quote: This is, of course, irrelevant to how the courts decided the issue once the law was passed.
I never said it was relevant to how the court rendered its judgement. I guess I'm speaking more to the perceptions of the people in these issues, and the attitudes of some Congressmen. More than half of Americans felt the Congress and the President were encroaching on judicial territory, and the other half wanted them to outright overrule the courts.
quote: Not really. The Constitution SPECIFICALLY gives Congress the authority to determine jurisdiction for the federal courts.
Tell that to the screaming masses demanding an immediate solution to whatever is bothering them this week. This speaks to the point I made before, the people demand action, and they don't seem to be either well informed, or if they are they don't seem to really care. Just an observation mind you. But there are other things that have happened in the last couple years that are also treading close to breaches of seperation of powers.
(Yay! I've reached the Congressional Signpost: 535 Posts!)
Edit to add: (Now at 536, and thanks to Dagonee for reminding me about DC)
posted
And many of those encroadhments on the separation of powers have been committed by the courts.
I don't think the judges in this case can be called activists judges if the term is to have meaning. But I disagree with Thomas's statement on the term as well. Just because people misuse the term does not mean the concept referred to by the term doesn't exist.
In this case, I think the trial judge allowed his own preconceptions about disability and quality of life to improperly influence his decision. That's not an accusation of activist judging; it's an accusation of bad fact-finding.
But there are instances of activist judging, just as there are instances of encroachment on judicial independence.
posted
There's a lot about Terri's life and death to be sad about. There's some to find joy in. From what's been documented publicly:
1) Terri had a severe eating disorder. A potassium imbalance brought on by bulimia stopped her heart. The subsequent lack of oxygen (probably coupled with the potassium imbalance already damaging neurons anyway) severely damaged her brain.
2)Terri and Michael appear to have had a happy marriage from all accounts except for, perhaps, allegations by her parents that Michael beat her. There's been no proof of this, but let us at least leave open the possibility that Terri may NOT have been happy in her marriage, but also it may have been a source of great happiness to her. One can only hope.
3) Either way, however, her eating disorder continued well into adulthood. She and Michael married knowing that she suffered from it, and that it could prove deadly.
4) We do not know what kind of home life she had. It is, however, quite likely that her parents feel a fair amount of blame for her eating disorder. That's not to say that they ARE to blame, but it is certainly natural for the parents of child suffering from such a self-destructive disorder to wonder if there's anything they could/should have done. To see her ultimately destroy her self must've been doubly hard on them. And...it's not inconcievable that they would think that Michael should shoulder some of the blame since their daughter at least LIVED THROUGH her life with them, and she died on his watch. (That is, the eating disorder didn't get better after marrying him, and may have gotten worse.)
5) Even if that bit of amateur psychology turns out to be completely false, there's the natural desire of a parent to keep their child alive at all costs. The pain of letting go while their loved one is still able to breathe, see, hear, etc. is just horrible to contemplate. What we know and more importantly don't know about her ability to comprehend or make sense of the world around her makes it worse.
Ultimately, cases like her tend to focus us on questions like what does it mean to be "human?" what does it mean to be alive? Who can speak for the incapacitated? Can more than one person be a true voice for an incapacitated individual? Can the healthy truly judge the value that an ailing or disabled individual would place on their own life, or is their perspective too skewed by the comparison by the thought that they would never CHOOSE to live "that way?"
then there are all the things that cases like this would say about us as a nation and as individuals. If one wants to affirm life, does that mean all life, innocent life only, mostly (or especially) those unable to speak for themselves, etc.
Her life gives us a lot to contemplate, but we should not lose sight of the fact that her life ended in tragedy that was, really, completely avoidable. What really would've helped Terri was better treatments for eating disorders, more understanding of what the risks are, and probably a extra dose of psychotherapy. Years ago. When she was really young, but also into adulthood.
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posted
I mourn Schiavo's death as well. But I have other question that, even if slightly off topic, I feel I should ask.
While the country debated and continues to debate, black Africans in Darfur continued to be systematically massacred. Why did the Schiavo bills take hours to pass and the Darfur Bill take weeks? Don't the people of Darfur have a "Right to Life" as well?
This is not a political criticism, even though I am a liberal. I have also lost a lot of faith in the Democratic Party because it has done virtually nothing. In fact, one of the reasons why I didn't like Kerry because he, like Bush, when asked about the Darfur genocide during a debate, essentially said, "AUtroopsaregreatnextquestion." But presently, it is Republicans with the power to send bills clean through Congress. So I find any claims about their respect for life to be absurd. Democrats also have done nothing dramatic, and I am further disillusioned with them as a result.
Why do people have stronger opinions about Schiavo's death than about the Sudanese villiage that was just bombed?
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quote:Why are we up in arms NOW? Why weren't we THEN?
Because Americans tend to not notice important issues unless the media rams them home. Then all of a sudden it's the most important issue in the world.
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posted
She was partially brain dead. The question is: did the part that was still alive actually contain Terri?
I honestly can't say I know where I stand on this issue. As has been mentioned before, it isn't reasonable to project what I would want to happen to me onto someone else.
I do think that it would have been reasonable for Micheal to divorce her and leave her in her parents hands, especially if she did have no consiousness. If she's not aware of her predicament, it would have hurt no one to keep her alive.
But I also think her parents' behavior wasn't healthy. They needed to grieve for her long ago, and I think they were clinging to more than what was there.
Was she alive? I dunno. Was she dead? I dunno that either. But I don't think that letting her go was murder. That's too strong a word for a bad solution to a no-win situation.
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Since she had a eating disorder, which means she was probably extremely vain about her appearance. How pissed off would she be to have her picture plastered all over the world in her "vegetative state"?
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I hadn't heard about the eating disorder until today. How very ironic.
I'm sad that the parents are going to be kept out of the funeral as well.
I wonder why the willingness to believe she was brain dead generally falls so predictably down party lines. I guess it's a question of some people seeing life as inherently sacred or not. Others feel the quality of life is more important than the actual life. And yet it seems there is information supporting both sides, and it is a matter of who we choose to listen to. I sure hope there is a God, because it will be so annoying to never know the answer to some questions otherwise.
CNN also made the "persistent vegetative state" claim again.
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"I wonder why the willingness to believe she was brain dead generally falls so predictably down party lines."
Honestly? It's because the media has defined it as a party issue (largely thanks, mind you, to Republican attempts early on to use this for political capital), and Americans are lemmings.
posted
It really is a crappy situation. It is really sad that Michael and the family could never reconcile their differences. All I can do is relate to myself in that hypothetical situation, so I have no idea what they are going through.
I am troubled by how easy it is to trash the husband and how the Schindlers seem to be free of the most extreme detractors. The abortion clinic rock throwers championed this cause as if it were a game, with no caring towards the family or especially the husband.
My best friend today told me his wishes in that situation and actually he is going to make me responsible for seeing his wishes carried out in that situation, via a living will. The fact that more people are now taking a serious look at living wills is probably the best thing to come out of this.
What I would want is to be given an overdose of morphine and call it a day. Is that legal? The starving to death option doesn't seem to be very humane. We can put our dear pets to sleep when they are suffering, why can we not do the same thing for humans?
posted
From my perspective, people's opinions don't seem to be divided down party lines as much as they say.
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quote:What? How can he bar them away from her funeral? That just isn't right...
No it's not. Also there is probably alot of spin on that. It seems to me that the Schindlers are irreasonable and insist things being done their way or no way. There is enough blame on both sides as to how the situation was allowed to spin out of control. I couldn't imagine conducting a funeral after all of this with usual civility.
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quote: What I would want is to be given an overdose of morphine and call it a day. Is that legal? The starving to death option doesn't seem to be very humane. We can put our dear pets to sleep when they are suffering, why can we not do the same thing for humans?
Erm, yeah. I was made sadder by a statement I ran across on PBS where some doctor said he didn't know if starvation is cruel. Maybe in the sense that if you assume the body you are treating is no longer human.
It says she was in hospice, was she receiving any anaesthesia?
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quote: I do think that it would have been reasonable for Micheal to divorce her and leave her in her parents hands, especially if she did have no consiousness. If she's not aware of her predicament, it would have hurt no one to keep her alive.
I must admit, I have kinda been thinking this myself. I don't know Michael, and even if I did, how could I *really* know his motivations? Maybe he *really* did want to do her will.
As Trisha said, we can't know that. And yes, in my hope of there being a God there is definitely the hope to eventually know "why" about everything.
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posted
If my husband went through this and his parents behaved the way Terri's did, I certainly wouldn't divorce him and let him in their hands. That would be betrayal, at last that's how I see it. We both know what the other wants in this kind of cases, and knowing it and not act in consequence would be betrayal.
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quote:It's because the media has defined it as a party issue (largely thanks, mind you, to Republican attempts early on to use this for political capital)
Tom, that's crap. (Blaming the media spin on the Republicans, that is.)
posted
No, it's not. It's deliberate spin. Republican strategy memos sent to members of Congress outlined their intention to turn this into a political issue; it's how they got so many legislators on board for their pathetic little stunt.
quote: The core belief that social conservatives bring to cases like Terri Schiavo's is that the value of each individual life is intrinsic. The value of a life doesn't depend upon what a person can physically do, experience or achieve. The life of a comatose person or a fetus has the same dignity and worth as the life of a fully functioning adult.
Social conservatives go on to say that if we make distinctions about the value of different lives, if we downgrade those who are physically alive but mentally incapacitated, if we say that some people can be more easily moved toward death than others, then the strong will prey upon the helpless, and the dignity of all our lives will be diminished.
The true bright line is not between lives, they say, but between life and death.
The weakness of the social conservative case is that for most of us, especially in these days of advanced medical technology, it is hard to ignore distinctions between different modes of living.
...
The core belief that social liberals bring to cases like Ms. Schiavo's is that the quality of life is a fundamental human value. They don't emphasize the bright line between life and death; they describe a continuum between a fully lived life and a life that, by the sort of incapacity Terri Schiavo has suffered, is mere existence.
On one end of that continuum are those fortunate enough to be able to live fully - to decide and act, to experience the world and be free. On the other end are those who, tragically, can do none of these things, and who are merely existing.
Social liberals warn against vitalism, the elevation of physical existence over other values. They say it is up to each individual or family to draw their own line to define when life passes to mere existence.
The central weakness of the liberal case is that it is morally thin.
...
What I'm describing here is the clash of two serious but flawed arguments. The socially conservative argument has tremendous moral force, but doesn't accord with the reality we see when we walk through a hospice. The socially liberal argument is pragmatic, but lacks moral force.
Thoughts?
[ April 01, 2005, 09:39 AM: Message edited by: Kasie H ]
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posted
So, leaving aside your skepticism, do you think compassion for the poor, sick little woman was what drove Bush to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fly back to sign a bill on her behalf, wearing all the while an expression of extreme constipation?
Yeah, Dag. It wasn't deliberately political at all.
I'm not saying that there aren't people on both sides of the divide working at this for their own moral reasons -- see NDY, as an example -- but it's pretty hard to deny that the Republicans in Congress seized on this as a way to score easy points and jumped like they'd touched a stove when it backfired.
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quote:It's because the media has defined it as a party issue
This is what you said resulted from the Republican's actions. This happened YEARS ago. Are we into reverse temporal causality here?
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posted
Yeah, shame on Bush for being in the side of life! Tom you sound like you're really grasping at straws here. By the way, did you get your documents from CBS? Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Honestly, it's not a party issue. The Republicans played it like that because they were trying to cememt an evangelical base, again. And now 82% of Americans think Congress and the President should have played no role in this at all. 82%! 82% of Americans hardly ever agree on anything. Remarkably, I thought the media did a reasonable job of not making this a partisan issue; they gave very little space and airtime to DeLay and those Republicans who showed up in Congress during recess to pass a bill, and plenty of the same to Jesse Jackson, who, as well all know, does not get along very well with Bush. If anything, this is a personal, religious issue, not a partisan one.
I think everyone, across all party lines, is very shaken up by this issue because it's something every one of us could face at some point in our lives. Really, try and think for a second what you would want in this situation. Would you trust your spouse to make decisions on your behalf? Or not? If your parents ended up in a dispute with your spouse, who would you want to take precedence? Would you want the tube taken out, or left in?
This is much, much more complicated than Republicans and Democrats.
[ April 01, 2005, 09:50 AM: Message edited by: Kasie H ]
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posted
I remember that one day, OSC said in a collumn that your spouse is the only person of your family you actually choose. (I believe it was around Christmas and on the subject of presents) Well, it strucked me as obvious, but you never think about it. So : if someone has to take decisions of life-or-death for me, would it be better that the person is someone blood-related to me but that maybe I have no real emotional link with, or someone I actually chose as my family and love ?
[ April 01, 2005, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
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posted
"This is what you said resulted from the Republican's actions. This happened YEARS ago. Are we into reverse temporal causality here?"
Ah. I assumed you -- or, rather, the person to whom I was originally replying -- were referring to the recent media circus, not the entire "sanctity of life" debate in general. The "sanctity of life" issue is in fact a great deal less partisan than the specific cynical abuse of the Schiavo case.
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posted
"I assumed they were referring to the media circus that has surrounded Schiavo for at least 5 years."
It doesn't count as a media circus until I've heard of it. And this is less tongue-in-cheek than it sounds.
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posted
If it comes to that, Tom, then I submit that this media circus started when the tube was removed and Schiavo's supporters began agitating for Congress to do something, but before they took up the call. And it was political even then.
posted
If Bush is on the side of life, why is he cutting the very services that were paying for Schiavo's care?
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posted
Thanks for clarifying, PC. I should adopt your strategy with Jay.
For the record, my "biases":
I wish she could have been kept alive. I think it should take more than hearsay to make the decision to remove nutrition and hydration, even if that hearsay is from the husband. I don't think this was an example of judicial activism, but of courts following our inadequate laws coupled with, as Dag noted, prejudices about the quality of Schiavo's life. I think we should clarify what level of communication of wishes is required to end a life--specifically, I think something like this (not an extreme measure in my view) should require a written statement--but I don't think laws designed to apply to one case are a good idea.
But much more importantly, I notice that poor widdle ol' Jay isn't the only one that is ever criticized, so my biases must be huge.
-o-
I don't think it's along party lines, since I am not a republican. I don't agree with that NYT column either, because I don't consider myself a social conservative, but I do consider individual lives sacred apart from their quality or thei contribution. I don't agree with the distinction or the lines being drawn up in either case.
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quote:I think it should take more than hearsay to make the decision to remove nutrition and hydration, even if that hearsay is from the husband.
What about a situation where the wife and children all agree that the patient would not want to be kept alive like that?
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posted
I'll sum up my thought's on this situation with a quote.
quote:The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
Over 300,000 people have died in Darfur, and the number one story on the news continues to be about Terri. If Bush wants to be on the side of life then something has to be done.
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posted
Yes, the Miami Herald ran a great cartoon last Sunday highlighting the attention paid to the Schiavo story, while ignoring what has been happening for months in Darfur. Wish I could find a link to it online.
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1) Jay, I see your point about the wrongness of Terri's death, but I believe you are wrong in saying this is Judicial Activism. The judges here were forced to follow inadequate laws because of Legislative Cowardice. The legislative branches, in the federal government and in the state government, do not believe these issues are worth the contraversy they cause, so create inadequate laws governing them.
You can't blame the judges for following the laws they are given any more than you can blame a soldier for murder when at war, he shoots the enemy. You can blame the people who wrote those laws, or chickened out from writing better ones.
2)Many of you mention Darfur, and the deaths there. You leave out one startling fact. Terri Schiavo was one woman who starved to death, reportedly without pain. In Darfur tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, many good Christians, are starving to death, and feeling every excrutiating moment of pain.
3)ENOUGH! Much of America's attention has been wasted on this case not because of the good sounding causes opponents and proponents mouth. To many claim to care about life and dignity, but the truth, the awful ugly truth that is witnessed by the front page story about the funerals is this:
We love the Schiavo soap opera. We want the juicy details of over bearing parents, wicked lustful murderous husbands, and the tears, guilt, and blame that lies in the wake of this tragedy.
Terri Schiavo is in reallity just Survivor 05, reality TV at its pinnacle. Advertisers like Tom Delay and President Bush have gotten their money's worth. The final scene has been shot, but we are still waiting around for the next juicy season, Schiavo Season 16--Vultures And The Corpse.
I am tired of being a vulture. I am changing the channel.
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"The examiner’s office has said it would conduct routine examinations and look for any evidence of what might have caused her 1990 collapse."
They didn't know?! 15 years later, and they didn't know? I guess this just shows how uninformed I am, but I thought that the main portion of the family feud was brought on by the feeding tube being removed. But does this mean they've been fighting for 15 years over this? How horrible.
and, as much as i hate to be the one to bring it all back up.. what was going on with the republican memos mentioned earlier? true, not true?
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The "sanctity of life" issue is in fact a great deal less partisan than the specific cynical abuse of the Schiavo case.
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