Appeals court: Terri Schiavo parents cannot intervene - Page 63 - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 04-04-2005, 10:59 PM

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There is no rule to be changed, you cannot change what the Bible says.

Where in the Bible is cremation forbiden ? You have presented some compelling texts "for" burial, but nothing that forbids cremation.

Do you keep Kosher, there are hundreds of food restictitions - most of which made sense in the Times where there was no refridgeration - keeping to the dietary practices must have saved thousands from food poisoning.

Do you hold with slavery - also allowed in the Old Testement.

The Tradition in the Catholic church originated because in the days of the early Christians the matyrs bodies were burned because they beliived in the Resurection ( they also thought He was Coming *any day now* ) and the Rapture. The Romans burned the bodies as a sign of disrespect - and so it has been held in distasts by the Catholic Church ever since.

KarlaJorge · 04-06-2005, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

Where in the Bible is cremation forbiden ? You have presented some compelling texts "for" burial, but nothing that forbids cremation.

Take Abraham, for example. As the "Father of the Faithful.' he chose to purchase a plot of ground for 400 shekels of silver as a place for burying his wife Sarah (Genesis 23:14). Why did he do that? Because it was the scriptural way to care for the dead. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all buried, as were the more than two million Israelites who died in the desert.

The Old Testament forbade the Jews from following the customs of their pagan neighbors, and specifically ordered them to bury dead bodies (Deut. 21:23). When Moses died, God buried him in Moab (Deut. 34:6). Since that is God's method, should it not be ours. The Jewish commentary on the Law (The Mishna) denounced cremation as "an idolatrous practice.'

The only case of a body being burned in Israel is recorded in Joshua 7:15. Aachan and his family were stoned to death, and their bodies were ordered to be burned because of their horrible sin of rebellion against a holy God. Burning a body was a demonstration of God's 'fierce anger' in Bible days (Joshua 7:26). Should our remains be disgraced in this same way?

Amos 2 records the unpardonable sin of Moab, which was the burning of the bones of Edom's king (v. 1). The result of that sin of cremation in the 8th century BC was a God-sent "fire upon Moab." Burning has always been a demonstration of God's wrath. It is therefore not a fitting practice at biblical funerals.

The New Testament

In New Testament times the only bodies that were burned were those of criminals. The place of cremation was the garbage dump in the Valley of Hinnon which was located just outside the walls of the Holy City. There. in ancient times, human sacrifices were offered (2 Chron. 33:6) and the continuous burning of rubbish illustrated for the Jewish people unending judgment upon the wicked.

Jesus used the word "Gehenna" as a picture of Hell. where 'the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched' (Mark 9:48). Burning was the symbol of shame and disgrace, hardly the proper imagery for a Christian funeral. Jesus said that the dead should be buried, not burned (Matt. 8:22).

The bible texts are there, if you want to look them up, but I am not going to further discuss this. Somebody asked where it was forbidden I just posted a finding on the matter, my mother is a Reformed Baptist Cristian, and knows the bible like nothing else. She had discussed this before with us, cause my grandmother wishes to be creamted and my mother simply is against it.

No further comments....

Jolie Rouge · 04-10-2005, 12:19 AM

ISSUES RAISED BY SCHIAVO CASE WILL BE DIFFICULT TO RESOLVE
Some final notes on the Terri Schiavo case
By John Leo

THE BEHAVIOR OF CONSERVATIVES. Uneven and sometimes awful, with lots of vituperation and extreme charges. (Jeb Bush does not remind me of Pontius Pilate; I don't think it's fair to circulate rumors that Michael Schiavo was a wife-beater.) Worse were the revolutionary suggestions that the courts be ignored or defied, perhaps by sending in the National Guard to reconnect the tube. This is the "by any means necessary" rhetoric of the radical left, this time let loose by angry conservatives. Where does this rhetoric lead?

THE BEHAVIOR OF LIBERALS. Mystifying. While conservative opinion was severely splintered, liberal opinion seemed monolithic: Let her die.

Liberals usually rally to the side of vulnerable people, but not in this case. Democrats talked abstractly about procedures and rules, a reversal of familiar roles. I do not understand why liberal friends defined the issue almost solely in terms of government intruding into family matters. Liberals are famously willing to enter family affairs to defend individual rights, opposing parental-consent laws, for example. Why not here? Non-intervention is morally suspect when there is strong reason to wonder whether the decision-maker in the family has the helpless person's best interests at heart.

A few liberals broke ranks -- 10 members of the black caucus, for instance, plus Sen. Tom Harkin, and Ralph Nader, who called the case "court-imposed homicide." But such voices were rare. My suspicion is that liberal opinion was guided by smoldering resentment toward President Bush, and the rising contempt for religion in general and conservative Christians in particular. We seem headed for much more conflict between religious and secular Americans.

THE BEHAVIOR OF THE NEWS MEDIA. Terrible. Pro-life columnist Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice called it "the worst case of liberal media bias I've seen yet." Many stories and headlines were politically loaded. Small example of large disdain: On air, a CBS correspondent called the Florida rallies a "religious road show," a term unlikely to have been applied to Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights demonstrations or any other rallies meeting CBS' approval.

More important, it was hard to find news that Michael Schiavo had provided no therapy or rehabilitation for his wife since 1994, and even blocked the use of antibiotics when Terri developed a urinary infection. And the big national newspapers claimed as a fact that Michael Schiavo's long-delayed recollection of Terri's wish to die, supported only by hearsay from Michael's brother and a sister-in-law, met the standard for "clear and convincing evidence" of consent. It did nothing of the sort, particularly with two of Terri's friends testifying the opposite.

The media covered the intervention by Congress as narrowly political and unwarranted. They largely fudged the debates over whether Terri Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state and whether tube-feeding meant that Schiavo was on life-support. In the Nancy Cruzan case, the Supreme Court said that tube-feeding is life-support, but some ethicists and disability leaders strongly dispute that position.

PUBLIC OPINION. Polls showed very strong opposition to the Republican intervention, but the likelihood is that those polled weren't primarily concerned with Terri Schiavo or Republican overreaching, if that's what it was. They were thinking about themselves and how to avoid being in Terri Schiavo's predicament. Many, too, have pulled the plug on family members and don't want these wrenching decisions second-guessed by the courts or the public.

If this is correct, it means the country has yet to make up its mind on the issue of personhood and whether it is moral and just to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with grave cognitive disabilities.

The following candid exchange occurred on Court TV last month in a conversation between author Wesley Smith and bioethicist Bill Allen:

Smith: Bill, do you think Terri is a person?

Allen: No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood.

Fetuses, babies and Alzheimer's patients are only minimally aware and might not fit this definition of personhood, and so would have no claim on our protections. Smith points out that other bioethicists narrow protection further, requiring rationality, the capacity to experience desire or the ability to value one's own existence. Tighter definitions of personhood expand the number of humans who can be killed without blame or harvested for their organs while still alive.

On Court TV, Bill Allen argued that the family could have removed Terri's organs while she was alive, "just as we allow people to say what they want done with their assets." This issue has been hiding behind the Terri Schiavo case for years. Soon it will be out in the open.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...iculttoresolve

janelle · 04-10-2005, 01:19 AM

Babies don't fit the definition of personhood?????

Jolie Rouge · 06-15-2005, 11:12 PM

The Case of Theresa Schiavo
By Joan Didion

Theresa Marie Schindler was born on December 3, 1963, to prosperous and devoutly Catholic parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, in a Philadelphia suburb, Huntingdon Valley. Robert Schindler was a dealer in industrial supplies. Mary Schindler was a full-time wife and mother. They named their first child for Saint Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic who believed the Carmelites insufficiently reclusive and so founded a more restrictive order. We have only snapshots of Theresa Marie Schindler's life before the series of events that interrupted and eventually ended it. According to newspaper accounts published in the wake of those events, there had been the four-bedroom colonial on the leafy street called Red Wing Lane. There had been the day the yellow Labrador retriever, Bucky, collapsed of old age in the driveway and Theresa Marie tried in vain to resuscitate him. There had been the many occasions on which her two gerbils, named after the television characters Starsky and Hutch, got loose and into the air-conditioning unit in the basement.

She enrolled in the two-year program at Bucks County Community College, where, in a psychology class during her second semester, she met Michael Schiavo. He was from Levittown. He is said to have been the first person she had ever kissed. At the time they married two years later, in 1984, she was just under twenty-one; he was eight months older. After a honeymoon at Disney World, they moved in with her parents in Huntingdon Valley, then, when the Schindlers decided two years later to move to Florida, preceded them there. They lived first in a condominium the Schindlers had in St. Petersburg. Theresa Schindler Schiavo clerked at the Prudential Insurance Company. She dyed her hair blonde. She lay out by the pool and drank several quarts of iced tea a day. Michael Schiavo, who after his wife's cardiac arrest would begin and eventually complete studies in nursing and respiratory therapy at St. Petersburg Junior College, took restaurant jobs.

For all the media coverage of Theresa and Michael Schiavo that occurred fifteen years later, during the last days of her life, there appeared very little hard information about what happened on the evening of February 24 or the early morning of February 25, 1990, the hours that marked the onset of the ordeal. Michael Schiavo has said that his wife was already in bed when he came home that evening from the restaurant where he was then working. He went to bed. He woke at five AM, earlier than usual, to hear his wife falling on the floor in the hallway. "For some strange reason that day, I was just taking the covers off, and then she hit the floor," he told the St. Petersburg Times-Floridian nine months after the fact. He called 911. It has been established that Theresa Schiavo was, at the time the emergency crew arrived, in full cardiac arrest. After seven attempts to defibrillate, or electrically shock the heart into beating normally, a rhythm was restored.

Theresa Schiavo was taken to Humana Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg, where she stayed three months, at first in a coma. We do not know from either the Humana Northside discharge summary or the later coverage how this coma was scored on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which ranks eye, verbal, and motor response on a combined range from three to fifteen, "GCS three" signifying that the patient has no response and "GCS fifteen" that he or she can speak in an oriented way, open the eyes spontaneously, and obey motor commands.

When Theresa Schiavo emerged from coma it was to the generally unresponsive state in which she would remain for the next fifteen years. Different people have called this state by different names. Some commentators have referred to it as "locked-in syndrome," which it seems not to have been. Complete "locked-in syndrome," which is sometimes characterized as "living eyes in a dead body" and was the condition described by Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,[1] is identified by tetraplegia (the paralysis of all four limbs), paralytic mutism (an inability to speak), the oculomotor deviation known as lateral gaze palsy, and the inability to breathe unaided. The patient, however, retains the ability to think and reason. "In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication," Bauby, who before the stroke that injured his brainstem had been the editor in chief of French Elle, wrote by blinking to select letters as the alphabet was repeatedly recited to him.

On the major diagnostic points alone, Theresa Schiavo was not tetraplegic and could breathe unaided, but seemed not to have retained the ability to think. Most neurologists have called her condition a "persistent vegetative state," in which the patient has normal sleep-wake cycles but does not respond. Since the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state is based on the absence of response, any response from a patient who has received the diagnosis is presumed to be reflexive.

A few neurologists, in what would be the last months of Theresa Schiavo's life, began to say that her condition could be a "minimally conscious state," a diagnosis in use only since 2002 to differentiate those patients previously diagnosed as vegetative who can track objects or people with their eyes and seem intermittently able to respond to commands. Early in March, at the request of the Florida Department of Children and Families, which was seeking custody of Theresa Schiavo, she was seen by a neurologist from the Mayo Clinic's Florida hospital, William P. Cheshire, the director of Mayo's Autonomic Reflex Laboratory. Some doctors and bioethicists with interests in the matter suggested that, as a conservative Christian, Dr. Cheshire brought a bias to the case, but his affidavit seemed to raise questions not before widely addressed. He noted that the patient had not had a complete neurological examination in nearly three years, had never had such advanced testing as positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and that in the absence of such examination and imaging there remained "huge uncertainties" about her neurological status.

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Late this past winter, Robert and Mary Schindler petitioned the court for time to allow that an MRI be done on their daughter, but the request was denied. "One of the Respondents' affiants," the order denying the request read, the "Respondents" in this action being the Schindlers, cautions that fMRI testing is an experimental procedure that has shown promise but is not yet routinely used for clinical purposes and that any fMRI testing should be conducted in an academic setting with ongoing research protocols investigating coma/VS [vegetative state]/MCS [minimally conscious state].
Michael Schiavo, the order continued, contends that no MRI can be conducted on Terri Schiavo without brain surgery to remove a device that was previously inserted in her brain [a "thalamic stimulator" implanted during an experimental procedure at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco in 1990] and that such an invasive procedure has not been previously favored.

The denial was based on grounds that the Schindlers had not met the burden, established by an appellate court in 2002, of presenting evidence that new diagnostic techniques or treatment "would significantly improve the quality of her life."

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Only in 1997, seven years after the cardiac arrest and a year before he first requested that the feeding tube be removed, did Michael Schiavo first mention these recalled wishes to the Schindlers. In 1992 he had pursued (and finally settled, for approximately $1.1 million after fees) a medical negligence suit against the doctors who had supervised Theresa Schiavo's infertility treatment, arguing that they had failed to pick up the potassium imbalance. During the course of this 1992 malpractice action Michael Schiavo (who had not yet been videotaped in what seemed to be a legal office explaining that his wife had never wanted to "live on tubes," never wanted "to be a burden") was asked how he saw their future:

A: I see myself hopefully finishing school and taking care of my wife.

Q: Where do you want to take care of your wife?

A: I want to bring her home.

Q: If you had the resources available to you, if you had the equipment and the people, would you do that?

A: Yes. I would, in a heartbeat.

Q: How do you feel about being married to Terri now?

A: I feel wonderful. She's my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. I believe in my marriage vows.

Q: You believe in your wedding vows, what do you mean by that?

A: I believe in the vows I took with my wife, through sickness, in health, for richer or poor. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18050

Jolie Rouge · 06-15-2005, 11:14 PM

Some of what made the case so toxic was clear. The general claim those opposed to the termination of feeding seemed to be making, for the absolute value of life, could be applied as well to fetuses. (It could also be applied to the death penalty, but the politics of the pro-life movement have not encouraged this seamless-garment approach.) Yet this specific case, which had to do with whether a healthy woman whose brain was damaged to a catastrophic but still unestablished extent should or should not continue living, was never about abortion alone. It had at its core a virtually unthinkable but increasingly urgent question, one that few on either side of the debate wanted to address aloud.

The question began with the different ways in which we define a life worth living, but it did not stop there. The question had ultimately to do with whether or not there could be occasions when the broad economic and ethical interests of the society at large should outweigh any individual claim to either the most advanced medical attention (which Theresa Schiavo, outside the one procedure at UCSF in 1990, did not have) or indefinite care. This was the question no one on any side of the debate wanted to hear.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18050

Jolie Rouge · 06-15-2005, 11:30 PM

Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage
By MITCH STACY, Associated Press Writer

LARGO, Fla. - The autopsy of Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding she was severely and irreversibly brain-damaged and blind as well. The report, released Wednesday, also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused before she collapsed.

Yet medical examiners could not say for certain what caused her sudden 1990 collapse, long thought to have been brought on by an eating disorder.

The findings vindicated Michael Schiavo in his long and vitriolic battle with his in-laws, who insisted her condition was not hopeless and suggested that their daughter was the victim of violence by their son-in-law.

In its report, the medical examiner's office cast doubt on both the abuse and eating disorder theory.

The autopsy results on the 41-year-old woman were made public more than two months after Schiavo died of dehydration on March 31 following the removal of her feeding tube 13 days earlier. The death ended an extraordinary right-to-die battle that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House.

The autopsy showed that Schiavo's brain had shrunk to about half the normal size for a woman her age and that it bore signs of severe damage. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," said Pinellas-Pasco County Medical Examiner Dr. Jon Thogmartin, who led the autopsy team. He also said she was blind, because the "vision centers of her brain were dead."

George Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, said the findings back up their contentions made "for years and years" that Terri Schiavo had no hope of recovery. He said Michael Schiavo plans to release autopsy photographs of her shrunken brain. "Mr. Schiavo has received so much criticism throughout this case that I'm certain there's a part of him that was pleased to hear these results and the hard science behind them," Felos said.

Nevertheless, attorney David Gibbs III said Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, continue to believe she was not in a vegetative state and questioned the conclusion that she was blind.

The finding that she was blind counters a widely seen videotape released by her parents of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile. She moaned and laughed. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

The parents said the video that showed she was aware of her surroundings, but doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of consciousness.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the autopsy did nothing to change President Bush's position that Schiavo's feeding tube should not have been disconnected. He had signed a bill, rushed through by Congress in March, in a last-ditch effort to restore her feeding tube.

Thogmartin also said Schiavo would not have been able to eat or drink if given food by mouth as the Schindlers wanted after the tube was removed. In fact, he said, she might easily have choked to death if such feedings had been tried. "Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Thogmartin told reporters.

The autopsy included 274 external and internal body images and an exhaustive review of Terri Schiavo's medical records, police reports and social services agency records.

Thogmartin said that the autopsy produced no conclusion on what triggered the temporary heart stoppage that caused her collapse and brain damage. He said there was no evidence of drug use, though he cautioned that Schiavo was not tested in 1990 for every conceivable substance that could have been in her blood.

He said there was no proof she suffered from an eating disorder such as bulimia, which can disrupt the body chemistry with lethal effect. The main piece of evidence cited for an eating disorder — the low levels of potassium in her blood in 1990 — could have been caused by the emergency treatment she received at the time, Thogmartin said.

While she had lost more than 100 pounds since high school, Schiavo never confessed to an eating disorder, she did not take diet pills and no one had witnessed her purging food, the medical examiner said.

He also discounted the possibility that she had overdosed on caffeine from drinking large amounts of tea in an effort to keep her weight down.

The cause of death was ruled dehydration from removal of the feeding tube, but the underlying reason for her brain damage was officially listed as "undetermined."

In addition, the autopsy found no traces of morphine in her system at her death, although she had been given two doses in the days before she died. The Schindlers had contended that morphine might have been used to speed their daughter's death.

The Schindlers fought their son-in-law in court over their daughter's fate for nearly seven years, battling to the end with conservatives at their side. Michael Schiavo said his wife never would have wanted to be kept alive artificially in such a condition.

Courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and the president on behalf of her parents.

Experts said that the autopsy demonstrates how difficult it is for people to recover from severe brain damage. "People should understand that sometimes, for known or unknown reasons, individuals sustain massive brain injury that for which healing is not possible," said Dr. Karen Weidenheim, the chief of neuropathology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "Everything that could have been done was done for this lady for 15 years, and this case is very tragic."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...chiavo_autopsy
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On the Net:

Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office: http://www.co.pinellas.fl.us/forensics

YankeeMary · 06-18-2005, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janelle

Babies don't fit the definition of personhood?????

You are correct in a sense IMO, but as long as their brain isn't dead or injured, they grow, learn, walk, run, think, they don't live in a PVS. There is no comparison to a "normal" brain and a dead brain.

janelle · 06-18-2005, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YankeeMary

You are correct in a sense IMO, but as long as their brain isn't dead or injured, they grow, learn, walk, run, think, they don't live in a PVS. There is no comparison to a "normal" brain and a dead brain.

I guess that is why so many monsters get away when they kill a baby. Just a few years in jail and then out to do it again. How would you feel if it was your baby? I know a baby doesn't have the knowledge of an adult but how do we measure the value of life?

This is how silly this argument can go. Babies are not as valuable as adults. God sees us all as equal in value and we are not to play God with anyone. It gets dangerous so don't even go there.

Even a baby with a brain injury is as valuable in God's eyes. A human life. When we start to pick and choose who is valuable enough to live and who isn't then we are getting like the Nazis. Too horrible to think about.

Jaidness · 06-18-2005, 04:41 PM

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This is how silly this argument can go. Babies are not as valuable as adults. God sees us all as equal in value and we are not to play God with anyone. It gets dangerous so don't even

Quote:

Even a baby with a brain injury is as valuable in God's eyes. A human life. When we start to pick and choose who is valuable enough to live and who isn't then we are getting like the Nazis. Too horrible to think about.

go there.

tell that to the mothers who lost their children in IRAQ, and to the children that lost parents....

YankeeMary · 06-18-2005, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janelle

I guess that is why so many monsters get away when they kill a baby. Just a few years in jail and then out to do it again. How would you feel if it was your baby? I know a baby doesn't have the knowledge of an adult but how do we measure the value of life? Simple, if you once walked and talked etc...then you are stricken down and are brain dead, thats a great indicator that your life is over.
This is how silly this argument can go. Babies are not as valuable as adults. Who said? YOU? God sees us all as equal in value and we are not to play God with anyone. It gets dangerous so don't even go there. I didn't go there the doctors that played God went there...they kept a body alive after the Lord took her soul.

Even a baby with a brain injury is as valuable in God's eyes. A human life. When we start to pick and choose who is valuable enough to live and who isn't then we are getting like the Nazis. Too horrible to think about.

Comparing a baby to a married adult that is brain dead isn't even on the same page. As far as a murderer killing my baby that isn't the case at all. There wasn't a murder, he didn't put Terry in that position...I understand your line of thinking I really do but it is irrelevant. Everyone has a right to live as well as the right to die, and the right to rest in peace. If anything was done against Terry then in the end they will answer to the Lord, until then everyone should allow her and her memory and honor to rest in peace.