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March 20, 2005SchiavoPronounce that as you would *sigh.* Ok, all together now: *Schiavo.* I'm not happy about talking about this, but apparently it’s important to people and that calls for attention. And I have a question for all those who think that keeping Terri Schiavo alive indefinitely in a vegetative, nonfunctioning, unproductive, uncreative, incapacitated, unresponsive, irresponsible, dependent, helpless, restricted, useless state in which she is trapped in a physical body she cannot even control is a compassionate, moral, or just thing to do. Here’s the question: Why is it that those most committed to spirit--as in soul--are the same least committed to giving spirit its life beyond the physical? Where are the spiritual crusaders demanding that this poor woman be set free from her physical bonds so that her spirit can finally be at peace and with God? Where are the religious righteous pleading with Congress not to interfere so that Terri Schiavo’s soul can truly be alive–-meaning able to choose, to think, to have the opportunity to fulfill one’s potential. What are the proponents of the "culture of life" doing when they loudly demand that a human being be kept captive in an Abu Ghraib of her own physical body? I would call that torture, not compassion, not morality, and certainly not justice. As a bereaved parent, I can understand the desire of Terri’s parents to keep her alive at all costs. It keeps them from having to experience the anguish of intense grief. It delays the necessity for them to have to deal with all the painful emotions and changed world they will encounter when their beloved child dies. I can understand how they might think they see her respond to them. Their need to see that must be overwhelming. According to the Washington Post: In Washington, lawmakers announced the agreement four hours after Schiavo's mother, Mary Schindler, went before television cameras on her way into the hospice and tearfully begged, "President Bush, politicians in Washington: Please, please, please save my little girl." Someone needs to put their arms around this suffering mother and gently explain to her that the only way to save her little girl, and herself, is to face the agonizing reality that Terri’s physical life is already over. Someone needs to support Mrs. Schindler and help her find a way to deal with her own life, as it has been forever changed. Posted by Elissa Bishop-Becker at March 20, 2005 6:45 PM | TrackBackComments
Elissa, I really appreciate comments. I've been spending a lot of thinking about this issue and have a comment up on my blog looking at some additional views on this, including the Sun Hudson case. Posted by: Aldon Hynes at March 21, 2005 5:50 PM"Why is it that those most committed to spirit--as in soul--are the same least committed to giving spirit its life beyond the physical?" this is exactly the question i asked my ethics class, yesterday. no one had an answer. i also asked them another question: given agreement that terri schiavo ought to be allowed to die, why is it better to let someone capable of physical suffering slowly starve to death than to kill her painlessly? no one could argue that one with me, either. and yet the former option is legal while the latter is not. you figure it out. thanks for the post, elissa. j Posted by: jeff at March 22, 2005 8:27 AMTwo of my daughters have died. One, who was born with severe birth defects, including blindness, deafness, and severe retardation as well as many physically painful conditions, lived at home until she died in my arms at age 2 1/2. She, like Terry Schiavo, used to seem to smile when we picked her up and danced her around the room. Selfishly, I am happy that she lived and was part of our family, because she touched our lives in a positive way. We might not be who we are today if she had not lived past birth. But I also recognize that is completely selfish. Her life surely gave her no joy, and a great deal of pain. Another daughter died of cancer at 38, leaving a husband and two small children behind. She had a feeding tube, and hated it -- hated not having the enjoyment of tasting food. At our urging, she opted for strong chemo in the hopes that it would give her boys their mother for months or even a few years. And -- I admit -- we were not ready to give her up. After the first chemo, she went into a coma and died. Do I think Terry Schiavo would want to live as she does? No, I do not. Do I think her parents are thinking of her? No, I do not. Giving up a child is hard and the hurt never goes away -- as I can attest after more than 40 years. But I cannot believe that her parents would really condemn her to life as an unconsious prisoner of her own body, if they realized how selfish it is. Posted by: Sharon Toji at March 22, 2005 9:59 PMThank goodness I finally found a blog that is FOR Mr. S! I truly believe he has Terri's soul at heart. Otherwise, he surely would have turned her over to her parents and washed his hands of the entire matter long ago. But he does still care about her and seeing this through to the end. He is an honorable man and he doesn't deserve all the mean, viscious things they are saying about and doing to him. Posted by: gmorg at March 26, 2005 4:55 AMThank you all for your thought-provoking and moving comments. I wonder whether part of the problem in differences of opinion on this issue has to do with life experience and empathy. If one can't empathize with what TS or her husband or anyone else involved in this is experiencing, one might fall back on what others in authority say, or on what one has been taught from childhood. That would be congruent with moral development theory (see Kohlberg if you're interested in this sort of thing). It also seems to me that many people are treating this case as if it were not real human beings involved, but rather human symbols for some personal or religious issue. There's a lot of projecting going on... not to mention opportunism. Posted by: Elissa at March 26, 2005 10:45 AMIt's a shame that this personal and painful ordeal is open to the public. There are no easy answers and every situation calls for special considerations and different directions. Who among us thinks they can decide who lives and who doesn't. Is the decision to kill someone predicated on the level of their suffering? There are healthy, ultra rich people who are some of the most un-happy people on the planet; should we kill them?(Don't answer that-just kidding). The politicians are exploiting the issue for some reason or another. I mean they are lawmakers. If they want to come up with a solution; they should use their political standing to make legal law equal to moral law, they shouldn't create an enviornment that gives the media the opportunity to turn this important issue into a media circus. If their intent is to use this occasion as step one to make our legal laws parallel to moral law - they are going about it in the wrong way. Posted by: Cliff at March 28, 2005 1:49 PMI lost my mother to cancer last year. She was not eating nor drinking at the end. So, should I have put a feeding tube in to her just to be selfish and hold on to her another day? She had told me that she never wanted to be hooked up to tubes, and never put it into writing. I honored her wishes and brought her home and she passed away two days later, to be by my father's side that had passed on four years before her. Now she and he are together again and she is happy. Posted by: hmk at March 28, 2005 10:51 PMThank you for putting in words what we all have been thinking. I pray that the people of this country will see the suffering that this women will endure and we will figure out how to help our love ones die with the same compassion we show our pets. My God rest Terri's soul. And may her husband and parents all find peace. Posted by: TracieT at March 31, 2005 12:51 AMI,for one,would come and haunt the people who kept me alive this long. This was wrong. They should have given her up to GOD a long time ago.Instead they tortured Terri for 15 years. Believe in Him and you will have eternal life. I believe in Him,I always have, even when I have sinned, from the time I was a child. And I will pray for the family of Terri. Posted by: SUE C. at March 31, 2005 11:59 AMThis may prove to be the Army-McCarthy moment of the so-called Religious Right and their enablers in the media. Maybe it took a Brit to put it together, but Justin Webb of the BBC did. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4400865.stm "Americans were corralled but rebelled. "They were emotionally blackmailed but refused to budge, were told that their deepest held religious beliefs should push them in one direction, but thought for themselves and thought differently." This makes the case important. The vast majority of Americans refused to be bullied. And if we won't be bullied on this, maybe we won't be bullied on other things. I hope so. Otherwise Terri Schiavo spent 15 years in purgatory for nothing.
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