Help Stop A Murder

[Quoth The Raven]

People deserve better than dogs. Some patients live for ten, fifteen, twenty years on a feeding tube. Even some young children require feeding tubes to grow to adulthood. I see nothing about modern medicine that should cause this disdain. Dogs indeed, hmmph.
No one is arguing that Terri is in so much pain and ill health, rather we know she is a healthy woman. She sits in her hospital bed and has an existence probably very similar to many nursing homes. If we overlook her rights, what about the aged and disabled in Sunnybrook? We are all going to die sometime, the question is the manner of death. Are we forced to die because we are inconvenient to someone else? Or are we allowed to live every precious moment until it is our natural time to go? The person who justifies the unnatural course cannot help but endorse suicide, and also murder.

I meant to go back and edit that post, because as I was hanging out the washing it occurred to me that someone was going to take it in a manner it wasn't intended. There is no disdain except in your head.
My point was that you wouldn't keep your dog alive for 15 years with a feeding tube and then decide that his life wasn't worth living and starve him to death. You'd be charged for it by the RSPCA, for starters, and for seconds, I sincerely doubt many people would even consider it an option. It would be considered inhumane, as would be starving Terri to death.
If it is ruled that her husband has the right to deny her food and water, then it would be more humane - if it is court ordained that she must die - to give her an overdose of something so she could just go to sleep and not wake up. If she's not allowed to live her life, then she shouldn't have to die in pain and misery.
Personally, I think the fact that there is even a court battle over this is a sorry state of affairs, and that starvation can be ruled in favour of is an even sorrier one.
As for the questions about her actual state and how cognitive she really is, as I said, it's not news here...what I was looking for was information, not a treatise on the thin edge of the wedge.

 

[Quoth The Raven]

She does make concious responses to stimuli, documented by court appointed experts as well as the parents. The problem is that her brain was incurably damaged years ago, and she is more often incapacitated than responsive.
She is now physically healthy, the arguement is over her mental condition. The husband and his attorneys argue that since she doesn't respond all the time, this is cause for euthanasia.
Over the years, she has made some progress in the area of motor skills. The family and some of her doctors believe she can make more progress toward re-learning to speak. The parents are even willing to completely take over her care to help her to recover as much as she can.

Thank you, this is what I wanted to know. What's the current state of things? Are the courts leaning more toward supporting the husband or her parents? Is the concern with handing over medical custody to the parents that they will probably pre-decease her and there will be no-one to make decisions on her behalf?

 

[linwood]

She does make concious responses to stimuli, documented by court appointed experts as well as the parents.

Could you cite a reference for these documents please?

 

[Faminedynasty]

I truly hope, that if I am reduced to a vegetable, my parents, and no one else in my family will prolong my suffering simply because I can still babble jibberish.

But that's just me.

 

[Quoth The Raven]

I truly hope, that if I am reduced to a vegetable, my parents, and no one else in my family will prolong my suffering simply because I can still babble jibberish.

But that's just me.

Dude,make sure they all know how you feel, then make it a legal document. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[Pah]

A thought about calling someone a murderer - if someone characterizes a legal act as murder and speaks of the person involved in the act as a muderer, would not the speaker be liable for slander or libel penalties? This would apply to this case and to all abortion cases where the term murder is used - wouldn't it?