I found the article by David Gelernter too emotionally and scripturally based to be persuasive for me. I have a problem with his tossing the husband's claims and rights aside while claiming the parents' to be valid. Would he have reversed himself if the sides were different?
The assertion that Terry is responsive is debatable. The definition of PVS (persistent vegetative state) includes many of the responses the family claims indicate awareness:
Along with maintaining autonomous functions, such as cardiovascular and renal functions, patients in a persistent vegetative state may be aroused by certain stimuli, opening their eyes if they are closed, changing their facial expressions, or even moving their limbs. Furthermore, they can grind their teeth, swallow, smile, shed tears, grunt, moan, or scream without any reason.
As a parent, I know that I would be fighting just as hard as Terry's parents, but I am not sure that this is reasonable. Gelernter says he believes the parents over the doctors based on his own experience. This seems to me to be a type of wish fulfillment, a subjective assigning with no basis but emotion.
I think appointing a guardian ad litem is the best route to take, eliminating the emotional and biased sides as much as possible. It is a curious case- the husband not getting a divorce, yet going on with a new family. But could he without her consent? What are the laws on that? I have no idea. The parents claim she was denied therapy; he claims teaching her to swallow was attempted three times unsuccessfully. Surely there are medical records of all this.
But underneath it all is the issue of how far we go to sustain life, even a life which is as damaged as this one, a life that if it weren't interfered with by us, would not continue. We create these scientific dilemmas that we have failed to address morally in their myriad possibilities before implementing.
No one I have talked to has said they would want to be kept alive as Terry Schiavo has been for 13 years. Not one person. There is no hesitation in these responses. Her husband claims she told him she would not want to be and I think this is probably true. My husband and I have often said this to each other.
Terry Schiavo's parents, on hearing of Bush's stay, said, "We won. Terry won."
I, for one, am not sure Terry did. |
