I don’t understand why Michael Schiavo is so anxious to have his wife killed. In 1990, after suffering brain damage because of heart failure that temporarily cut off blood flow to her brain, Terri entered into what doctors call a Persistant Vegetative State (PVS). This is a sort of “waking coma,” where only the brain stem’s function still remains.
Terri left no living will stating her wishes whether or not she would like to be kept alive if in such a state. Her husband says that she spoke to him about this when she was 25 and said that she would not like to be kept alive in such a state. Her parents disagree, saying that disconnecting the feeding tube would lead to a slow death by starvation.
The question that I’m most curious about, as an engineer, is what caused Terri Schiavo to get into this situation in the first place — there’s a dearth of information available as to the circumstances and causes of her condition. This article says that “Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped briefly. Her collapse was later linked to a potassium imbalance believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. A successful malpractice lawsuit argued that doctors had failed to diagnose the eating disorder. She can breathe on her own, but has relied on the feeding tube to keep her alive.”
So are extraordinary means being used to keep Terri alive? Hardly; nutrition and hydration are very ordinary means of keeping someone alive — she can, after all, breathe on her own, and her heart beats on its own accord. She is not in the ICU and is not on intensive life support that is the only thing keeping her alive.
One could liken her condition that of a disabled child: alive, with a limited awareness of the world, reliant upon others for shelter and sustenance. Her husband says that she said that she would not have wished to live in such a state; unfortunately there is no written statement of this and thus it is her husband’s word against her parents’. As President Bush said, in complicated situations like this it is wise to err on the side of life. Her condition is no cause for her to be killed. She is still a living, breathing human being and I would contend that the disabled child analogy is most apt.
To argue that she “should not be forced to live in such a state” is a dangerous argument to follow; who are we to judge whether or not she lives? What’s next? Saying that unborn children do not deserve to live or that disabled or elderly “have lived long enough?”
Why is Michael Schiavo so anxious for his wife to die? What harm does she cause him by persisting in life, eating and drinking via her feeding tube, much like a disabled child with a limited awareness of the world? He claims that she would not have wanted it this way. Her parents claim the opposite — that she would not have wanted to die via starvation and dehydration. Her own intentions remain unknown.
But her condition is no cause for her to be killed, let alone by a cruel death of starvation and dehydration.