunately, a city known as Windsor, and the gifts Santa brings around are carefully wrapped, shiny-ribboned pink slips.
scs
To also explain someone’s question above, I am linking statistics on marital violence to Terri because I feel that, since marital abuse and violence is a fact of life, especially for young women, there may many situations in the future where a spouse’s guardianship should be revoked, but will not be because such abuse has too a high a standard of proof under the law. For instance, I feel that Terri had clearly told people of her wish to get a divorce from her husband and I felt that Michael was not a good guardian due to the way he treated her family, whom Terri loved. I even suspect he may have had something to do with her collapse. Of course I know you are all going to bitch and moan if I say that and protest that Michael was an angel. He was a saint! Like I said, I don’t want to argue about that – it’s no use. You all love Michael because he happened to fall on your side of right to die causes and practically no evidence will shake your love for him.
(And by the way, you all were fooled hook line and sinker by Aaron Broussard’s obvious drama act, too and I caught a lot of shit on here for questioning him, but I turned out to be very right about him. And if you knew me in my personal life, you’d know I was always right about judging character, much to my friend’s chagrin. But that is neither here nor there – just an f.y.i)
That’s why I wanted to make this about the next case, because I know you will never give up your love for Michael. I know that ONE of the top causes of death for young women is murder by their husbands. I can foresee situations where a respected husband, perhaps a radio announcer maybe, puts anti-freeze in his wife’s Gatorade (gee, that’s a Hollywood plot, right?), or a husband tries to smother his wife, leaving no tell-tale evidence. Or even a less dramatic situation where a women makes an effort to get a divorce, not yet complete, or is emotionally abused by her husband, confessing her fears to her friends and family. There are many situations where abuse or violence cannot be proven legally, but are very real nonetheless.
These women, (or husbands in the reverse situation), will have NO rights under the current law. Their is NO allowance for testimony to come in from friends and family about the quality of the marriage,. There is no allowance to allow family visitation to the victim if the husband doesn’t want it, even if it was determined that the victim was very close to her family and would have wished it, and a controlling husband can torment her family for years by holding visitation over their heads and treating his spouse however he wants to, short of actual physical abuse. In other words, a helpless woman becomes the property of the husband. That is shameful to me. We don’t even allow children to be treated this way by their parents and allow the courts to step in custody battles even when, not just physical abuse, but emotional abuse is suspected.
As someone brought up Britney Spears on here upthread, consider Britney’s quickie one day marriage to her friend in Las Vegas a few years ago. Let’s say she would have passed out that night from drinking too much and fallen into PVS. You know who would have controlled her for the rest of her life? Her one day husband. That is just wrong.
Marriage is not an absolute certificate of ownership. We need to start qualifying it, just like we qualify everything else in life. . There has to be some changes in the law to let the quality of the marriage and the best interests of the victim to come in to play. That would just be civilized, no?
scs
Just another quick thought I forgot to add. If we allow hearsay evidence of ONE comment about a TV show as enough evidence to end a life, uttered 7 years after the fact as evidence of a victim’s true wishes, we should also allow repeated utterances and actions expressing a desire to get a divorce also as evidence of a victim’s true wishes, and allow her to get a divorce. If it’s good enough for death, it should be good enough for divorce, I say.
scs
And by the way Faux News, keep up the good work on reading the Communist Manifesto. Brushing up your reading may actually help you form some critical thinking skills someday! Hey, stranger things have happened.
Richard Bennett
scs, you’re still lying. The research study I linked – not a newspaper article but the real deal – shows clearly that murder is not the leading cause of death for pregant women, and in fact it’s not even the leading injury-related cause of death. News reports and press releases put out by organizations like NOW misrepresented it.
You owe us a retraction.