Submitted to you without comment:
Last fall, Haleigh was hospitalized after her stepfather allegedly burned her and beat her nearly to death with a baseball bat. Haleigh, in a coma, was kept alive by a feeding tube and ventilator. Doctors said she was “virtually brain dead” — in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.
The Massachusetts Department of Social Services wanted to remove Haleigh’s feeding and breathing tubes.
***The only person who wanted Haleigh alive was her stepfather, who will likely be charged with murder if Haleigh dies.
Two days ago, Massachusetts’ Supreme Court ruled against Haleigh’s stepfather, saying it was ”unthinkable” to give the power to make a life-and-death decision to the man accused of putting Haleigh in a coma. “Court: State can let beaten girl die,” the headlines trumpeted.
Just one small complication for all of those who, for whatever reason, were in such a rush to “let Haleigh die:”
Haleigh wants to live.
***Everyone had given up on Haleigh–except Haleigh.
This is a huge story, a wake-up call to “right-to-die” ideologues who recklessly put such unlimited trust in the medical profession and Nanny State. The same government bureaucrats and doctors who had conclusively deemed the 11-year-old girl “hopeless” and her vegetative state “irreversible” now tell us she is responding to stimuli and breathing on her own.
They were wrong.
Next, look for The Professionals to tell us that despite her improvements, her “quality of life” will be worthless. We already know how they feel about people with feeding tubes.
No, I did not make up the “Haleigh wants to live” part. I just made it bigger so you couldn’t miss it. Love the Schiavo tie-in at the end there, too.
my cat
I hope she is getting better,but I’m not sure the signs described here indicate that. What kind of stimuli is she responding to? Terri Schiavo could respond to being poked since her pain receptors were fine. I’d be more persuaded if Haleigh was responding to voices or speaking herself.
Jcricket
Why can’t evil people like Malkin be used as political footballs by right-wing idealouges? Surely she’d enjoy it.
Instead we get people like this girl or Terri Schiavo being abused because idiots like Malkin can’t stand the idea people are given a choice to remove themselves or their loved ones from states of psuedo-existence that modern medicine has created.
Again, “States rights”, “Nanny state”, “Judicial activism” are all code words for “when things don’t go my way I’ll use a phrase to cover this situation despite it probably being the opposite of anything I’ve argued in the past” Malkin is especially good at this.
How people still believe that it’s Democrats who want to interfere with the way you live is mind-boggling. Although, I understand where bigots and racists get the idea – they think that interfering with their right to push their bigotry on the rest of us is, in itself, unacceptable interference.
Pb
You know who actually did want to live? Tirhas Habtegiris. Fuck you, Michelle Malkin.
Lines
Haleigh must be a pretty white girl, lets check the picture……..
BINGO!
chopper
first off, schiavo was in a vegetative state for like what, 15 years? the only doctors who claimed she had any chance at all of recovering were either quacks, or bill frist (but i repeat myself).
second, who the hell is malkin to say what the kid wants? for all she knows, the kid is going to ‘respond to stimuli’ by pounding “kill me now” in morse code with her head against the wall.
personally, i don’t think someone in a PVS should be disconnected until a sufficient time has passed to allow no reasonable doubt that the person won’t get any better. but malkin taking this kids story and using it as schiavo II: electric boogaloo reeks of ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ politicking.
besides, as pointed out above, what about the kids who were removed from ventilators by the hospital/insurance company despite their parents’ pleas to the contrary?
The Other Steve
Umm… This case is completely different from Schiavo.
canuckistani
I’m guessing Malkin knows she wants to live because Dr. Frist saw her on videotape.
If there’s a down side to being an atheist, it’s being denied the hope that Michelle Malkin and her ilk will get their comeuppance in the afterlife.
Louise
Oh dear. I think this may be my fault. :-)
I worked with people who survived traumatic brain injuries and their families for 10 years. A persistent vegetative state (extensive brain damage, and especially brain stem damage,which this girl has — as opposed to a coma that does not occur because of such damage) is not something from which you recover, and speaking for myself and many people I’ve known, not a way in which I would want to be kept alive, even if the feeding tube could be removed.
How people can believe that there is a loving God waiting for us in the afterlife, and say that this child should be kept “alive” in a living hell, is completely beyond me.
Steve
Malkin apparently imagines some huge “pro-death” culture of bureaucrats, doctors, and liberals, that can’t wait to execute this poor child.
All I see is a terribly tragic situation and a mother who doesn’t think a vegetative state is any kind of life for her child and feels the compassionate thing is to let her rest.
If her condition has miraculously improved, my assumption is that her mother would now want to wait and see what happens.
But seriously, what do people like Malkin want? If you’re in an apparently irreversible coma, and you want to die, apparently she wants the government to force you to be kept alive indefinitely, just because a bunch of people who know you as nothing more than a picture in the paper demand the chance to pray for a miracle. Or, better yet, a chance to score political points by portraying liberals as “pro-death.”
chopper
i think i can translate some of this from MalkinSpeak.
“yeah, stupid doctors, thinking they know more about brain injury than i do. the nerve!”
“yeah, screw the nanny state! unless they’re enforcing my personal beliefs in medical care against the will of the patient, then yay nanny state!”
Pb
chopper,
Or in the case I hilighted, despite her own plea to the contrary. But who cares, she’s poor, non-white, and conscious…
neil
You’re kidding. The Schiavo lovers are teaming up with the _murderer who put his daughter in this condition to begin with_?
Although I have been wrong about this many times before, I really don’t think people will fall for this.
KC
Does anyone take Malkin seriously really?
jcricket
Chopper – Let’s rewrite your quote and apply it to every supposed “core belief” the Republicans hang their hats on:
Insert “Judges”, “Trial Lawyers”, “Politicans”, etc.
That’s one reason liberals are just better equipped to handle the modern world. Rather than subscribe to some orthodoxy (“states rights”, “originalism”) across the board and then flip-flop every time something comes along to challenge that, we actually hold nuanced viewpoints that can change when appropriate, given new information/realities.
For example, liberals just recognize that modern medicine has created opportunities that extend existence beyond a reasonable point, and can help dying people leave this world peacefully. Conservatives can’t fit that kind of nuance into their pro-life/pro-death thinking (despite their support of the death penalty, which clearly is a “nuance” – albiet a blunt one).
What’s even more curious is when two conservative memes collide – seeing which one wins. For example, the Bush WH asking the federal government to overturn Oregon’s laws runs afoul of their “leave me alone”, “states rights” and “judicial activism” philosophies, so apparently the “culture of life” is a trump card.
Basically, BS and hypocrisy are built into rigid ideological thinking.
Krista
Holy shit, Malkin’s a hack. Look at the quote from the mother:
And this is Malkin’s take on it:
(emphasis mine)
So the mother wants her daughter to be able to be at rest, but according to Malkin, she wants to murder her child. And somehow, the miserable fucker who put the kid in the hospital in the first place is the sympathetic figure?
I’m convinced: the U.S. has been infested with extraterrestrials. No human being has thought processes like some of these right-wingers.
neil
So the mother wants to disconnect her daughter’s corpse from the machines so she can get on with her life. On the other hand, the stepfather wants to keep her legally alive so he doesn’t get charged with murder.
And the ‘family defenders’ are defending the stepfather. We should make sure everybody hears about it.
neil
I’m thinking maybe the Democrats should get way out front on this one, to bait the Christian extremists into standing up against them. Wouldn’t that be a fun wedge issue? Republican Senators, you have a choice: defend a murderer or piss-off your ‘culture of life’ base!
Ha ha ha, oh man. Too bad they’re not smart enough.
Geek, Esq.
I think we should compromise and let Malkin lock the little girl up in a concentration camp.
Steve
I don’t want to see the Democrats try to score points from this situation, either. Some people thought the Democrats should have opposed the Schiavo grandstanding more vigorously; I disagreed because I thought they did the right thing by basically remaining neutral and letting the Republicans press on with their crusade.
After the fact, it’s fair to say “do you really want these control freaks making your personal choices for you?” but while the poor girl is lying there, she deserves better than to be part of a tug-of-war between two political parties.
neil
I thought they did the right thing by basically remaining neutral and letting the Republicans press on with their crusade.
That’s true, but half the country probably believed that the Democrats were taking positive actions to murder Schiavo, or at least that they weren’t neutral. Anyway, my point was just that the Republicans have probably learned their lesson and will try to remain more ‘neutral’ this time as well, which is why Democrats should force their hand.
If there’s one thing the Democrats need to learn, it’s to bait the Republicans into making weak arguments. You would think after 6 years of having it done to them, they’d have figured it out.
DougJ
Not true. It was a political catastrophe for the Republicans — they won’t stick their noses into this one, except for those who especially need to suck up to the religious right.
This case is just too unsavory. We’ll hear about it on Scarborough obviously, but most of America just doesn’t have the stomach for it. And no one wants to side with the murderous step-father.
KC
Again, does anyone take Malkin seriously? Just asking.
The Other Steve
I don’t think it’s a question of listening to her.
Malkin is just repeating what the conservative moonbats are already thinking. She’s learned how to do this to attract hits to her website.
neil
I disagree, DougJ. Clearly there are a lot of people who want to side with the murderous step-father. They may be a tiny but vocal minority, but why not blow them up until they represent.. dare I say it? the heart and soul of the Republican party.
neil
I said that totally like a Democrat. Let me try again.
They may look like a tiny minority to you, but they arguably represent the heart and soul of the Republican party.
Wrye
Arguably…heh. There’s a word.
I think what isn’t arguable is that they want to be the heart and soul of the Republican party.
DougJ
Neil, I know what you’re saying, but you’re not cynical enough. Rove and the others who actually run the party want nothing to do with this. They’ll make some strange coded references to Dredd Scott and talk about the culture of life but we won’t see GWB cut his vacation short to sign the “Save Harleigh” bill. (He is on vacation now, right?)
Sojourner
Wow, can we sign Malkin up for universal health care so poor kids can receive medical care that will allow them a healthy childhood?
Zifnab
I’m comforted by the fact that the Republican Party has thrown its moral conscience in behind a convicted child abuser. I think that really does help exemplify what the dogma of the Republican ideology is all about. Theology first. Common sense somewhere far behind.
So to Malkin and the rest, I say bring it on. Seriously. The liberals have their Tookie Williams – an inevitably unsympathetic criminal that garners no widespread support for ending the death penalty. Let the conservatives have their Haleigh Poutre, a beaten and abused child in such a pitiful state that no one with a heart would allow her to continue such a painful existance. We all remember how successful the Terri Shavio legislation was. Let’s see how well our leaders handle it again.
The Dems could use another opportunity to sit back and watch Republicans castrate themselves.
neil
I know they don’t, DougJ, that’s exactly why it’d make an effective wedge. If we assume that half of the voters in the country follow Rove’s beck and call regardless of their own ideology, then we might as well join up now because it is hopeless. But that’s not the case — the alignment is temporary and weak and must be exploited. With wedge issues. Rove has been utilizing the inchoate rage of this group for years now. It should be used against him. We have the ability to use it against him.
Blue Neponset
Bingo! The only time non-wingnuts go to Malkin’s website is when she writes a dumbass story like the one above.
Ignoring Malkin is the worst thing we can do to her, and she has been on my ‘pay no mind’ list for a good, long time.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Don’t ya just love how the Pro-PVS people like Malkin try to frame this issue and Schiavo as the court against the family when it is actually the family members vs themselves?
The courts merely make a ruling. If the stepfather is the only person who wants to keep her on the support then that means the mother, the father, the brother, the sister, etc etc all want her off.
This isn’t the courts ruling over a family, this is the courts ruling for the family and against the piece of shit who put her in this state.
Mr.Ortiz
I’ve got a great compromise: Keep the girl on life support, but take her out of the hospital and put her in Michelle Malkin’s living room. I mean, those “medical professionals” don’t know what they’re doing anyway. In fact, every conservative household should adopt a vegetable. I’m pretty sure it’s what Jesus would do, and it’s just temporary, anyway: a little chicken soup and some TLC will have those veggies back on their feet in no time! Yay!
DougJ
I see what you’re saying, neil. But ultimately, I think that people would just like the government to stay out of these decisions and to keep quiet the whole thing. The last thing the dems need is for Joe Biden to give some half hour speech on patients’ rights.
Paul L.
You did not read this did you?
Girl in vegetative state reported to improve
Of course if she recovers you will deny even saying any of this?
Nikki
So going to hell, Mr. Ortiz.
But I understand.
Lines
This whole thing is just another attempt by the right to paint the Democrats as “the party of death”, a label they seem to think is the greatest thing since sliced paint chips. For any party to get involved in a family’s grief and personal affairs this way only indicates the level of debasement they are willing to undergo.
Another Jeff
Is there some rule that says whenever Malkin or people like her talk about these cases, they must ALWAYS refer to the person by their first name?
“Terri is….”, “Haleigh feels…..”
It’s certainly not the most important aspect of what’s going on here, but it’s fucking annoying.
Lines
Hey Paul L, they said the same thing about Terri. Will the mother have to wait 15 more years and a Frist emergency legislative session before her wishes are followed?
Otto Man
Good point. “Michelle suffers from delusions of grandeur, a belief that she knows what’s best for everyone, and a strange affection for internment camps. Won’t you help Michelle? Everyone around her hates her, but Michelle wants to be loved!“
The Disenfranchised Voter
Uhhh another thing…this girl isn’t in a PVS to begin with. I;m fairly certain that in order to be classified as a PVS you must be in a VS for quite sometime. The fact that this only happened last fall leads me to believe Haleigh was never in a PVS to begin with.
Someone correct me if I am wrong.
neil
I see what you’re saying, neil. But ultimately, I think that people would just like the government to stay out of these decisions and to keep quiet the whole thing. The last thing the dems need is for Joe Biden to give some half hour speech on patients’ rights.
True, but the invocation of Joe Biden giving a speech could be used to dissuade the Democrats from doing anything. No, my idea is for the Dems to pull out that old Republican trick of the preemptive political attack. Blast them for getting involved in the same mess again. I promise you that some people will come out to receive that fire.
DougJ
Blast them for getting involved in the same mess again.
I agree with that.
srv
I for one welcome the new culture of propping up the brain dead.
jack
Not again.
You know, the one thing I remember most about the Shiavo case that struck me as horrific was the proclamation that these cases were going to become far more common. Looks like that was true.
In the Shiavo case, the brain told the tale. It wasn’t all there. It was unable to function beyond reflex motion. I imagine that before this is out we’ll see this poor girls’ CAT scans published all over the net–just like Terri’s, and I imagine that we’ll find people out there willing to scream that the lack of a cerebral cortex–or whatever other damage is done–doesn’t matter–her hand twitches!
And, of course, there will be those who will leap to make politics out of this. They’ll rant about conservatives–and on THIS site, to boot. John Cole was, like a large portion of the right side of the aisle, in favor of allowing Terri to die. The schisms on the right were very easy to see during the whole Shiavo mess. On the left? I can’t say. I can tell what I observed, but that is only a surface thing, I’m not one of them. But politics has no place here–for any source
Pb, regarding the Tirhas story, do you have any more information? As someone who works in the medical field, I have to say that cessation of services due to inability to pay is almost unheard of(don’t confuse this with refusal to pay). Particularly when said cessation is guaranteed to lead to a patient’s death. In fact, the case as presented, seems an open/shut case of medical malfeaseance–pay-or-die.
Either there’s more to this than is being told or the family has already won a major suit.
Pb
Paul L.,
Question for you: do you support only removing ventilators from conscious people who can’t afford them?
Mr.Ortiz
From the story you linked to, it’s clear that the doctors are monitoring the situation and will make the appropriate decision at the appropriate time, i.e. they don’t need Michelle Malkin or anyone else to tell them how to do their job.
One of these days, you’re going to show up at a protest for a cause like this, and Fred Phelps will already be there, waving his signs and shouting into his megaphone. Then you’ll have a decision to make: do you leave grieving families alone, or do you heckle and shame them on national television to score political points? If you chose B, then Fred will be happy to welcome you into the Westboro Baptist Church.
Pb
jack,
Here’s a more recent summary of it; I’m not sure that there’s any new information there, but it might be stated better. Apparently this sort of thing is representative of the ‘compassionate conservatism’ in Texas now.
Oh, and as for that “ventilator insurance” asshole–I wrote him an e-mail, and copied it to Slate and the Washington Post–never heard a thing back from the cowards.
Paul L.
The biological mother does not have custody of Haleigh. DSS does. Just like Terri’s mother did not have custody. Michael did.
Her wishes do not matter. But from the article it appears she might be willing to wait a little longer.
“Avrett Haleigh’s biological mother, who said she never wanted to give up custody of Haleigh said yesterday she is relieved by the ruling, though happy that more medical tests will be conducted.
When she visited Haleigh at the hospital last week, she said, she observed Haleigh’s hand moving, which gave her new hope that Haleigh’s condition might have changed.
But Avrett said she was later convinced by DSS officials and doctors that those movements were involuntary and not signs of revived brain function”
[ED- Paul- if you do not start embedding your links, I am going to kick you in the ding-ding. Thanks, John Cole]
Alexandra
My father had a brain aneurysm and a car accident last November. He had strokes all over his brain which meant that he would never move or think again. My family took him off life support and he died peacefully a few days later, with his family around him. The doctors offered to put him on life support, but why? What is the point of a life that is nothing but responses to pain? I don’t think I was wild about the Schiavo parents before my father’s death. But the experience of being part of the choice, of following my father’s stated wishes, of being willing to face his mortality, makes me feel even more strongly about this issue. People don’t live forever. Sadly, we all die. Some people are trapped in a twilight between life and death from which they can never emerge alive. Oh god, give them peace. Let them go to the fate we will all share, surrounded by the support of the people who love them.
SeesThroughIt
Brilliant.
Also, fuck Michelle Malkin. That idiot couldn’t think her way out of a wet paper bag.
As for this:
I certainly like the idea of hoisting these fuckwit right-wingers on their own petard–and you do pretty much have to spell it out in giant neon letters like this in order for a lot of people to get it–but I value a family’s right to privacy far more than that. People who can think gor themselves already know the right-wing lunacy on this notion, and this case is making it quite clear.
But as with the Schiavo debacle, I think it’d be disgusting to use a suffering family as a political football. And that, right-wing assholes of the world, is called taking the high road, something you prattle endlessly about and yet know nothing about.
Krista
By bolding that, I presume that you mean to say that the mother is being somehow coerced or manipulated by the doctors and officials into putting her child to death? Question: what on earth would they have to gain from this kid being taken off support?
Can you not entertain the possibility that the doctors aren’t politically motivated, don’t have shady motivations, and maybe just don’t want the mother to falsely get her hopes up?
skip
Anecdotal puffery.
Meanwhile, children die in Darfur every day and Malkin couldn’t find it on a map.
Krista
Alexandra — I’m sorry for your loss, and think it’s lovely that your father had such love, empathy and support around him at the end. He must have been a very good man.
Ozymandius
Krista, doctors are the agents of Satan. That is, unless they vote Republican. Then you can trust them. But these doctors abviously have worked out an agreement with the Dark Prince for this little girl’s soul. Most likely for an old bag of cheetos. It doesn’t take much for these heathens to sell out their fellow man.
Al Maviva
I’d strangle her myself if it would get everybody aside from her mother to shut the fuck up about it.
Yeah, that includes everybody on both sides of the issue. By the time you fucknuts with strong feelings on both sides get your way, it’ll take an order from the Supreme Court to let anybody live, die, fish or cut bait. No, there shouldn’t be a law allowing you to starve off your comatose relatives; no there shouldn’t be a law forcing you to keep somebody alive just on the sayso of their would-be murderer. There’s a lot of decisions that are only appropriate for the private sphere. This is one of them.
yet another jeff
I don’t see the GOP getting involved in this…Mass. isn’t a swing state.
Paul L.
No, did I say I did?
I could use the “right to die” argument that she was dying of cancer with no hope of recovery. Why let her suffer?
Looks like a victory for the right to die side.
Note: the law George W. Bush required the hospital to gave the life-sustaining treatment for 10 day. before the law the hospital could disconnect life-sustaining treatment with 72 hours notice.
Of course I would expect the NY times to spin it.
Pb
Al Maviva,
I think I agree with you, but… is strangling her yourself part of the private sphere? :)
Ancient Purple
May I take a moment just to remind people that everyone should have a living will, Power of Attorney, Health Care Proxy, etc. all in line.
I know we are talking about a minor here, but just a friendly reminder that you can make your wishes know well before anything happens.
Mac Buckets
Another reminder that Reason #658 of the downfall of western civilization will be the insane notion that people are entitled to live forever (and should sue if they don’t).
Marcus Wellby
Well timed indeed – combined with the “Osama gonna get you” warnings it looks like the GOP really needs to scare its already frightened little minions into action.
I say in two weeks we will be learning how attacks on Abramoff are anti-Semetic.
jack
Pb, well, you were right, the article doesn’t shed any new light–though I question it’s focus.
It blames the law Bush signed–and then goes off into an economic rant.
But the law only allows doctors(doctors, not lawyers, politicians or accountants)to discontinue treatment when it’s “medically inappropriate”. Finance does not seem to enter into the equation(save on the malpractice side)
There are times when treatment is medically inappropriate. Most revolve around the treatment being useless. Was that the case with Tirhas?
No one seems to be saying.
Is there a lawsuit?
Speaking from experience, the question of the patient’s ability to pay generally doesn’t enter into it for things that aren’t elective. If something needs doing, the hospital does it and figures out how to pay for it later. I’ve dealt with hospitals in Texas, and they didn’t strike me as having such a radically different stance.
There’s got to be more to this.
Laws can be blamed for whatever you want, but in the end it’s the doctor and the nurses who take away the life support. It’s the doctor who willingly sets his patient on the road to death. I just can’t see a doctor doing that for a few bucks.
Krista
Extremely well-put.
Of course, in a case like this, where the mother has no custody, and the stepfather’s the one who put her in the hospital, and we can assume that the father is either dead or out of the picture, it’s going to get complex. I do think they should be able to hash it out amongst themselves, without getting the media, the pundits, or the politicians involved. That helps nothing.
Pb
Paul L.,
No, you didn’t say that you did, and I didn’t imply that you did. However, I was curious as to your position, because I haven’t seen you say word one about Tirhas Habtegiris, either. Where’s the outrage? However, after that post, I think I see where you stand:
Nice job utterly mischaracterizing the ‘right to die’ side. Let’s assume that she did have the ‘right to die’. She *didn’t want to*. So, there goes that BS.
As for George W. Bush’s law (and what it may or may not have changed in the Texas statutes), I’ve looked into that a bit, and I haven’t been able to definitively find that much about it one way or the other. However, he is still responsible for signing into law legislation that allows this idiocy, *and*, I haven’t yet seen a documented case of this happening at all in Texas before he signed it into law. And I certainly haven’t seen him rushing in at the last minute to save the few people who have died since this law’s passage, unlike his actions in the Schiavo case.
But the central issues remain: why did she have to die, and why don’t you seem to care, especially considering your outrage in these other situations.
Paul L.
$$$$$
Patient Dead, Issues Live On
“Thank God, they were willing to take that chance. And let me promise you something, because I’ve seen it personally: when your health turns bad, liberal caregivers will be willing to take similar chances with you. Killing the old and the sick is not merely SOP; it’s fashionable.”
Krista
Paul – That was simply an opinion piece. I’m glad you found a kindred spirit who agrees with you that doctors are willing to take money to murder people, and that they lie about their patients’ chances in order to manipulate the next of kin into pulling the plug, but I’m afraid I’m going to need something besides opinion and speculation.
Sorry.
Paul L.
I am not outraged and I do not march with the anti-abortion fundies at protests.
From what I have read of the story ,I feel that maybe we should give the little girl some more time to recover. That is it. let’s determine if “Haleigh Poutre,”is” a beaten and abused child in such a pitiful state that no one with a heart would allow her to continue such a painful existance…”
Steve
It’s silly to say that the whole thing should be nothing but a private matter. It’s not that easy.
In the Schiavo case, you had her husband who said she would have wanted one thing, and you had her parents who said she would have wanted something else. Given that set of facts, how are you supposed to leave it as a wholly private matter, if they can’t reach any kind of agreement? Are they supposed to wrestle for it?
I completely deplore the political spectacle the Schiavo case turned into, but that doesn’t mean I think it was wrong to have a Florida court determine what should happen as an initial matter. They have a law in Florida that says how these decisions are made, a court conducted a trial and heard the evidence, and that’s where it should have ended. I don’t see any way it could have been resolved as a “wholly private matter.”
And Al’s statement that “there shouldn’t be a law allowing you to starve off your comatose relatives” is nothing more than a Malkin-like twisting of the proposition that even if your relative is in a PVS and you know she doesn’t want to be kept that way, there shouldn’t be a law authorizing you to discontinue life-sustaining treatment. I completely disagree with that.
Pb
jack,
The economic rant is quite justified, considering what it is in response to. I agree with you about the law, what they’re quoting by itself doesn’t appear to require the hospital to do anything, it appears to allow them to do it. However, the hospital seems to disagree with that interpretation (“On Dec. 1, hospital authorities notified her brother that unless another hospital could be found to treat his sister, Baylor would be forced to discontinue care after 10 days.”). I think what they’re talking about falls under § 166.046.
I’m no lawyer, and you’d might need a few to properly reason that mess out. But either the hospital is lying, or malicious, or–perhaps more likely–one way or another the law required them to do what they did, and against the wishes of the (conscious) patient and her family. And again, due to that self-same law, I doubt the hospital would be liable in the event of a lawsuit. Then again, as long as only poor people are dying, that probably cuts down on the odds of a lawsuit as well.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Who gave the cutody to DSS?
If the mother willingly gave them cutody then guess what folks, the DSS makes the fucking decisions.
If that isn’t how she wanted it then she shouldn’t have given them custody.
The Disenfranchised Voter
*custody
rinse and repeat once.
Pb
Paul L.,
Wow, way to evade the question. I always knew you were a hack, but this is just painful to watch. Wake me up if you ever discover a consistent moral position to take on these issues, until then it’s probably better for me to ignore you.
Pooh
I (heart) Al Maviva.
The Disenfranchised Voter
There shouldn’t be a law allowing guardians to make decisions about the medical care when the person themselves can’t?
Well I’ll have to disagree there.
Who do you think should make these decisions?
The mere fact that you try to equate both sides shows that you’re almost as bad as the pro-PVS crowd. Their side is wrong. The only reason why the courts have to get involved is because the family themselves can’t decide. As Steve put it “Are they supposed to wrestle for it?”.
You would be wise to heed the words of Steve’s comment above.
ppGaz
I don’t disagree with what Steve said, but I wonder … why would we “err” on the side of keeping people in PVS alive in the first place? In other words, why is life support the default response? It seems to me a grotesque misapplication of our technological ability to keep the patient “alive” when nature has obviously made another judgment. Why do we need courts and acts of Congress to get involved again?
Why isn’t the concept of “Do No Harm” interpreted to mean, don’t cruelly prolong life when there is no point?
Krista
Yes, but you’re fickle, Pooh. :)
Pooh
Krista, you may say its wrong, but I just can’t quit him.
Krista
I have no idea what you and Al look like, so just to keep the mental image from traumatizing me, I’ll tell myself that you’re both cute as buttons.
The Other Steve
My girlfriend made an interesting comment the other day. Something I agree with.
We were talking about Ariel Sharon, and she said “It’s amazing how technically advanced Israel is. Their doctors brought Sharon back from God because they didn’t want to lose him.”
The key to the comment is “back from God”. The point being, God made a decision and he choose for Sharon to die. Man intervened in that decision. Because make no mistake, without that medical care, he surely would have died.
Now there’s another aspect of this in that God created mankind and gave us the intelligence to create that medical science. The intelligence that allows us to intervene in the process of life and death.
But with that intelligence comes responsibility.
Frankly, I think those who advocate we keep people in vegetative states alive forever are intervening against the will of God, and not for altruistic or moral reasons.
Al Maviva
Honestly Steve, who gives a shit who lives or dies? Really. I’m not engaging in Malkinistic twisting here.
If it’s not a completely able bodied adult, why should any life have some intrinsic value that the legal system should weigh in on? I think I’m starting to agree with Senator Boxer’s and Peter Singer’s position, that the legal right to abortion ends a couple weeks after birth, when the mother decides to take the baby home, and when the baby checks out free of any birth defects. At least the public policy thinking side of me is starting to agree that life only has a subjective value. I’m also starting to agree with Dr. Kervorkian’s opinion, that if somebody expresses a death wish (other than drinking tap water in Tijuana) that we should oblige them, post haste. Likewise if their quality of life slips too low. Who is the state to stand in somebody’s way if they want to die, or if their family thinks it’s time? Who am I to say, or who is some idiot elderly lawyer in a black robe, or some legislature, to say?
Is it the rule I live by? No. Would I teach my kid that? No. I think it’s abhorrent and ghastly. But for public policy purposes, that’s probably what the law should be. If your baseline for the policy discussion is that my moral considerations are inappropriate, completely wrongheaded or fascistic, then the only consideration left is individual rights as defined by the individual – or by some other person close to the individual who can divine what the individual would have preferred, or who can make legal decisions on behalf of the individual.
So if a mother doesn’t want to be hindered by an unwanted child, or a couple Boomers don’t want to pay to keep their folks in a nursing home, which costs a lot of money, or if somebody is in a coma and on a ventilator, why should we bother? They made their decision, let’s be done with it.
I don’t want to sit here and fight one moronic policy fight after another amidst the mouth breathers on both sides, see my side lose each fight in turn, and be told every time that moral considerations and my insistence on the inherent dignity of each human life, and my Burkean arguments about the social fabric are not just wrong but irrelevant and evil – to put up with the same old insults every single time, only to cede just a little bit more space in the public policy realm to an ever expanding “right to die.” You can have all the space in this debate that you want, Steve. Take it. I don’t want it any more. Let’s just be finished with this debate and define the individual’s right to die as the point at which the individual, or third parties with some responsibility for the individual, think that the individual’s quality of life isn’t sufficiently high to allow the individual to keep on living. Laws have to be universally applicable, or then they aren’t laws, but rather a collection of special cases. Let’s set the law in this area and be done with this stupid, piecemeal, bitter debate.
I’m not being sarcastic. I’m tired of the fight, tired of being called names, etc. Let’s have a bright line rule and go with the result that favors, to the nth degree, the rights of the unencumbered, able bodied individual. If you are going to make this a legal matter then you are going to face legal fights from moralists like me every time it comes up, and I accept that we backward facing moralists are going to lose in court every single time. It’s just the march of progress and I’m not goiong to argue any more that the law should live in the same neighborhood as my moral position. So I’m willing to withdraw from the public policy debate entirely, let the families or the doctors make the decision, and not worry about it. Not my problem any more, Jose.
A very similar system is working out quite well in the Netherlands where the doctors have discretion to end the lives of children and elderly people and others that aren’t of sufficient quality, in their medical opinion. It is a very efficient way to control medical costs as well, since terminal patients never spend six months or a year or longer suffering away, dying, at tremendous expense.
If it is a private matter, if it is the mother’s decision, or “Joe would have wanted it this way,” then it’s not a matter for the courts, and I don’t want some other jerks trying to dress it up in legal process. The legal process is perverted enough without forcing it to do your bidding here. Just off the buggers, and be done with it. Don’t ask the legal system and elderly judges to wade in and weigh the value of everybody’s life under a thousand different circumstances – they are as capable of weighing the value of human lives as they are of permanently disposing of political questions, which is to say not very capable at all. The legal system has enough problems with playing god, without having to decide, thousands of time a year, when people should die. That’s a metaphysical question, and other than Justice Kennedy who has recognized a right to define the sweet mysteries of life, judges normally avoid granting standing to metaphysical questions as unjusticiable.
Sure, it may look a little horrifying at first to devolve this kind of power into the families’ and MD’s hands, as a number of doctors in the Netherlands have testified. But I see where we are going in the trajectory of the law, and we can eliminate a lot of debate if people like me just leave the battlefield. I’m positive that as we get used to the idea of eliminating people based on quality of life considerations, it won’t seem so horrifying at all.
And if you need legal approval, or feel it’s important for me and other morals-driven folks to call this moral, then perhaps you ought to ask yourself why you feel that way. This has nothing to do with state action, so no due process should be required; the state really shouldn’t be tinkering with the machinery of death. And as for my morals, I’m not ever going to morally approve of the scope of the right that Kervorkian and Singer are pushing, so my moral approval is not forthcoming. Ever. If offing this kid is “the right thing to do” – which I keep hearing over and over again – then you shouldn’t need some elderly lawyer and some idiot writing in blog comments to sanctify it. Like the good Catholic politicians who are personally opposed to abortion but in favor of it in practice, color me personally opposed to ending the lives of people by stopping feeding, pharmacological treatment or other means, but in favor of it in the public policy realm. And yeah, my personal opinion here is in line with my position in the Schiavo case – ceasing heroic measures like the ventilator is fine, removing ordinary measures like feeding tubes or antibiotics is not. But that moral distinction which I would make internally matters not a whit in the public policy debate, which I concede to you.
Let her starve. Why should I care any more about her than Tookie Williams?
Let’s all just quit this insanely bitter, nickel and dime slide down the slippery slope, and hop right to the bottom of it. It will save a lot of time and vindictive political fights.
Lines
Way to kill the conversation, Al. Good job.
DougJ
Don’t go soft on me, Mac. We need someone here who supports the culture of life.
Pooh
I no longer (heart) Al Maviva,
In all seriousness Al, I sympathise to an extent with your viewpoint, but I might suggest that your side of the argument picks cases which make them fairly easy to demonize. I don’t think anyone seriously argues that abortion is objectively ‘good’ (not even Stephen Levitt…), nor is removing someone from life-support, but these decisions are inherently contextual, and removing said context by imposing some top-down regulation from people who know what you want better than you do is paternalistic, intrusive and hubristic. I don’t neccesarily disagree with your ends, but the means chosen certainly do trouble me.
Steve
Al, I really don’t get to what extent you are sincere, and to what extent you are making a Swiftian point in hopes that, once you allow the “pro-death” forces free run of the battlefield, they will suddenly realize the horror of their position and relent.
Either way, I am completely with you as far as the autonomy of the competent individual. That is why I think physician-assisted suicide and the like is an absolute no-brainer. If I want to die, and someone out there thinks my life is too intrinsically precious to throw away, yadda yadda, why should their opinion matter to anyone at all? The fact that we live in a democracy does not mean that a majority should get to dictate my most personal family decisions. That’s what the courts have been saying all along in the privacy cases.
My only point, Al, was that you’re never going to solve a case like Schiavo with any kind of simple principle. The family was not in agreement. Florida law quite properly recognized the right of Terri Schiavo to make her own decision but the family couldn’t agree on what that decision would be, so someone has to be the arbiter. I think Florida had a very sound system, which is, let’s have a court hear all the evidence and make the very best decision it can about what the person’s wishes would be, and that’s the decision, period.
We won’t always get it right, and we’ll never know if the person would have miraculously emerged from that vegetative state if given 20 or 30 more years, but I think a system like that is the best we can do as an imperfect human society.
You say you’re withdrawing from the battlefield, Al, but I don’t think you’re my enemy. My enemy is the people who think they have the God-given right to use the power of government to tell me how I should live, who I can marry, how I should raise my children. I think my right to make these decisions is inalienable and I don’t really care if an electoral majority thinks otherwise. Free men don’t form governments in order to surrender sovereignty over their own bodies.
Al Maviva
Pooh, sorry, I’m not trying to demonize here. Please don’t feel that way, I’m sure you’re a person of good faith. But I’ve been told umpteen times, my morals are irrelevant and I shouldn’t impose them on people. Assuming that is correct, I’m just telling my morals to go regroup, go fight my strictly personal battles, and leave the public policy debate alone. Assuming morals have no place here, then the question of when to “let somebody die” as it is euphemistically phrased, is then reduced to a public policy line drawing exercise. A contextual question, as you put it quite well, just a matter of preference.
I’ve heard from the pro-euthenasia side (X+10) times, where X=too many, that morals are not only irrelevant here, but shouldn’t be applied at all in the public policy arena. Absent moral considerations and patently irrational (but for some treasured) christian humanist notions about the intrinsic dignity of all human life, there are no reliable answers here, just judgment calls based on the peculiar facts and our personal feelings about given situations.
I believe that we are heading ineluctably towards the (warning: moral judgment) ghoulish Dutch system. Since it’s inevitable, I’d just as soon make everything that the Hemlock Society asks for the law, and have people stop the absurd process of trying to dress up the decisionmaking process in judicial branch trappings and discussions of “mercy” or of individual rights, as if the Dutch euthanized after a vote by a panel of three doctors had a say in the matter. Call a spade a spade, then let’s make it a medical or family call and forget about it. This isn’t a hot bath that we lower ourselves into slowly, it’s a pretty big question and if we only get into it a bit at a time, and fudging around the edges, it seems to me that we are acting as if we were too fearful to confront exactly what it is we’re dealing with. Stripped of the moral and abstract arguments, killing some ill, injured or deformed person is just a matter of policy preference, so let’s go for it and be done with the stupid fighting. Yeah, sure, you can raise a couple practical arguments about the Dutch system, like oldsters getting bumped off for the inheritance, and accident victims and other seriously ill people getting treatment withheld as a cost saving measure, but those are canards that somebody like Stanley Kurtz would raise. But really, those are just glitches that conservatives raise because the moral arguments aren’t really taken seriously by non-conservatives.
Given my druthers, I’d counsel gentleness towards the afflicted under all circumstances, and in the absence of proof that the individual is on an irreversible downward spiral and quite near death, or alternately suffering terribly with no chance of recovery and no higher brain functions, I would consistently counsel to give life a chance, at least providing non-heroic measures such as feeding, or as much pain management medication as can be profitably used. That is a profoundly stupid public policy opinion if my moral basis isn’t fit to be seen in public. So, in the absence of any other argument, if the mother wants to take her off the ventilator, or withdraw her feeding tube, or whatever, hey, why not. It’s her call any more, not mine, I don’t have a good argument against it. My version of morality took it’s ball and went home. It ain’t playin’ any more.
Like Justice Blackmun, I’m tired of tinkering here. I’m done with it. My morality, henceforth a purely personal consideration when it comes to this issue, draws the lines for me, and hopefully for my family. Everybody else, including the politicians, can draw the lines wherever they see fit. As a matter of public policy, if life hasn’t an intrinsic value that is unrelated to the value we subjectively assign to individual human lives, then the question is answered, and where we go on this question really doesn’t matter very much. If the value of a life in question is a variable that only the beholder can assign, or only a judge can assign, then the situation is basically standardless, and I’m not using that term critically, but as a factual descriptor. I believe that like abortion or other questions about First Principles, in that where one starts necessarily dictates where one finishes. Just as nobody is making me get an abortion, nobody is making me euthanize anybody else either. So I think as a matter of public policy, we ought to allow families and doctors to mercifully end the lives of those people whose quality of life is too low, suffering is too high, or who are in terminal illnesses, and we should quit being squeamish about what it is we’re doing, and where this road leads, and in fact should just drive faster unless we wish to worsen our bitter partisan debate on the issue.
ppGaz
I am in total agreement, Steve, but I am still puzzled as to why the default behavior of the healthcare system is to prolong the life of a PVS person at all.
I can’t find that this is consistent with the whole idea of medicine in the first place. Who decided that it was?
Rex
What color is the sky in your world, Michelle?
Impeccable timing indeed.
Pb
Al,
How about the real-life situation I’ve outlined? None of your posts seem to address the scenario where the person in question *consciously doesn’t want to die* yet.
demimondian
Interestingly, when the original Dutch euthanasia complaints were reexamined, they turned out to be largely false. Yes, any failures is too many, but the truth is that the “ghoulish Dutch system” turns out to be not so terribly bad.
The issue in this case, as in the Schiavo case, is whether the victim is genuinely
. In the Schiavo case, do you believe that she had any chance of recovery? (I’m not asking if you felt that adequate evidence was forthcoming prior to autopsy; I’m asking if she had a chance of recovery given the facts the autopsy demonstrated.) This case is even harder — half of the neurobiologist in me is shaking his head in despair at the poor child, but the other half keeps saying “this is a child. they are much more plastic. there may still be hope.”
Pooh
Al,
Excellent post. And food for thought. Let me give it the consideration it is due before I respond.
Al Maviva
And no Steve, I’m not hoping you’ll be horrified. Please. Have at it. Be my guest. I’m not being Swiftian about it. I think an expansion of euthanasia practices is profoundly wrong as a moral matter, but as you remind me immediately above, my tired old morals shouldn’t have anything to do with my public policy choices, how I vote, etc. You want to know why I half facetiously said I’d strangle the kid myself? Because I’m sick and tired of seeing Pat Robertson and Tom Delay on one side, versus Jack Kervorkian and Peter Singer on the other. On top of it, I’m sick of hearing it from mouth breathers who think I’m a freakin’ troglodyte because I’m not real enthusiastic about the project. It’s really not worth it to me to debate any longer. I’ve lived in some nasty corners of the world, heard shots fired in anger a number of times, and I know there are worse things than death – it doesn’t really bother me much. I generally have a problem with people who inflict death on the unwilling, but assisted suicide and euthanasia of those who don’t voice an objection to it or probably aren’t capable of voicing an objection, I suppose, isn’t too bad once you disregard the moral issues. Maybe Peter Singer is right that a chicken has a better quality of life than a retarded child, and thus has a greater claim to legal protection – again absent the moral judgment that humans are superior to chickens, I don’t really know how to honestly argue with that. So I’m not kidding, if we want to rid ourselves of some folks with low quality of life, I probably shouldn’t care, as you ably point out. None of my damn moralizing business. I do have a problem with all the euphemisms here – it seems to me if we think we’re doing nothing wrong in making this choice that we ought to be proud of it, but that again isn’t a concern because right and wrong are just moral labels, in the public policy arena we maybe ought to be concerned more with legal v. illegal.
Sorry we crossed posts because I think my answer to Pooh would have clarified where I’m coming from.
Pb
Al,
That’s at least a fairly sane position, I think. Not that we should necessarily disregard moral issues altogether–I also have much more of a problem with cold-blooded murder than I do with your average victimless crime. And where we all disagree, I think we should keep the decision as close to the original affected person as possible (“Do What Ye Will, An Ye Harm None” :)).
Pooh
Al, let’s back away for a moment and come at this from the other direction – at what point is your morality allowed to trump mine, or vice-versa? More importantly, when should that judgment be given the force of law? “Morality” may be a sticky word here because it means different things to different folks, not just different morals, but different definitions of what “morality” contains.
FWIW, this specific case seems to be something of a tempest in a teapot, (largely thanks to Ms. Malkin’s, er, artful framing of the issue…) as the decision appears to be in the hands of the most appropriate person, the poor girl’s mother.
Steve
What I don’t understand at all is how recognizing the autonomy of the afflicted person takes us at all down the slippery slope to euthanasia. Euthanasia, in which society can force you to die, is just the other side of the coin from the Malkin Rule, in which society can force you to live. Promoting the decision of the individual over the desires of society is the polar opposite of both these concepts.
Look at the Schiavo example for a moment. Society did not get to decide whether she lived or died. At no time did the courts apply any standard other than the question of what the individual, Terri Schiavo, wanted. If the evidence had established that she wanted to linger on in a PVS, then linger on she would have.
I don’t see a slippery slope here, and I categorically reject society’s right to tell me “Sorry, we know you want to die, but we can’t let you carry it out because somewhere down the road it might lead to killing a person who doesn’t want to die.” It’s my decision and my wishes are controlling, period.
demimondian
how recognizing the autonomy of the afflicted person takes us at all down the slippery slope to euthanasiaI disagree with Al terribly here on the morals, but this is something where honesty is critical.
In the case of this child, as in the Schiavo case, we *are* talking about euthanasia. There’s really no other name for letting someone’s body die — their body was alive, and it is dead, and we caused that transition. We did it kindly, so it is “a sweet death”, a euthanisia, but…that’s what it is.
Steve
I assume what we’re talking about with euthanasia is killing someone, or letting them die, because society deems their life not worth saving, without much regard for what the person actually wants.
I see this as completely distinct from the situation where we kill someone, or let them die, because it’s their voluntary choice to die.
When you’re talking about a kid it’s a difficult scenario because you can’t really ask what they “would have wanted,” as they were never a competent adult able to make that determination at any time in their life. Still, if we as a society say that a parent or guardian makes that choice for their child, which is pretty much how we handle other situations involving minors, then I see it as a private decision to let them die, not society’s decision.
John Cole
Al- I respect your feelings that your perceptions of morality are being thrown in your face, and that is not my intent here, but I need to remind you of something- during the Schiavo unpleasantness, it was most certainly not us ghoulish adherents of the culture of death who were heaving the insults, but the other side.
My position was clear- I stood with Terri Schaivo (as determined in judicial proceedings that were exhaustive and transparent), her husband, the law, and the respectable members of the medical community (to include the various individuals who served in the role of guardian ad litem), and felt that the decision was to be left to Terri and her husband. It was not my ‘side’ who was attempting to win some larger political battle, or who was attempting to foist my morality on Terri and Michael Schiavo.
It was not my side who had Peggy Noonan penning columns attacking people for worshipping a culture of death. It was not my side pretending that everyone who thought the law was clear and that this was a decision for Terri and Michael Schiavo was some evil ghoul who believed in mandatory euthanasia.
It was not my side lying about medical records, impugning the integrity of one of the victims (Michael Schiavo), making remote diagnoses via video tape, or rushing to Washington to make up new laws to subvert already established law.
It was not my side screaming about activist judges, or attacking anyone who dared to follow the law.
So while I understand your feelings may be injured because of this debate, let’s be realistic about whose side played the role of provocateur. My side did not want Terri Schiavo dead. My side wanted her and her husband to be left the fuck alone.
DougJ
John, the Jackson Triggs sauvignon blanc has given you new eloquence. Very well put.
Sojourner
I don’t know enough about the case of the child to have a position but it certainly was not the case that euthanasia was involved in the Schiavo case. As her autopsy showed, Schiavo had been dead for years. All that was left was a living corpse.
Krista
Pooh, you are a fickle bastard, aren’t you?
We could look at it that way, absolutely. Or, we could look at it that the only thing keeping their body alive are these extraordinary measures and machines. 50 years ago, we would not have had the technology to keep PVS-ers alive. They would have died shortly after the condition/incident which struck them down in the first place.
So both positions could be considered equally abhorrent: unnaturally keeping someone alive, who, by all rights, should have died; or withholding the technology to keep someone alive, thereby making the decision as to precisely when they die.
The burden of technology: just because you can, does it mean you should? Everybody from Mary Shelley to Joseph Rotblat has been faced with this question, and there is never going to be an answer that will work for everybody.
Pooh
My parents were too married! (sniffle)
Al Maviva
In the past, the vote of the legislature has always been thought sufficient to give voice to – or to silence – the moral sentiment of the community. As long as the legislature had a rational basis for a law not involving fundamental rights, it would withstand court scrutiny. Or as Scalia puts it, “I might think a law is exceptionally silly and stupid, but that doesn’t mean it’s unconstitutional.” In turn the Constitution was thought to be a fair check on the moral sentiments of the community, setting a floor beneath which even the legislators could not sink – a restraint on state power. Thus I’ve always thought that “you can’t legislate morality” was a canard, since most major laws, criminal laws especially, have a pretty clearly explicit or implicit moral basis.
Given Tony Kennedy’s holding in Bowers, that morality can never provide a rational basis for the law, and what I’ve heard here, I’m starting to believe it’s true. Perhaps the day of people like me who think that more or less traditional morality actually matters is past, and we’re moving into a Nietzschean utopia beyond good and evil and so on.
What then is our basis for making subjective judgments about basically metaphysical questions in law and public policy? If morality has no place I’m inclined to believe that the next best argument is probably utility, and the next best option is perhaps a radically expansive interpretation of individual rights. Insofar as vegetative, retarded and disabled people – folks with Alzheimers, the profoundly disabled, etc – pose a burden or we think they have no chance of recovery, it seems to me that the greater good would be served by ridding ourselves of them. It would be cheaper, more convenient, we’d be happier, the individuals themselves wouldn’t suffer any longer, insofar as their affliction permits them awareness of their suffering. And if that doesn’t work the individual rights approach might get you partway there – nobody should be burdened with somebody they don’t want to take care of, right?
No, I’m actually not really offended by attacks on “what I perceive to be morality” because most of the attacks are being made by people practicing “what they perceive to be ethics” which is something generally distinct from morality. I’m offended by the dishonesty of the debate, and by the fact that a number of people seem to think that people with traditional morality should bless an act that would be rated in that moral system as a grave error. I’m also offended by the notion that there’s some right to end others’ lives, and that the courts provide the ultimate answer. As an attorney I know exactly how fucked up the attorneys and courts are, and for simple questions they do pretty well, on complicated questions of social policy and morality a chimp with a dartboard could generally do better.
What’s caused me to give in here and conclude this is a fight not worth having is that the slippery slope that I was worried about six months ago isn’t a place where we can stop and hold for a while. We’ve gone from ’12 years in a coma is enough’ six months ago, to ’12 weeks in a coma is enough’ today. The rate at which we’re proceeding toward the Dutch system or something where bystanders take a much more active role in ending the lives of the disabled, ill and old, makes me think that there’s too much momentum to step in front of this train, so I’m inclined to let it go, and actually to cheer it on just to end this stupid, hypocritical debate. I’ve got better things to fight about, more winnable debates, than this nihilistic fight.
Similarly, other progress in the commodification of human life proceeds apace, grinding up embryos to harvest medical supplies, human cloning, etc – convincing me we’re heading into a brave new world where the technology is wonderful and man’s spirit lives in a dystopian despair. I’d just as soon move off the grid on these issues. It seems inevitable, and if it’s a losing fight maybe I can fight a rear guard action for small c conservatives by bitching about budget overruns or something.
Admittedly, I’m having some cognitive disonance over the fact that many of the people who want to ban genetically modified corn because it’s unnatural and could lead to horrible unintended consequences, are just dying to harvest genetic materials out of embryos to implant it in themselves to stay forever young. But I’ll get over that.
So no, my feelings aren’t hurt here. If we’re going to fly down this path, I’d just as soon we do it honestly and systematically, rather than on a haphazard basis. Make euthenasia just like abortion – safe, legal and rare. Okay, well, abortion isn’t exactly rare, but you know what I mean, safe, legal, and “rare” but not really rare.
12 years, to 12 weeks, in six months. That guy who survived the Sago disaster had better be careful. By my count, he’s been unconscious for 12 days.
Steve
If you think I’m arguing for a right to end others’ lives, then you’re a lot more interested in writing than reading.
demimondian
Hmm. There’s actually a good reason for 12 weeks, though, Al, and it has to do with how people recover consciousness after catastrophic brain trauma.
We have never — never — seen someone recover consciousness at all after more than about three months in a vegetative state. I’d have to go back to look it up (and I’m willing to do so if you’re interested, but I don’t have those books here and I have a business dinner tonight, so it’ll be a while), but I believe that the DHS is being a little abrupt in this case. On the other hand, catastrophic damage to the brain stem, such as this child has suffered, is far more devastating than damage to the cortex, as Mrs. Schiavo had suffered.
That said, I am very surprised that the child is reported to have responded to commands. I am reserving judgement on the reports; in my experience, there is a long period in which such things seem to be happening and are not. To be honest, Al, my expectation is that she will never experience anything in a conscious sense again — the kid is, functionally, a zombie.
I have grave moral problems with maintaining an animated corpse. My church teaches that heroic measures when then is no hope are no longer heroic, but are damnable. So, I wonder — is keeping this kid breathing really a “good” thing?
Pooh
I agree with Steve. I think you are trying to win the argument definitionally (further, I think you are taking a convenient reading of Bowers and sending it tobaggoning down the slippery slope with great force.)
As an aside how should this, or the Schiavo, situation have been resolved without using the courts?
nyrev
Al, I realize that you were just trying to score a cheap shot with the Sago survivor, but you do realize that there’s a difference between a light coma and a vegetative state, right?
But as far as cheap shots go, it’s a decent one. Congrats.
Al Maviva
No, I’m really not conveniently reading Bowers. Kennedy defines the case as posing the question of whether morality can ever form a rational basis for the law. Then he goes through a whole spiel about how anti-sodomy laws are based in morality. Then he strikes the Texas law. While the question is a loose end – like a lot of rather stupid non-sequiturs Kennedy often leaves hanging out in his opinions – the way the case was resolved can leave no doubt about the broader holding, that morality cannot form a rational basis for laws. I don’t think that’s a convenient reading; it is a staple of the pro-polygamy set’s legal arguments.
On the Sago thing, I don’t think it’s a particularly cheap shot. If withdrawing a feeding tube – generally considered a non-heroic measure – is a purely medical or family judgment, where does the slippery slope end? A 49% chance of recovery? A 25% chance of recovery? A 1% chance? It doesn’t. If the docs say somebody is in a vegetative state, how long should it have to last? 12 years? 12 weeks? 12 days? As long as our policy is “next friend” gets to decide, then I don’t see why the state should be entrusted to make that choice on our behalf. The miner’s docs have said he has very severe brain damage. C’mon. I don’t see much of a difference here between three months and three weeks. They both strike me as pretty arbitrary choices.
And no, I really don’t want to win the argument. I can’t win it. Please, accept the surrender. It’s pretty clear where we’re headed, and I think it’s inevitable. Might as well try to do it the right way and keep the government’s big nose out of it, if we’re going to do it. Yeah, sure, it puts a lot of power in the hands of our spouses and family, but as has been pointed out repeatedly, nobody wants my morals imposed on them, and nobody wants the government to make these decisions. Hey, I’m cool with that, I trust my family’s choices.
As for court involvement – one custody hearing, time limited litigation, no, or limited appeal rights. Whoever gets custody of the zombie – not my term – gets to make the decision. The court should have no say on the merits.
ppGaz
According to British Medical Association:
In other words, true PVS is irreversible.
FWIW.
nyrev
I’m really not trying to pick a fight here, Al. But the miner continues to improve, and all that medical experts have said is that there might be permanent brain damage. Nobody knows what the long-term effects of his CO poisoning will be, because no one’s ever survived such extended exposure before. But he’s responding to his doctors and family, swallowing, and moving his arms and legs. He was never in a vegetative state, and certainly hasn’t been in a PVS, which is the legal criteria for ceasing medical treatment.
As far as this particular case is concerned, I think it’s a little early to say that this child in a PVS. Generally, a patient is not considered in a PVS until they’ve been in a vegetative state for at least 6 months. However, I’m not a doctor and I don’t know anything about her condition. It could be that enough of her brain has been destroyed that it is medically impossible for her to recover. In that case, since she’s a minor child, the decision to continue treatment should be up to her mother. In other words, it’s good that the doctors are reassessing the child’s condition before doing anything drastic. It’s bad that the Malkins of the world continue to shamelessly exploit personal tragedy to score political points.
Pooh
Ok, you lost me. I’m disinclined to receive morality lectures from one who equates homosexuality with the whole passel of Santorum’s nightmares. (If that’s not the point you are making, I apologize. But if you are talking strictly about polygamists, you’re setting up a huge strawman and you know you are).
Steve
First of all, you can talk about Bowers all day, but Kennedy wasn’t even on the Court in Bowers.
Second, assuming we’re talking about Lawrence, I don’t see where Kennedy said laws can never be based on morality. He simply said you can’t infringe a liberty interest solely by pointing to some notion of morality rooted in history or tradition, with laws against miscegenation serving as the example. At the end of the day, what two consenting adults get to do in private is their business, not the business of the legislature.
I don’t see why it’s an issue anyway, because the fundamental right to refuse life-sustaining nutrition is pretty well accepted at this point. Personally, I don’t get why Al believes that letting a person choose to live or die takes us closer to permitting euthanasia. I stand by my position that allowing a legislative majority to keep someone alive against their will is much more likely to lead to euthanasia – because once you accept that society can make a value judgment about the worth of your life, you run the risk that some future society may judge it to be worthless. The only appropriate principle is that your personal end-of-life decisions should never be left up to the whims of an electoral majority, one way or the other.
james richardson
“The same government bureaucrats and doctors who had conclusively deemed the 11-year-old girl “hopeless” and her vegetative state “irreversible” now tell us she is responding to stimuli and breathing on her own.”
So was Terri Shaivo and her brain was half gone. Not impressive so far. Maybe it will miraculously regenerate. Or maybe Doctors are skirting God’s plan for her to spend the rest of her life as a living dead woman. If she sits up and rides a bicycle then I’ll be impressed. Otherwise, it’s no different from Terri.
Pb
Al,
“We” who? Speak for yourself, Al. Michelle Malkin doesn’t speak for me.
demimondian
Steve says…
To be fair to Al, “choice” has no bearing on this case. (My guess, given what I’ve read of his, is that he’d be entirely on your side as far as a conscious adult choosing to reject nutrition is concerned.)
This case involves a child, and an insensate one, at that. Due to the biological mother’s loss of parental rights, the death of the adoptive mother and grandmother, and the resposibility of the stepfather for the child’s abuse, there’s no “loving adult” around to make decisions on the child’s behalf, which is why there’s a court involved, and also why there’s a moral issue.
W.B. Reeves
I was highly impressed by Al’s statement of his beliefs. I don’t think I’ve read anything by him as cogent, eloquent, passionate or as honest. It is this very honesty that allows me to identify where I disagree with him profoundly as, perhaps, others do.
Al makes plain that he thinks we are on the proverbial slippery slope. He believes that he can foresee the inevitable outcome of any divergence from the moral position he himself has staked out. If I understand him correctly, neither Schiavo nor the current case are simply individual family tragedies with no good outcome. Rather, each represents a cosmic choice between Al’s moral standard and a quick march to the Mengele Retirement Home.
For me the snippet posted above clarified the principle at work in Al’s thinking: premises dictate conclusions. While this is certainly true in the realm of formal logic and intellectual debate, in the world of human action beset by the impulses of cynicism, hypocrisy, opportunism, lust for dominance and circumstance, it is manifestly not so. In the world of action, ill intentions can and do lead to good outcomes, while good intentions can and do lead to Hell. The whole of our known history of religion and politics testifies to this. In human hands, first principles have shown an amazing degree of elasticity.
I think most people recognize this intuitively . Which is a reason why the reaction to Schiavo was as intense as it was. People who might not agree on much else, agreed that this was a family matter that had, unfortunately, gone to court. They didn’t view it as a battlefield in some cosmic struggle between the forces of life and death. They saw it as a specific, individual tragedy that ought not to be politicized.
Against this was an argument that essentially told such folks that they were on the same side as the Kervorkians, Singers and even Mengeles of this world. In retrospect its easy to see why this turned into such a debacle for the Right.
The problem with Al’s view, as I see it, is that he is blind to any moral sense other than his own. He is a believer in clear bright lines. Categorical certainties. Hard and fast rules allowing for no ambiguity. Not for him the squabbling conflict of hashing out the particulars of each case in order to discover the path of least harm if not unalloyed good.
I don’t suppose it would occur to him that some might find the elevation of abstract moral principle above the actual particulars of a given tragedy to be, in itself, deeply immoral. Nor does he seem to appreciate that some may base their morality on a commitment to individual autonomy that precludes delegating questions of conscience to the authority of the state. Or that such devotion to the dignity of the individual human being would mandate opposition to forced birth and forced abortion equally.
Youranas shole
Youre an asshole. This girl is dying and you have a headline like “Not again”.
Truly, you are an asshole.
Michele
I often think of state Child Protective Services depmartments as agencies who seem to sometimes take kids away from good families while way too often leaving them in bad families. I have no trust in these state agencies. They are pathetic.
2cents worth
2 cents worth: there are major differences in these three cases.
T. Schiavo was able to breathe on her own and required only a feeding tube to sustain life for years. She had no terminal disease and a family willing to care for her to the end of her life. The courts decided her husband had the final say and her food and water was removed. She starved and dehydrated. It took ten days! She may not have been aware but she endured it. She had lived in her “state” for years.
Tirhas Habtegiris had abdominal cancer that spread to her lungs. She was terminal and was on a respirator. She had a family willing and able to care for her but no facility willing to accept her admittance. The hospital legally determined that as she could not be transferred and they could do no more for her medically, she was taken off the repirator and died in minutes. She suffocated. As for her mother not being there when Tirhas died, she was on another continent. Schiavo’s mother was right there and DENIED the right to be with her child when she died. Where is the compassion?
Haleigh Poutre is a case of child that has been abused and abandoned by damn near every adult she has come in contact with and ended up comatose. Within three weeks of her admittance into hospital, DSS requests her feeding tube and respirator be removed. Four months later, she is reponding to stimuli and has been removed from her respirator. At 11 yrs, the human brain is still developing. She is not terminal, has no disease and a life ahead of her. Her teeth may be shattered but at eleven has more adult teeth to grow and technology to replace. This is one traumatised child who ought to be given a chance at life away from the people who hurt her and those who aid the abusers. I’m talking about the stepfather, his attorney, the court system, DSS, CPS, hospital administrators, beancounters, insurance adjusters, bloggers with an agenda…..
Mr Cole, you wrote:”My position was clear- I stood with Terri Schaivo (as determined in judicial proceedings that were exhaustive and transparent), her husband, the law, and the respectable members of the medical community (to include the various individuals who served in the role of guardian ad litem), and felt that the decision was to be left to Terri and her husband. It was not my ‘side’ who was attempting to win some larger political battle, or who was attempting to foist my morality on Terri and Michael Schiavo.” & “So while I understand your feelings may be injured because of this debate, let’s be realistic about whose side played the role of provocateur. My side did not want Terri Schiavo dead. My side wanted her and her husband to be left the fuck alone.”
When you “Stood” with Terri and her husband, you “sided” with their supposed wishes. To then say you didn’t “Want her dead” is to have it both ways. Or possibly not care one way or the other.
Stephen
First, your disgust and hatred of Malkin blinds you to the core of the issue she broaches with Haleigh Poutre. Which is as follows: The State put her a horrible in the situation, the State ignored all the signs of abuse, now the State wants to kill her. As mentioned previously, the little girl should be given more of a chance than a couple of months before she is “allowed” to die. It has been pointed out that in some, abeit rare cases, a child’s brain is resilient, she is still in her developmental years, it is possible that her brain can “rewire” itself, and she may come out of it functional. She should be given that opprotunity, regardless of whatever political party YOU want her registered as!
Let all these case be a lesson to ALL of you, get that living will together, get it on paper and legally binding.
Hume's Ghost
No brain can rewire itself around the brain stem. Malkin has the audacity to declare “Haleigh wants to live” because Haleigh, or what’s left of her, has displayed non-volitional automatic physiological functioning.
Malkin’s position is one born out of ignorance, hysteria, and wishful thinking.
W.B. Reeves
Bunk. There can be and are many occaisions in life when we are called upon to defer to the wishes of others, even when we don’t agree with their choices. If respect for the integrity and rights of the individual is to have any meaning at all, it’s essential that we practice it when we disagree with the choices made. A reverence for the integrity of the individual that is observed only so long as that integrity doesn’t conflict with our own views is no reverance at all. Respect for the rights of others which only operates when we agree with the expression of those rights is no respect.
To say, as John does, that you support the wishes of Teri Schiavo as lawfully adjudicated implies nothing whatever regarding one’s opinion of those wishes. To suggest otherwise is to degrade Teri Schiavo’s desires to the status of an irrelevant detail, implying a mindset that views Teri Schiavo’s tragedy as incidental to a larger agenda.
2cents worth
Reeves, a court of law cannot determine Terri’s wishes! you can never know Terri’s wishes. Her husband said that is what she wanted and only his brother could back up the statement. Her parents who, I dare say, knew her a damned sight longer and probably better said otherwise. She was a praticing Catholic. Her parents were willing to care for her to the end of her life. Her husband said she wanted to die, not him mind you, but Terri, who had no voice. AND finally, to get to the part that makes me sick is the fact the COURT ordered her to be starved and dehydrated to DEATH. You’d think that the sheer barbarism in this alone would have made people madder than hell instead of merely apathetic.
And please don’t tell me that if YOUR child were in the same situation, you wouldn’t fight to the end to stop a spouse and the courts from putting that child “out of his misery” by making him miserable on the way to death. If they were so concerned about her quality of life, the quality of her death should have been given greater thought.
You apparently deferred to the wishes of a man who wanted his wife dead and her parents to suffer. His actions at the time of her death, the fact that he cremated her against her religion and wouldn’t let her parents know where her remains were speaks volumes! But, hey, you are free to revere who you want.
BIRDZILLA
And he did it with a baseball bat frankly he should be himself beat to a pulp with a baseball bat and since she want to live i say let her live and screw the over populationist freaks and especialy that jerk PETER SINGER
W.B. Reeves
Don’t worry, I won’t. I will tell you that when I was eleven years old, my mother suffered a massive cerebral hemorhage. She lapsed into a coma and lost all higher cerebral function. If you want to label my father a murderer, via the keyboard, because he took her off life support, you’re free to do so.
I wouldn’t advise you to say it to my face though.
The difference between Teri Schiavo’s case and my mother’s is that no one in my family challenged my father’s judgement, including myself.
The fact that you slander Michael Schiavo in the vile fashion above, without a shred evidence, is what speaks volumes here. Volumes about your disdain for truth, decency and the dignity of your fellow human beings.
2cents worth
“The difference between Teri Schiavo’s case and my mother’s is that no one in my family challenged my father’s judgement, including myself.”
Exactly. No one challenged him. Completely different from the Schiavo case.
But the Schindler family didn’t simply and on ly “challenge” M. Schiavo; they offered him an alternative he refused to take. No strings attached, they would take over the care and keeping of their daughter.
You claim I slander the man without a shred of evidence. I submit the following as “evidence”. Damn, don’t make it seem like I drew the conclusions from blue skies.
Wikipeda:
“Last Rites
On March 26, 2005, Bob and Mary Schindler announced that their legal options had been exhausted. The next day, Schiavo was given the Anointing of the Sick (“Last Rites”). In accordance with the Catholic ritual of Viaticum, she received the Eucharist for the last time; it had been administered to her once through her feeding tube just before it was removed. The Eucharist, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, can be received under the consecrated species of bread (referred to as the host) or wine. As her tongue was too dry to receive a small piece of the host, she received under the species of wine, one drop being placed on her tongue.
Terri Schiavo died at 9:05 a.m. EST on Thursday, March 31, 2005, with her husband Michael at her side. Her parents, who had been denied access to her during her last hours, went to the hospice to visit her when they were informed she might be approaching death; they arrived half an hour after her death. The Schindler family was allowed into the room after Michael Schiavo had left.[57]”
“Schiavo’s body was cremated following the autopsy. Her parents offered a memorial Mass for her at the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Gulfport on April 5. Father Frank Pavone, an activist with Priests for Life,[61] delivered the main sermon (Audio: MP3 Format).[62]
On May 7, Schiavo’s parents made public a complaint that they hadn’t been informed of when and where the ashes of their daughter had been (or were to be) buried by Michael Schiavo. He was under court order to provide this information to them.
On June 20, the cremated remains of Terri Schiavo were buried. The Schindlers’ attorney stated that the family was notified by fax only after the memorial service; by then, the family had already started getting calls from reporters.[63] The ashes were interred at Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park in Clearwater, Florida.”
“March 28, 2005
Battle Brewing Over Terri Schiavo’s Funeral
Terri Schiavo’s death will not end the rancorous conflict between Terri’s husband, Michael Schiavo, and her parents. Michael wants to have Terri’s body cremated and taken back to Pennsylvania; the Schindlers want a Catholic funeral and burial in Florida. ”
“MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 8:34 p.m. ET March 31, 2005
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. – The bitter family feud over Terri Schiavo continued after her death Thursday, with a member of the Schiavo family saying that her ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family doesn’t show up and turn the event into a media spectacle.”
“Michael Schiavo, Terri’s estranged husband, is expected to hold his own funeral service — possibly in Pennsylvania, where he is secretly burying Terri’s body.
The funerals have been a source of contention between Michael and the Schindlers.
A local judge allowed Michael to obtain Terri’s body, to cremate her and bury her in a secret plot owned by his family outside of Philadelphia. Michael does not have to divulge the location until after Terri is buried.
Terri’s brother Bobby said Michael has not offered his family any details on the burial or funeral services.
“They’ve been pretty rotten to our family throughout this whole ordeal,” Bobby Schindler told the Associated Press Sunday night.”
You wrote in response to my first post: If respect for the integrity and rights of the individual is to have any meaning at all, it’s essential that we practice it when we disagree with the choices made. A reverence for the integrity of the individual that is observed only so long as that integrity doesn’t conflict with our own views is no reverance at all. Respect for the rights of others which only operates when we agree with the expression of those rights is no respect.
Can you show me where the respect for the right of individual was observed by M. Schiavo in regards to his wife’s family? He absolutely disagreed with them, got everything he wanted and still denied them dignity. He made public statements that he intended to bury her ashes in Pennsylvania and she rests now in Florida.
I didn’t call Mr. Schiavo a murderer, I never threatened you, I have tremendous hope for humanity, and you are entitled to your opinion. I am sorry you lost your mother at an early age and in such a manner. As you didn’t address my actual points I’ll just go take my “vile” self away.
Stephen
Hume’s Ghost, if you were a doctor and if you had made the diagnosis, I would agree with you only partially. I’ll stand by what I said. There may be a possibility, Kids are resilient. Should she be tied to life support for years on end? No, but she should be given all the treatment and therapy and time necessary to make a concise and definitive decision. Taking the medias word for whats going on and basing an opinion on their pathic, agendized little sound bites is wrong.
Yeah, Malkin’s shrill and sometimes annoying, her blog is mostly links to other more eloquent and thought out missives, but I stand by her basic point on this, and so many other horrible cases of extreme child abuse. I have 2 boys myself and there has never been any instance at any time that brought me to within several lights years distance of savaging them in such a manner. And my two guys work overtime trying to drive me nuts!
This is just another example of the safety net having HUGE holes in it.
W.B. Reeves
2 cents worth,
Nobody suggested that you threatened me so I don’t where that’s coming from. Your earlier comments made it pretty plain that you think that Michael as well as his brother and sister were lying about what Teri’s wishes were.
I deferred to my father’s wishes concerning my mother as well and I know for a fact that he didn’t “want” my mother dead. That you would make such charge against Michael Schiavo based on nothing other than your own prejudice is both vile and slanderous.
You’re right that Teri’s parents objected. That’s why they took the case to court. In so doing they recognized the court’s authority to adjudicate the question. That authority, once granted, can’t be withdrawn simply because the courts ruled against them. If the courts were’nt competent to decide the question of Teri’s wishes, why did her parents take the case to them in the first place?
I’m not going to defend or condemn Michael Schiavo’s treatment of Teri’s parents subsequent to the court’s ruling. If you think that punishing her parents was the only reason for his actions, I’d remind you that these two had spent years blackening his name, impugning his love for his wife and even going so far as to suggest that he was responsible for her condition. I doubt very many people would be able to let such hatefulness slide off their backs. Nor do I think Michael had any reason to believe that the parents wouldn’t turn Teri’s death bed and funeral into yet another chapter in the ongoing media circus. He had plenty of reasons, beyond vindictiveness, to avoid contact with these two.
BTW, if he is so interested in punishing Terri’s parents when is he going file suit against them for libel, harassment, etc? Given that the courts found them uncredible he’d have a fairly good case. At least good enough to make their lives hell for several years. Has he done this?
This is a blatant falsehood on your part. My initial post cited a specific point you made. Your response was to vilify not only Schiavo but all who differed with your opinion. You went so far as to suggest that I wouldn’t hold the same opinion if it involved someone near and dear to me. As I pointed out, you were quite wrong about this. You were also wrong about a number of other things I didn’t choose to address. However, those I did address were in fact points that you had raised.
If you’re going to engage in slander and falsehood I can only approve of your departure.
Kenneth Almquist
In reply to Jack’s questions about Tirhas Habtegiris:
1. The hospital claims that it complied fully with the requirements of Texas law, and I’ve seen no reason to doubt this. So I doubt that there is any basis for a lawsuit here.
2. As far as I know, the hospital has not said why it decided to remove her from the ventilator. Many commentators have suggested or assumed that the decision was based on the inability to pay, but there is no proof of this.
3. With regard to the question of whether continued treatment would be useless, there seems to be no question that her cancer would have killed her in less than six months or less (probably much less) regardless of treatment. Keeping her on the ventilator would have probably extended her life by a matter of weeks.
I am not suprised or disturbed that a doctor would believe that Tirhas had reached the point where it was appropriate to terminate treatment. I find it shocking that Texas allows a doctor’s opinion on such matters to override the clearly expressed wish of the patient.
Karen OBrien
My grandchildren were in the care of these “people” for several years. There were others also. How on earth did they get a license? and were some of these children abused also??