This newspaper columnist has changed his mind
This is just a piece of a newspaper column that Richard from Hyscience posted on Blogsforterri. I thought it was very interesting; someone in the MSM with an open mind who has taken a good look at the facts and now realizes this is a slightly different situation than he had previously thought. Sometimes even newspaper columnists change their minds. In the matter of Terri Schiavo, the permanently brain-damaged former suburban Philadelphia woman caught in a life-and-death tug-of-war, this columnist has changed his.
I no longer so blithely believe Schiavo’s feeding tubes should be pulled and her life allowed to end. I’m no longer so sure her parents do not deserve a say in their daughter’s future. I no longer am totally comfortable assuming her husband, Michael, who now has two children by another woman, is acting unselfishly.
One of the biggest indicators for me was the fact that he had their wedding rings melted down, and he had both of Terry’s cats euthanized. What kind of a man does things like that if he’s grieving over the condition of a wife who has gone from a healthy 26-year old woman to a disabled young woman?
That’s not to say I have changed my opinion about the right of all of us to die with dignity when life has lost all meaning. But for Terri Schiavo, who lingers in a Florida nursing home, the devil is in the details, uncomfortable details that raise sticky moral dilemmas.
I think this totally is a matter of opinion. In Holland, they are dealing with the intentional murders of children–where the health care professionals took these life and death matters into their own hands and didn’t tell the parents. Whose right is it to decide in matters of life and death? These are very important things to consider.
Detail 1: Terry Schiavo is not dying. She is not being kept alive artificially. Her heart beats and lungs breathe without help. She cannot swallow food or water. Once the feeding tube is removed, she would slowly starve to death over days or weeks.
Detail 2: Schiavo is not comatose. Her eyes open, and she sometimes responds to stimuli. Doctors say there is no brain activity and her responses are simply reflexive. Her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, want to believe otherwise.
Unanswered questions
Detail 3: The Schindlers think their daughter could benefit from physical therapy and might someday swallow on her own, but her husband, as her legal guardian, reportedly will not allow it. Which leads to an equally uncomfortable question: If Schiavo merely required spoon feeding instead of tube feeding, would anyone seriously be arguing to withhold food and water? Does not every human, no matter how incapacitated, deserve sustenance?
Detail 4: Unproven allegations that Schiavo might have suffered physical trauma immediately before her heart stopped for several minutes in 1990, leading to brain damage, have not been fully investigated. The Schindlers have long suggested their son-in-law strangled their daughter; Michael Schiavo’s lawyer says the abuse allegations have never been substantiated. Before pulling the plug on this woman, don’t these questions need to be fully answered?
The abuse allegations against Michael Schiavo may be nothing but scurrilous rumor spread to damage his credibility. But what if there is even a tiny chance he is guilty of abuse? Should such a person be in a position to decide this life-and-death issue?
I don’t think so. What I’d like to know is–if experts like Michael Baden figured out that she was probably strangled and that’s what caused her heart to stop for 8 minutes or so, then why isn’t this angle being pursued? I haven’t seen a thing about going after Michael Schiavo for his part in what put Terri into this condition. There should at the very least, be an investigation. She was 26 and her heart was healthy; Baden said she doesn’t have a condition that would bring on a potassium deficiency.
People need to know the difference between being on LIFE SUPPORT vs. being fed via a tube. There is a huge difference.
See why I call us the Blorg?
Resistance to the Truth IS Futile!!
Keep beating them on the head with it and they have to notice sometime…..that is why hard truth works better. It hurts worse.
We found the one columnist who has an open mind?
/TJ
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danm … used the wrong signature … /TJ
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“I haven’t seen a thing about going after Michael Schiavo for his part in what put Terri into this condition. There should at the very least, be an investigation. She was 26 and her heart was healthy; Baden said she doesn’t have a condition that would bring on a potassium deficiency.?
*nice, I believed you had a bit of conspiracy theorist in you
Read this and shut up. “Conspiracy theory”? I suppose Baden’s theory about Gacy’s victims (how they died, what he used to do it, over what period of time) was wrong and so are all the theories that he came up with based on forensic evidence that have solved crimes and put criminals behind bars. You know by ignoring all the evidence cited by blogsforterri and all the articles I’ve cited and linked to, you’re just looking more and more like a totally blind and clueless moonbat. Go ahead and blame me for being a “conspiracy theorist” without considering any of the evidence or any of the others who are writing about it, if it makes you feel better. Just makes you look pretty stupid.
Why do you suppose that Baden and 26 other experts say Michael should be investigated for Terri’s condition? I’m not pulling this out of the sky, you know. These documents prove there’s plenty of evidence to conduct an investigation. Baden is just one of the experts on the Schindler’s side that Greer has just ignored.
Same moonbat just hit my Kerry 180 post a few minutes ago. You should see the comment. Pathetic moonbat!
So many of them are so totally clueless, it’s almost not worth the energy to respond to them. But some fo the convos are worth reading over afterwards–for the entertainment value.
~for such a Christian right-winger you sure have a ton of angst and a slight bit of anger in ya…but then again, I expected that response from ya, in the tone you applied it…but then again I’d expect nothing less~
Btezra, you represent the typical liberal idiocy I have come to expect from your lot. Try to bait people and then go on and on with mindless, endless chatter with no substance. No wonder your party is the no longer for the people.
QUOTE: for such a Christian right-winger you sure have a ton of angst and a slight bit of anger in ya UNQUOTE
It’s called ‘passion’ you ignorant moonbat. Cao, like most of us, is actually *incensed* that a disabled woman is about to be murdered on the say-so of a man who might well have been instrumental in disabling her in the first place. This is a travesty, and any normal person would feel passionately about it … which possibly explains why you don’t.
Hey BTezra, may I mambo dogface to the banana patch?
LOL…haha. I’m laughing so hard you don’t wan’t to know. Cao…Read this and shut up? LOL…:lol::lol:
I read “shut up and read this” 3 hours ago…I am still laughing.
BTW, I have no proof that they’re reading by what it is they’re saying to me. Could be that they make up those insults, click on a thread and just stick the comment out there. It’s like a drive-by comment, regardless of the subject at hand.
LOL, spit the coffee. Drive by comment attacks. You’re too funny. LOL
Wouldn’t those comments be a “surf-by” instead of a drive-by?
I had my hackles up to comment at everyone’s blog last Tuesday, whether they be conservative or moonbat, and it was Terri’s day, so instead of being controversial, I simply posted a comment to “save a life” with a link to Terri’s fight dot org. I hit a bunch, it was exhausting, but I think I had an impact.
LOL. Surf by comments. YOU all are too funny and it’s why I luv you so much.:lol:
surf-by comments……the new online gangsterism.
DUCK!!!!!