Re: [Marxism] Terri Schiavo: the right to live, to die, or to kill?

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

When this case started, and all I had was text information and some short
clips in CNN, I sympathized with Terri Schiavo's blood family. A certain
cynicism told me this was a rundown case of a husband tired of taking care
of an invalid, and maybe even some financial repercussions.

When I saw the videos in the website, with their sloppy, obviously leading
editing, and the mix of right-wing religious propaganda with baseless
inuendo on money, I forgot all that.

This is obviously an artificial campaing in which the religious right
latched upon the understandable pain of a family that refuses to face
reality, and made them poster children against a secular view on choice,
life and death.

This case exposes a deeper problem, which is that of a society that has a
culture of denial of death, or the possibility of death for the individual.
As the slowness of a juridical establishment of living wills and other forms
of pre-death legal arrangements shows, people simply don't want to face
their mortality as a social issue, only as a moral and individual one.

That Terry Schiavo didn't answer the question herself before find it in the
need of answering it, is the real problem.

If we had an honest culture, one in which death was faced as an inevitable,
integral part of living, and in which the individuals had to face the
immediate social consequences of death, there wouldn't be a case. She would
have answered the question before it was neccesary to answer it. But in this
culture and legal system, this answer is left to the discretion of a judge,
who in my view has taken a correct desicion, but could have just as well
taken an incorrect one.

sks

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>

"By the court's count, (Hammesfahr) gave 105 commands to Terri Schiavo and,
at his direction, Mrs. Schindler gave an additional six commands," Greer
wrote. "He asked her 61 questions and Mrs. Schindler asked her an
additional 11 questions. The court saw few actions that could be considered
responsive to either those commands or those questions."




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