Killing Terri Schiavo
I’ve been interested in the Terri Schiavo case since the previous attempt to starve her to death but I’ve been remiss in commenting on the latest developments–mainly because my opinion hasn’t changed. Persons in a vegetative or near-vegetative state do not retain any abstract desire to die from their pre-vegetable days, so living wills are beside the point. You cannot make a suicide pact with your future self.
It’s all well and good to respect the desires of the dead when it comes to cremation or inheritance, all other things being equal (which they sometimes are not), but it’s a whole different matter to leave instructions to other people to kill you. Suicide is a natural right only the individual can exercise, and that right (such as it is) ends where your ability to follow through ends. If you can’t kill yourself, then you can’t kill yourself. Terri Schiavo may be able to roll her head but she can’t kill herself, so she has no right to die.
What happens to vegetables doesn’t matter to them; it only matters to us. The public’s squeamish kill-her-already attitude is the most surprising part of Terri’s case, and the least appropriate reaction of them all. Take my word for it–Terri doesn’t mind the publicity. She doesn’t care if you squabble about her autopsy by her deathbed. It doesn’t matter whether she would have minded, back when she had a mind. Terri is no longer her own problem–she’s ours, and Congress should be making a federal case out of it. At some point we do need to decide whether a husband has the right to starve his ailing wife to death. Our legal system is based on case law, and this is a case and a half.
April 3rd, 2005 at 4:13 am
that’s the most clear, succinct and logical take on this that i’ve read or heard.
April 15th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Thank you.
August 24th, 2005 at 7:56 am
“At some point we do need to decide whether a husband has the right to starve his ailing wife to death.”
That right has already been decided for a very long time. My sister works in hospice. People in persistent vegetative state have their plug pulled every single day, with less fanfare. It is ALWAYS a difficult and painful decision for the family making it, but nobody makes a media circus about it.
The only reason that anyone took an interest in Terri Schiavo’s case was because there was conflict between family members. As you pointed out, Terri herself did not care at that point what happened to her. If Michael Schiavo’s in-laws had not raised a fuss, this would have been an ordinary case of taking someone off life support, and no one would have wrung their hands about “starving her to death.”
“Persons in a vegetative or near-vegetative state do not retain any abstract desire to die from their pre-vegetable days, so living wills are beside the point. You cannot make a suicide pact with your future self.”
Of course you can. If you could not, there wouldn’t be any living wills. And while it may not have mattered to Ms. Schiavo personally, it matters A LOT to other people who do not wish to be indefinitely kept alive as a vegetable. It’s creepy to think that your wishes on the matter might be ignored at a later date, and makes everyone much more unsettled about the whole process.
August 25th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
That people starve one another to death all the time does not actually contradict my statement that at some point we have to decide about it.
I know there are living wills; I mentioned them above. There is a difference between refusing extreme measures when terminally ill and requesting people to actively kill some future, viable version of yourself. Thus a living will is irrelevant to a case like Terri Schiavo’s.