Comments on: Terri Schiavo’s federal law: constitutional?

By: thebandwagon

thebandwagon — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 01:28:57 +0000

Because saving a life should be a partisan battle

I am not an expert at constitutional law and neither will I pretend to be one. I feel that this article by Joshua Claybourn is very good if you are interested.
I wish, however, to bring to your attention the vile nature that the political battle f…

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:27:13 +0000

Balta and philosopher, you guys are way off base in supposing an “ability to pay” aspect to the Schiavo case. Terri’s parents have simply offered to take care of her on their own…to let Michael Schiavo divorce her and walk away. Instead, he has insisted that she must die. No one is arguing that Terri deserves to live simply because her parents can afford to pay for her treatment.
BTW–Foltz–Terri is not being “kept alive by machine” in the usual sense in which that phrase is used. Her heart and lungs are operating on their own, the feeding tube only administers nutrition.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 07:20:07 +0000

I see now that Mark Kleiman has beat me to the punch on wondering just what’s up with moral disasters and who’s paying for the health care:
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/hudsonnikolouzos_update_and_correction.php

By: Big Man On Campus

Big Man On Campus — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:45:50 +0000

The irony. Republicans argue for state rights and federalism but they decide to stick their noses into this issue.

By: Phil Dillon

Phil Dillon — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:35:21 +0000

I think there are at least some comparisons to Dred Scott here. The Supreme Court held that not only was Scott nothing more than property, but also the state of Illinois could not violate the sovereignty of the state of Missouri in this matter. It was, they deemed in the opinion, a states’ rights issue.
One of the outcomes of the Civil War was that a strong federal government was re-established and that the federal government had an interest in ensuring that all citizens’ rights were protected.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:03:53 +0000

Yeah, but we already knew that W.’s ethics were all effed-up & hypocritical. It just hadn’t sunk in to me before how large a swath of the right-wing of the blogosphere this was true of, too.

By: Balta

Balta — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:20:59 +0000

Philosopher, if we were to look at the law Mr. Bush signed while he was the governor of Texas, we might see a reason why the ability of the family to keep paying the bills may in fact be an important argument.
If I’m reading that bill correctly (text here, I assume Josh will correct me if I’m wrong), in the event that the patient cannot pay the bills, and a judicial/medical process has said that the patient will not be able to recover (as in this case), then the doctor is allowed to remove the patient from life support after 10 days, even if the patient’s family wishes that the patient be kept on life support.
In other words, in Texas, a patient’s inability to pay the bills is reason enough to override the decision of the family. So, given that the same governor is now the President and had to sign the bill passed by the Congress over the weekend, it does seem that the decision whether or not it is a moral disaster may in fact have to include some thought about the ability of the family to pay.

By: Don Singleton

Don Singleton — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:45:55 +0000

Bad prescident

I suspect the bill is constitutional, but I believe it sets a very bad prescident

By: philosopher

philosopher — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:28:00 +0000

There’s very little of that money left, as stated even on the pro-parents site terrisfight.org.
Btw, one of the things I don’t understand is how so many commentators are willing to fling around the harshest of moralizing language, like Tom DeLay’s saying that it would be illegal to even treat a dog the way that Schaivo is being treated; yet they seem to think that the willingness of her parents to pay for her continued feeding is of relevance. If allowing this shell of a woman to die is really in the realm of moral disaster, I would think that it would be a moral disaster whether or not her family was willing to pay for her care. The extreme (and, frankly, silly) rhetoric being thrown around all over the place just doesn’t seem consistent with it’s being fine to let her die if no one happened to want to pay for it.
This is not to say that everyone is throwing around such rhetoric: the folks taking the ‘it’s too hard to tell, so let’s err on the side of life’ line aren’t necessarily making this mistake, though it does seem to me that some of them slide around between the ‘moral disaster’ and ‘gray area’ stances.)

By: Foltz

Foltz — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 14:37:14 +0000

I’ll openly admit I havent studied this case into great detail (because the topic makes me bang my head against the wall in its general absurdity), but how much does Michael still stand to make if he gets his way? Is there any of the $700k left?
Do the parents contend that her wishes were to be kept alive by machine?