Schaivo Autopsy Results
I can’t wait to see the social conservative spin on this:
An autopsy released Wednesday found no evidence to contradict the diagnosis that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state after her 1990 collapse, backing up her husband’s contention that she would not have recovered if she was given additional therapy as her parents requested.“There’s nothing in her autopsy report that is inconsistent with a persistent vegetative state,” said Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, a medical examiner who assisted in the autopsy.
Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin, who led the autopsy team, concluded that there was no evidence of strangulation or other trauma leading to her collapse. He also said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death.
So all the allegations of abuse, misdiagnosis, mistreatment, and foul play were completely groundless. Of course, since social conservatives pride themselves on their morality, I’m sure they will be in a rush to formally apologize to Michael Schiavo for all the hateful allegations they leveled at him. Um, let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.
There’s more:
Thogmartin said that Schiavo’s brain was about half of its expected size when she died March 31 in a Pinellas Park hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House and divided the country.He said she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth as her parents’ requested.
“Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not,” Thogmartin told reporters.
That’s right folks: there was only a shell left of what used to be Terri Schiavo, and this had been true for years. Food and water by mouth, if it had been allowed, would have accomplished nothing, and continued tube-feeding would merely have kept alive a hollow vehicle that no longer housed anything resembling a live person.
Terri Schiavo wasn’t “murdered by the state” in 2005. She died tragically in 1990.
UPDATE: According to Xrlq, the autopsy report only vindicates Michael Schiavo as much as Jacko’s “not guilty” verdict vinidcates him. Of course, to back up this implication, Xrlq offers zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Mr. Schiavo; he only asserts that you can’t prove Mr. Schiavo didn’t do anything wrong. How he can possibly equate the Schiavo case with the Jackson case is utterly beyond me, and frankly, morally repugnant.
UPDATE II: Kevin T. Keith has much, much more over at Sufficient Scruples, as does the best Schiavo blogger around. See also Alas, A Blog.
UPDATE III: This will never end. Now Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is opening a probe into the 911 call from 1990, claiming that there was an unusual delay between the time Mr. Schiavo found her and the time he called 911. Of course, he’s only just now bringing this up, after the autopsy report made him look foolish, but he insists it’s “not meant to suggest wrongdoing by Michael Schiavo.” Yeah, I’m sure he’s just interested in setting the record straight.
This is the problem now: these politicians banked on some wrongdoing on Michael Schiavo’s part, and when no evidence of this materialized, they started fishing. They could just admit that they were wrong about this, but that would take, umm, what do you call it? Integrity, that’s the word. It will never happen. They’ve publicly vilified Michael Schiavo and can never back down from that without *gasp* admitting that they were wrong.
The Moderate Voice has more.
How will they spin it? Simple, it’s all part of the same liberal cover up.
Spin? It’s science. And we already know that ideology trumps science. They’ll wave it aside with “God can still work miracles,” and not miss a step.
Michael Schiavo was demonized by some decidedly evil people. Evil people who were able to gather up a flock of unthinking sheep in their quest to ride to power on the emaciated body of a brain-dead woman-it is hard to imagine anything much more evil or foul.
Terri Schiavo is the Horst Wessel for the modern Nazi movement. I hope that poor lady has finally been able to find the peace the conservobots never wanted her to have in this world.
You know, I said the same thing, that he was owed an apology. But like you, I’m not holding my breath. Poor guy. He got alot of unnecessary slack over this.
If he gets any sort of apology, it will be of the days-late-dollars-short variety that Richard Jewell got.
So, my question would be, if we know all the things that didn’t cause her collapse, what did cause it? I never bought into the whole ‘he killed her’ nonsense but this just seems to prove that he didn’t do those things she was tested for.
Uncle:
What caused the initial collapse was never really in dispute. In February 1990, Ms. Schiavo suffered cardiac arrest because of an oxygen deficiency to her brain. This turned out to have been caused by an eating disorder (bulimia) which her doctors failed to diagnose. The much-talked-about $1 million malpractice settlement was because of that failure.
Isn’t cardiac arrest a heart attack? Which this report said she did not have.
I’m writing from Madrid, Spain. Recently, a law has been approved to legalize homosexual marriage. The main opposing party, the PP, belonging in the mainstream conservative party of Europe, has promoved civical disobedience between the state agents in charge of arranging these events. The main argument they have exposed to justify this is: ‘when people follow laws instead of personal convictions, Auschwitz happens.’
I am totally sickened by the hypocrisy of these, the ones who caused Auschwitz in the first place. Those who would justify perversions like keeping a corpse fed just so that someone can still sit on a chair in a big building with a flag. It’s simply sickening, and the very idea of these people being supposed to belong into our ‘democratic’ society makes me question the very nature of the principles that guide this political model.
Greetings.
Called It
In a post at LeanLeft, on the Schiavo autopsy, I gave the following comment in response to the question of how the Schindlers would “spin” the autopsy finding.
Spin? It’s science. And we already know that ideology trumps science. Theyâ…
The perception by now-smug liberals that “all conservatives wanted to keep Shiavo alive” is largely a fairy tell perpetuated by the media. In fact, many conservatives (myself included) believed that Shiavo died long ago and was only waiting to be cut off life support. The liberal understanding of the dynamic conservative position on this seems superficial, at best.
Mid to late March…5 out of 7 conservatives agree: Shiavo is dead….
http://conservativepulse.com/messageboards/viewtopic.php?p=50266&highlight=shiavo#50266
Kha:
I didn’t say “all conservatives,” I said “social conservatives”; it’s a big difference. Even among conservatives, I’d say that the “social” conservatives are an annoyingly vocal minority that has gotten disproportionate representation of late.
Uncle:
Actually, the report confirms the cardiac arrest, but raises questions as to whether or not an eating disorder was truly the cause of the arrest. Physical abuse and drug abuse were essentially ruled out, and there’s no evidence for an eating disorder, either. So the cause of the 1990 heart attack is listed as “undetermined.” Nonetheless, there’s absolutely zero evidence to back up any of the numerous allegatoins of foul play or abuse that have repeatedly been levied against Mr. Schiavo.
“Social conservatives” are still in disagreement. I consider myself a sociocon, but do not agree with keeping someone breathing who is not really alive. When someone is dead in the head, they’re just gone.
IMO, and the opinion of a lot of other sociocons, encouraging a “culture of life” applies when there is life to preserve. Terri Schiavo was long gone.
Kha:
In that case, I wish there were more “sociocons” like you, or that you actually got some media attention.
This has always been and continues to be a story about a pitiful set of parents who could never come to grips with the death of their daughter in 1990 and never could come to the agreement that they had to do the right thing, the same thing most of us have had to do over the years and that is to make this type of decision with our parents or other loved ones … and then they let themselves be surrounded and used by the vile likes of Terrance Randall. Living through this down in Palm Harbor, FL for 15 years we never could understand why the parents wished their daughter live out a life that no one would ever want to be in … I guess they just did not have the love for Terri that Michael obviously had. The love to let go.
There are actually quite a few on the right who take issue with the “culture of life” declaration that any corpse with a heartbeat should be kept alive. There is little disagreement on the left on this issue, except among the Disability Rights crowd.
I do have to say you called the reactions pretty accurately.
Not according to yesterday’s autopsy report, which if anything is more conclusive on the lack of an eating disorder than it is on the question of whether or not Michael Schiavo physically abused her. You didn’t actually read the report, did you?
Oops, I see you did figure that out later. Nevertheless, you do seem to be doing a great job overlooking the fact that while the autopsy report does not show Michael Schiavo physically attacked Terri, it also provides no evidence that he didn’t – particularly since it didn’t provide any pointers as to what did cause her 1990 collapse. The only person who ought to apologize to Michael Schiavo based on yesterday’s report is the rare bird who (1) accused Michael Schiavo of physically attacking his wife, and (2) based that accusation entirely, or at least primarily, on his mistaken belief that yesterday’s autopsy report was going to prove it. Show me a person who meets both criteria, and I’ll concede that that person ought to apologize. Otherwise, your entire argument is phony.
Xrlq:
Actually, the initial news reports (when I first commented) didn’t mention the finding about bulimia. Have I read the entire report? No, I have not.
As for what I “do a great job overlooking,” I do no such thing. We don’t base our system of justice around proof of innocence, now do we? We base it around evidence of guilt. It doesn’t matter that the autopsy report doesn’t conclusively rule out abuse (how could it, anyway?). What matters is that it shows absolutely no evidence of abuse. When you couple that with the rest of the evidence of abuse (none), I think it’s high time we let the abuse allegations die, unless and until someone comes up with something substantial.
And contrary to your argument, I think that anyone who alleged abuse in the absence of evidence owes an apology, irrespective of what the autopsy report says. Further, I think that people who continue to point out that we can’t prove no abuse occurred are partially guilty here, too. After all, what’s the point of repeatedly pointing that out unless there’s the implicit belief that abuse did occur? By your standard, I could accuse you of murder with no basis for making such an accusation, and everyone would have to entertain the possibility that you may have actually committed that crime. When someone challenged me, I could just say “hey, he can’t prove he’s never murdered anyone,” and continue repeating my groundless accusation.
I was sickened by Gov. Bush’s latest move, as outlined in Update III. Will they *ever* stop hounding Michael Schiavo? Could he be one of the first ethical heroes of the new century?
Even the best heroes have a flaw or two; yet who could fault his estaqblishing a new family after exhausting all remedies for Terri?
How ironic it is that “Schiavo” in Italian means “slave.” Not only was Terri a slave to her parents’ deep denial put in the service of near fanaticism; but Michael is yet again to be enslaved by this mindless persecution.
What an amazing statement Jeff (“Xrlq”) [deleted] makes here: “while the autopsy report does not show Michael Schiavo physically attacked Terri, it also provides no evidence that he didn’t.”
Guilty unless proved innocent.
[Ed note - Xrlq blogs anonymously, and this comment contained something that looked like it may have been his last name. Despite our differences, I respect his decision to blog anonymously, so I deleted it in case it actually was his name. - tgirsch]
Gov. Jeb Bush Wants Yet ANOTHER Schiavo Inquiry
“Hey, I’ll have what Florida Governor Jeb Bush is drinking..”:
Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schia…
Gov. Jeb Bush Wants Yet ANOTHER Schiavo Inquiry
“Hey, I’ll have what Florida Governor Jeb Bush is drinking..”:
Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schia…
Richard:
Gotta love that Napoleonic justice, don’t you? You’d think Xrlq would want to avoid all things French, like the GOP playbook says.
This horse was beat to death about 2 months ago. But I gotta point out to KHA, they weren’t keeping her breathing. She was at least doing that on her own.
I can’t wait to see the social conservative spin on this:
From at least one of them, it’s simple denial:
I’m no fan of the Napoleonic Code. I’m merely pointing out the difference between disproving something and merely NOT proving it. “Innocent until proven guilty” isn’t really right, either; it’s presumed innocent until proven guilty, which is different. As to Michael Schiavo’s guilt vs. innocence, I think he has done an excellent job of proving himself beyond a reasonable doubt to be a callous, self-absorbed asshole, but I don’t think anyone has made a convincing case that he’s guilty of anything else.
Come to think of it, I also think the other Michael (Jackson) has done an excellent job of proving himself beyond a reasonable doubt to be a disturbed and disturbing individual, but I don’t think Sneddon et al. did a very good job proving he was guilty of anything else. So perhaps the Jacko/Schiavo analogy is actually a bit stronger than I originally intended it to be.
… a callous, self-absorbed asshole
Do I detect a note of jealousy?
Xrlq:
Couldn’t you say that about pretty much everyone involved in the whole Schiavo affair? I guess the Schindlers would be better described as self-righteous, although I think self-absorbed also applies, given their unwillingness to accept the obvious truth concerning their daughter’s condition.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of Micheal. As we come to know more about Terri’s condition, and therefore more about the case, it becomes crystal clear that he was acting appropriately according to her wishes while his critics were and for the most part still are deranged, deluded, and dishonest.
Those who have charged that Mike put Terri in the coma, such as Nat Hentoff and those who’ve praised him and his speculation as “evidence” as well as those who’ve claimed Mike had a financial motive for snuffing Terri are particularly disgusting. I hope Mike will file defamation suits against some of these people, but he’s probably too classy for that.
And by the way Xrlq, what specifically did Michael Schiavo do to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt? Suppose just for a moment that Mrs. Schiavo really did convey to him (and others) the wish that she not be kept alive artificially under those circumstances. What do you suggest Mr. Schiavo should have done differently? He went through the appropriate channels every step of the way as far as I can see. Further, he stayed by his wife’s side through it all, despite having been vilified and made the target of seemingly spurious allegations by those who opposed him. There were plenty of opportunities for him to walk away.
So what is it that he did that made him an asshole beyond reasonable doubt?
Richard: I don’t think the word “jealousy” means what you think it means.
Tgirsch: I don’t fault the Schindlers for holding out hope against hope that their daughter could recover, even though we now know what most of us (myself included) long suspected, namely that such hope was in vain. I also don’t think there’s a chance that the Texas firm Natalee Hollaway’s family hired will find Natalee alive, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to attack them as being “self-absorbed” simply because they refuse to accept what is, in all likelihood, the inevitable. Parents are supposed to respond that way when horrible things happen to their kids.
As to St. Michael, you basically made my point for me when you acknowledged he had plenty of opportunities to walk away, yet repeatedly refused to do so. Let’s assume, arguendo, that his cock and bull story about “Terri’s wishes” was true, and Terri really did express a clear desire to be killed rather than kept alive if incapacitated, and for some odd reason only trusted three people named “Schiavo” with this directive. Let’s even go one better and assume there was a good reason she didn’t write this intent down, and a better reason why Michael Schiavo lied about it in the early 1990s when he told a nurse and an assistant they had had no such conversation. Forget all that, and assume “Terri’s wishes” really were what Michael Schiavo and George Felos said they were. So what? In Michael Schiavo’s world (and, judging by what we can glean from the autopsy report, probably the real one also), Terri stopped having wishes on 2/25/1990 or shortly thereafter. From that point on, it wasn’t about “Terri’s wishes” anymore, only his, coupled with a sick desire to hurt her family in every way he could.
If, at the time I posted my last comment, there was any remaining doubt as to what a sick, vindictive, self-absorbed jerk, Michael Schiavo is, there isn’t anymore.
Xrlq:
*sigh*
Yes, because a missing girl where we don’t even have a body is just like a case where we have the person right in front of us, and where every doctor ever to physically examine her, except those specifically hired to say otherwise, agreed upon the prognosis. Yeah, that’s a valid comparison all right…
So did the Schindlers. Why was it incumbent upon him (and only him) to walk away? Particularly if he believed he was doing the right thing? It certainly would have been far easier for him to walk away, so what do you suppose was his motivation for hanging around all these years and putting up with the verbal abuse? A dozen years of vilifaction for spite? It sure as hell couldn’t have been for the money, or he wouldn’t have turned down the $1M offer to relinquish guardianship and walk away.
I’m willing to be lots of people still haven’t written down such wishes, even after all this publicity. And yet you think it odd that nobody bothered to write it down? Come on…
Assuming, of course, you believe the nurse and the assistant are remembering correctly all these years later. Apparently, hearsay according to anyone named “Schiavo” is “cock and bull,” while hearsay according to anyone on the Schindlers’ side is gospel truth.
See, now you’re just making shit up. Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers lived together for more than two years after Mrs. Schiavo’s collapse; it was even at their behest and on good terms that he move on and start a family with someone else (for which much of the right vilified him). It was only at the point when it became clear that she wasn’t ever going to recover that they had their falling out, when Michael accepted this and the Schindlers refused to. Note that like him or not, Michael was on the side of reality here.
The 1993 malpractice suit served to poison the issue with money, but neither side was immune from that poisoning, I’m afraid. But nonetheless, things didn’t truly get nasty until the post hoc unsubstantiated allegations of abuse (made by the Schindlers against Michael), and Michael’s the one that sunk to low levels?
Last I checked, it was Michael who petitioned a guardian at litem to decide the feeding tube issue; it was the Schindlers who tied the case up in court for years with bogus motions; it was the Schindlers who turned the case into a media circus. It was the Schindlers who involved essentially every right-to-life politician they could find to drag things out even further. And Michael is the asshole here?
I honestly can’t say that I blame the Schindlers here. If I truly believed that there were a chance my loved one could recover in such circumstances, I’d certainly stop at nothing to save them. But this doesn’t excuse their making spurious allegations, nor does it excuse your mindless parroting of the vilification of Mr. Schiavo, seemingly to the exclusion of any criticism whatsoever of anyone on the Schindlers’ side.
If Michael Schiavo is a “callous, self-absorbed asshole,” it’s because this ordeal turned him into one, with a lot of help from the Schindlers.
As for the tombstone, BFD. The “I Kept My Promise” line might be a bit much, but I’m willing to grant some leeway based on the ordeal, and headstones where a survivor inscribes a message to the departed are not really that uncommon. And apart from that phrase, I see nothing at all wrong with the marker.
[Note: I approved your comment with links, and deleted the sans-links versions. We have a spam filter on the comments, and somehow you tripped it.]
And by the way, what’s with the “St. Michael” moniker, anyway? I’m not aware that I’ve ever claimed that Mr. Schiavo is completely without fault; and I don’t know that I’ve ever read anyone prominent argue that, either. So why do you feel the need to apply sardonic labels to him? You may or may not have noticed, but as much as I disagree with how the Schindlers handled things, I’ve never called them disparaging names; I’ve criticized their actions, not their persons.
I don’t know Mr. Schiavo. He could be an asshole. For all I know, he could be the biggest dickhead ever to walk the face of the earth. It doesn’t make him any less right, or any more wrong.
In fact, if being an asshole factored into rightness or wrongness, then neither you nor I would ever be right about anything.
So all the name-calling at this stage of the game seems like sour grapes to me.
Because there’s such a thing as being “right” yet nevertheless being wrong. In a case like this one, the stakes are really high in one direction, and virtually nonexistent in the other. If you screw up in one direction, you starve an innocent woman to death. If you screw up in the other, you keep her corpse alive for a few extra decades long after she’s gone anyway. BFD. Michael should have said “Terri wouldn’t want it this way, but I’m confident she’s in a better place now, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that she’s suffering in any way, so if you Schindlers want to call your witch doctors to prove me wrong, knock yourselves out. I’m done.” That would have cost nothing but his pride.
Only in this case, where “on the Schindlers’ side” is a cute way of saying “everyone who isn’t named Schiavo.” It would be different if it was just the Schindlers’ word against the Schiavos’, but it’s not.
I wasn’t making anything up, but will grant I was being a bit sloppy in implying that “it” began in 1990. Michael himself didn’t even remember Terri’s supposed wishes then. The point is that once Michael decided Terri was really dead, and took the position that she had been since 1990, then in his world, there was no “Terri,” and therefore, no “Terri’s wishes” to respect or disrespect, as it were. All there was was Michael’s wishes, which he generally portrayed as hers – except, of course, when he goofed and admitted to Larry King that “We didn’t know what Terri wanted, but this is what we want.” And it’s not as though everything went swimmingly until the Schindlers up and accused him of abuse for no good reason. Until he became obsessed with ending her life, they didn’t suspect her of anything.
Absolutely. Both sides did whatever they could to get the result they wanted. One side cared as much about killing a woman as the other side did about their quixotic efforts to save her. The two are not comparable. At all.
It’s nice that some other headstones also communicate messages to the departed, but how many do so in a manner aimed at attacking the departed’s family members?
More than a few of his defenders have been trying to make him into some kind of hero. “Reason” Magazine, for example, is portraying his slimy headstone as though it were evidence the Schindlers were evil ghouls. From where I sit, he’s not a hero at all, just an arrogant, self-absorbed asshole. And that’s assuming he is 100% correct on the underlying issue; else he’s worse still. Either way, that puts him in a totally different assleague than a couple of “asshole” bloggers arguing the merits of his case from afar.
Xrlq:
Unless, of course, she really had expressed the wish not to be kept alive like that, or he even simply truly believed that she wouldn’t have been wanted to be kept alive like that, absent any specific statement that amounted to as much. You’re basically arguing from the presumption that Mr. Schiavo is lying about Mrs. Schiavo’s wishes; very little of your argumentation even makes sense without that presumption. We tend to try to treat our loved ones with a certain amount of respect and dignity, even the departed ones, assuming we really do (did) care for them. What you’re saying he should have done is said “screw her dignity, she’s dead anyway,” and move on. Even if he firmly believed she wouldn’t want to be kept alive like that absent any specific statement to that effect, walking away like you suggest would be the supremely assholish thing to do.
I also can’t help but notice that you don’t even attempt to answer the question of what motivated him to fight this until the very end. You seem to imply that pride was the culprit, but I find that very hard to believe.
Interesting framing. It’s neat how you jump back and forth between the “killing her” stance and the “she’s essentially dead anyway” stance, depending on which suits the argument at hand. Of course it might have been different if there were any reasonable doubt at all concerning her condition. Are you seriously arguing that preserving a barely-technically-”alive” life is more important than concerns about human dignity?
So now you can divine intent? It’s a pretty big leap to get from “I Kept My Promise [presumably 'to you']” to “Fuck you Schindlers.”
You of all people should know that Libertarians can’t be taken seriously…
And from where I sit, he’s a guy who was thrust into an extremely difficult situation, and stuck to his guns until the very end, despite attacks from virtually all sides. I can’t see anything about this case that leads me to believe that either the Schindlers or the Schiavos acted out of any motive other than to do what they ultimately felt was right: allowing Mrs. Schiavo to pass with dignity in Mr. Schiavo’s case, and saving their daughter’s life in the case of the Schindlers. It’s unfathomable to me that anyone would vilify either side without solid evidence of wrongdoing or wrongful intent.
But I can tell you this much: my wife and I have made our wishes clear to each other and to our families, but if something similar ever happened to my wife and there were ever a dispute over those wishes with my wife’s family, I would do precisely what Mr. Schiavo did, fighting until the very end to see to it that my wife’s wishes, as I understand them, are met. If that makes me a “callous, self-absorbed asshole,” then so be it.
“I kept my promise” is what it’s all about, and doing so makes Mike a hero to all of us who’ve ever had to deal with moronic zealots.
Why? Under the circumstances, nothing else makes sense, particularly when discussing a family that prides itself on its stubbornness.
No, I jump back and forth between the two sides depending on whose side we are discussing. In case you’ve forgotten, the Schindlers did not believe she was essentially dead anyway, but Michael Schiavo did.
No, it’s not. The connection is so clear even Dick Cabeza (see also Comment #37) can see it.
Not to me. There are hard “right to die” cases, but for those of us who’d rather err on the side of caution, this case should never have been among them. Where all agree the patient is not suffering in any way (how could she be, if she’s already dead?!), and an error in one direction will result in a legalized, slow-motion murder while an error in the other means a corpse pointlessly pumps blood a decade or two later than it needed to, there should be no dilemma at all. The risks are not comparable.
Xrlq:
Dude, what’s with all the name calling? “St. Michael,” “Dick Cabeza,” etc. Leave it at the door already. You can knock yourself out with the personal attacks on your blog all you want, but while you’re here, I ask that if you can’t make your points without insulting people (something that seems to be very, very difficult for you), then don’t bother.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter who believed what. What matters is what was true. All of her higher brain functions had ceased, and every expert to examine her knew it, and with the notable exception of a couple of hired charlatans, expressed as much. But my point was that your anti-Schiavo bias permeates your framing. There’s no possibility, to you, that Mr. Schiavo could have cared about his wife’s dignity or her wishes. No, he was just eager to “kill her,” everything else be damned. I would have expected you to take a dim view of such demagoguery, rather than engage in it yourself.
Again with the demagoguery, eh? Of course, by your own argumentation, all didn’t agree on this. Namely, the Schindlers believed that there was still some lucidity in their daughter, and thus she would have been capable of suffering. So in that regard, if they were right, that would even further justify Mr. Schiavo’s actions.
But in any case you ignore the outside factors here. Mrs. Schiavo may very well have been preventing someone from receiving care who could actually have benefited from it.
And come on, “slow-motion murder?” Surely even you can do better than that. By your standard, we just slowly murder our grandfather this past January by declining to put a feeding tube in him. For someone who purportedly supports the right to die, the use of the term “murder” here seems highly suspect. Apparently in Xrlq-land, once you put someone on artificial life support, you’re obligated to keep them there forever until something else kills them, and anything else is murder. Go ahead and keep using the terms “killing” and “murder” like that. It will help strip them of any meaning.
I’ve said before that if there was a moral failing in the Schiavo case, it wasn’t the feeding tube’s removal, it was its insertion. Obviously you disagree. The moral failing was pretty much anything Michael Schiavo ever did.
Not when you’re judging someone’s character. To judge each individual’s actions fairly, you have to view his/her actions against the world as that individual saw it, not against anyone else’s perspective. It makes no more sense to argue that the Schindlers acted unreasonably because Michael knew she was dead than it does to argue that Michael is guilty of murder (or, if you prefer, attempted murder) because the Schindlers “knew” she was alive.
Not true. The possibility certainly exists. My point is that even if it is true, he still handled it horribly. If, God forbid, I were ever in the Schindlers’ position, and believed what they say they believed, I’d probably hire a better lawyer in the original trial, and I’d sooner court Al Sharpton than Randall Terry, but by and large, handle the situation more or less the way they did. If I were in Michael Schiavo’s position, and believed what he says he believed, I hope to God I wouldn’t be so pigheaded as to handle the situation at all the way he did.
Huh? On what planet can one person’s perception justify another’s action? Could it be the same planet where a troll can call someone a “ghoul” solely for disagreeing with him, willfully and maliciously out that same person for the sin of blogging anonymously, baselessly accuse him and at least two others of not being who they truthfully say they are, and lie through his teeth about basic historical facts with impunity, but where the guy occasionally retaliates gets upbraided for … shudder … name-calling?
Nah, couldn’t be that.
“If Michael Schiavo is a “callous, self-absorbed asshole,” it’s because this ordeal turned him into one, with a lot of help from the Schindlers.”
LMAO!!! Now thats classic liberal spin.
Liberal spin my ass. You obviously forget that even most conservatives sided with Michael Schiavo in this matter. This according to a poll by that horribly-liberally-biased Fox News. “Liberals” only sided with Schiavo at a slightly higher rate than self-described Republicans.
It’s pretty rare occasion when I get called a liberal.