There is a not-so-high fence that runs down the center of typical thought. Some people sit on this fence; others are planted firmly on one side or the other. Others, still, gracefully spring over the fence, back-and-forth, depending on the issue. Jeanne, you come down hard. Kind-hearted to the mass murderer yet scathing to the "right-to-die" proponent. Is there anything about which you are unsure?
Have you seen that woman's face? I work with a brain-damaged man who is one tenth as emotive as Terri Schiavo. He cannot speak, and to the outsÃde observer he could appear untouchable. But I have as elaborate a relationship with him as I do with anyone I know. She isn't trying to kill herself, which would raise a different issue. This is an abomination. I can hardly believe it is actually happening.
I don't think so. It would be an abomination if they ruled to kill you, too. As it is with every death penalty. How on earth can I presume to know what process any particular mind/soul is working through? How can I say that now is when they should stop working through it? What if Terri S. hasn't realized whatever she needs to realize, or hasn't done what she needs to do, or affected whomever she might end up affecting? Taking control would require omniscience. We have no right to take that kind of power into our own hands. Life is all we've got going. Ending it willfully is an abomination.
This is a remarkably hazy area, the argument about life support. It's called feeding, and we do it for any number of handicapped people who cannot use their hands to eat for themselves. If you were in a motorcycle accident, and broke your neck, you would be entirely incapable of supporting your own life. Your wife may think that your new condition does not qualify as a worthy life. May she stop feeding you? I give birth to a severely handicapped child. He won't ever have a normal life. May I kill him? It is borderline Nazism.
That was the intellectual approach, but really what happens is that I look at Terri S., and see her aliveness, and cannot fathom that someone (a whole system of individual someones!) would squelch it. It shocks me so fundamentally that I can barely stand to think about it.
The doctors, if they are like the doctors I've come in contact with here, haven't got the time or energy to recognize the individual beneath the surface of a handicapped person. In a way, they are the worst judges, because if they were to have empathy in contact with the number of suffering or dying people that they meet regularly, it would probably kill them. They seem to learn to harden themselves and think of statistics as a survival mechanism. I don't know if doctors have anything to do with this decision. It seems to be a federal court that has ruled. There are apparently massive demonstrations, and people trying to storm the hospital where she is being starved, so I doubt that there is much you or I could do, apart from trying to change the perception of people in general and hope that it weighs over in this case. The future is as yet unwritten, and I ward off cynicism as best I can.
5 Comments:
There is a not-so-high fence that runs down the center of typical thought. Some people sit on this fence; others are planted firmly on one side or the other. Others, still, gracefully spring over the fence, back-and-forth, depending on the issue. Jeanne, you come down hard. Kind-hearted to the mass murderer yet scathing to the "right-to-die" proponent. Is there anything about which you are unsure?
Not so far.
Have you seen that woman's face? I work with a brain-damaged man who is one tenth as emotive as Terri Schiavo. He cannot speak, and to the outsÃde observer he could appear untouchable. But I have as elaborate a relationship with him as I do with anyone I know.
She isn't trying to kill herself, which would raise a different issue. This is an abomination. I can hardly believe it is actually happening.
1:20 PM
an abomination? that's a little strong.
I don't think so. It would be an abomination if they ruled to kill you, too. As it is with every death penalty. How on earth can I presume to know what process any particular mind/soul is working through? How can I say that now is when they should stop working through it? What if Terri S. hasn't realized whatever she needs to realize, or hasn't done what she needs to do, or affected whomever she might end up affecting? Taking control would require omniscience. We have no right to take that kind of power into our own hands. Life is all we've got going. Ending it willfully is an abomination.
This is a remarkably hazy area, the argument about life support. It's called feeding, and we do it for any number of handicapped people who cannot use their hands to eat for themselves. If you were in a motorcycle accident, and broke your neck, you would be entirely incapable of supporting your own life. Your wife may think that your new condition does not qualify as a worthy life. May she stop feeding you? I give birth to a severely handicapped child. He won't ever have a normal life. May I kill him? It is borderline Nazism.
That was the intellectual approach, but really what happens is that I look at Terri S., and see her aliveness, and cannot fathom that someone (a whole system of individual someones!) would squelch it. It shocks me so fundamentally that I can barely stand to think about it.
The doctors, if they are like the doctors I've come in contact with here, haven't got the time or energy to recognize the individual beneath the surface of a handicapped person. In a way, they are the worst judges, because if they were to have empathy in contact with the number of suffering or dying people that they meet regularly, it would probably kill them. They seem to learn to harden themselves and think of statistics as a survival mechanism.
I don't know if doctors have anything to do with this decision. It seems to be a federal court that has ruled. There are apparently massive demonstrations, and people trying to storm the hospital where she is being starved, so I doubt that there is much you or I could do, apart from trying to change the perception of people in general and hope that it weighs over in this case. The future is as yet unwritten, and I ward off cynicism as best I can.
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