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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (105218)	3/21/2005 1:39:35 PM
From: Zakrosian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793908

If, OTOH, she is self aware and doesn't want to live like that, then she's being tortured. I'd say that torture constitutes harm. Can't disagree with you there. However, what if she's self aware and is content to live as she is - on the receiving end of her parents' complete devotion? Years ago I had a good friend who said that he would not want to live if he didn't have complete use of all four limbs - even if he were in good mental shape he'd kill himself if he were physically handicapped. Four months later, he was in a serious auto accident; his girlfriend was killed and he wasn't expected to live out the week. He survived, but the prognosis was that he would forever be in a vegetative state. He emerged from his coma/vegetative state a few months later, but was told that he would need 24 hour care. A year later he was living on his own; however, his mental abilities were strongly affected and he had difficulty focusing on tasks or remembering some things. He also needed a cane to walk. At that point he said that if he'd been told a year earlier that he'd need a stick to get around, he'd have said no thanks, but his perspective had changed 100% now that he was faced with his new reality. Unlike most people, I don't have a clear opinion on this case; I find it easy to agree with both sides.

To: Lane3 who wrote (105218)	3/21/2005 2:55:30 PM
From: Bridge Player	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793908

It seems quite reasonable to me that the wishes of both her husband, and her parents, should be secondary to the current wishes of Terri herself, providing they can be satisfactorily determined given her present state. This may seem to be a very large if, and yet in the video which was linked to here she was shown as responding to her father. The response was in the form of a kind of gutteral laugh, as he was reminding her of something in her childhood, or during a period of health earlier in her life. As I recall, he was holding something in his hand. Her response seemed to me to be in direct response to the stimuli he was providing. If Terri truly wants to die given her present state, it doesn't seem unreasonable to believe that she could blink her eyes or respond in some other manner to questions about how she wants to deal with her life.