A true culture of life

[volkov]

What Terri Schiavo's autopsy teaches us about how far we ought to be willing to go to defend life

Just something i felt the need to share with people.

Comments

[dbroussa]

On the other hand it rasies that question once again as to why she collapsed in the first place. If you take the autopsy result that finds that she had no evidence of an eating disorder...then why did she collapse in 91? Why did the insurance companies of the doctors have to pay out over $1.3 million to him to keep her alive?

I would also point out that while some people did maintain that she might awaken not all did. For me personally I think Pope John Paul II put it best when he said that food and water are not extraordinary treatment and should not be denied to a person who is not otherwise imminently terminal.

Lastly, PVS is a disanosis that is not determined by the size and weight of the brain. It is a clinical diagnosis that is determined by observation of the patient. That being said, just being PVS is not a reason to kill someone (unless their wishes are known). In this case there was doubt about her wishes (at least to me). But then again I would tend to side on the case where killing someone is irrevocable while allowing them to live allows for mistakes to be corrected. What would people say if a signed verified document turned up now that showed that Terri wanted to be kept alive? We would have to say, Opps we goofed sorry about that. There would be no recourse at that point, whereas in the reverse case she can be killed.

The entire situation was bad on many levels. What is sad to me is that we have now set the bar that a spouse can have their disabled spouse killed unless that spouse has verifiable legal documentation to the contrary (and that is really tough to do because of the complex nature of such issues). We no longer think of life itself as precious, but will now judge how important a life is to establish its worth.