Khelben
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Reply 23 of 64 (Originally posted on: 03-21-05 08:30:34 PM)
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Two things I want to touch on here, and that would be whether Shiavo has the right to live, and this whole court issue.
I've done a little research before posting about this, and I think she should live. She does not require a breathing apparatus (which even Christopher Reeves required), she only needs food and water (what a baby needs), she can laugh, she can cry, she can smile, and she is starting to utter complete sentences after several years of being essentially in a brain-dead state. After fifteen years, just a year short of how long I've been around, she is starting to show signs of a minor recovery. Were she to continue on her course of no recovery in sight, taking up tax dollars in the process, I would have been all for her being given the right to die in dignity. But she seems, judging by the signs, to be recovering, to be leaving her current state of health.
Aside from the fact that her husband, as well-intentioned he may be, has refused her most of the therapy she's been offered, the case should not have been brought before a state judge, as it is a family issue, first and foremost, and the parents and husband should have been able to adequately compromise like thinking adults instead of bringing the gov't into it, and thus starting this politically and religiously charged storm. What also irks me is that the traditionally state's rights conservative crowd are protesting the judge's decision. When the Shiavos said they would bring the issue before the judge, they said they would be just fine with whatever decision the judge made, as they were staunch believers in state's rights. They were confident he would make the decision they wanted to hear. But it did not turn out that way, and because of that, they are taking the issue to the highest office in the land, and in what appears to be almost Stalinist in effect, had the president himself sign a bill (A BILL!) reinserting Terri's feeding tube, overturning the STATE judge's decision, much to the joy of the STATE's rights conservative extremists. The bill was signed literally overnight, with little opposition from the basically republican crowd.
In my opinion, Terri should be allowed to live, because she is progressing from a vegetable to a higher state (hopefully; she certainly shows signs of recovery), but it is the family's decision, and they should have made it. They didn't, so they brought it before a judge, who should have been a very last resort, and he made his decision, and it should have ended there. Stop bringing the government into personal matters, as it only gives the gov't more control. That is what state's rights are all about, and, boy, are they a fundamental freedom of ours, and an underrated one at that. When things like that get ignored for a supposedly more noble cause, only bad will result in the long run. The republican party, while right for the wrong reasons in this matter, needs to stop being hypocritical in a case like this, which should have remained between the family. If they decide she lives, she lives, and if not, then not. It need never be clearer, to anyone. Fin.
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he does not become one; when you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes into you..."
-Friedrich Nietzche
"Whenever the majority of men are not deprived of their property or honor, they live contentedly".
-Niccolo Machiavelli
"All of my questions are answers to my sins/And all of my endings are waiting to begin"
-Slipknot, The Subliminal Verses
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