Terri Schiavo

For some time now this case has bothered me. It bothered my in several ways. Mainly because it is my belief that Terri was treated in a way that should be considered inhumane. Imagine the scenario, a woman is discovered locked in a room, shackled to the bed, starving and thirsty, her husband has deprived her of food and water for 13 days. What do you think would happen to the husband? Of course he would be locked up in prison for all kinds of different offenses, not least abuse! What happens when that room is a hospital bed and the husband is the doctor? Nothing. Nothing! Ok, that is one scenario. Look at it another way, a dog is discovered, starving and thirsty. The owner is prosecuted! Another way? Ok, a dog is injured in an accident and is to all intents and purposes dead although it can still move its eyes and whimper. Does the vet recommend that the owner put the dog on life support? No of course not! The vet kindly suggests it would be the best thing to put the poor dog out of its misery. So when it happens to a person, do the doctors suggest that the person be put out of their misery? Oh no! That wouldn't be fair! Let the poor person live on, struggling to communicate their wish to die for fifteen years! Fifteen years!!!! How *dare* her parents over rule the agreement that Terri made with her faithful and loving husband? And why the hell did the PTB allow for this case to drag on so long? If it wasn't bad enough that this was going on, for it then to become National News, International News, turns it in to some kind of freak show for the world to stare at. It horrifies me that something like this happened. Scares me that if I was in an accident which resulted in a persistent vegetative state that the agreement that I have made with my partner could be over ruled by my mother. Well I know that wouldn't happen, but in theory it could!

Then today I read a brilliant article by a BBC correspondant who lives in the US, that has given me hope that something good has come out of this horrendous case.

The URL is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4415595.stm

This is one of the paragraphs from that article "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." The article goes on to say "If you can convince the courts that you are legally in the right, then no politician, even the president himself in his pyjamas and on his high horse, can stop you.
Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's much vilified husband, did convince the courts.
He believed that his wife would want to die and they agreed.
It is a lesson the Republican party, which has allowed itself to become very closely allied with the religious right, will reflect on in the months ahead.
Already moderate Republicans are talking openly of re-capturing their party from the social conservatives.
It is possible at least that the high watermark of social conservatism has been reached. Its limit set by the will of a silent liberal majority.
The founding fathers must be watching from their heavenly perches and wondering at the power of the constitution they created. "

I sincerely hope that America learns from this lesson and that the religious zealots of that country have a looser grip. There is too much integration of church and state, it is one of the reasons I left America. If you do not believe in God you are still expected to pledge your allegiance to him, and that God can be any God I realise, but what if you are like me, a Pagan who believes not in a single deity, but in the ruling of nature over all things? No matter how fervently religious you are, you have no right to force your beliefs on me, and yet American's don't seem to even realise that that is what is happening to them. Now with this Terri Schaivo case, perhaps they are beginning to wake up to the fact that GWB is intent on making everything run to his own rule book, and that book is the Bible, interpreted by him (someone who can't even pronounce nuclear).

As an endnote, dying of thirst is one of the worst ways to die, drinking water is one of the major instinct for humans, and to deprive someone of water until they die is cruelty in its worst form. It is one of the reasons why the water torture is the most effective form of torture. Terri Schiavo should have been allowed to die a painless and dignified death once the decision was made that she wanted to die.