03/21/2005: "Terri Schiavo's two separate problems"

(I guess this is #2.5 on my list for the day)

I've been trying to wrap my brain around why there are so many people who think it is acceptable to let Terri Schiavo die. I occured to me yesterday that she has two separate "problems" that people like to treat as one.

The first problem she has is that she is significantly mentally handicapped. I heard my father-in-law say yesterday "Who would want to live like that?" Obviously anyone given the choice between living like Terri or between living without a mental handicap would choose to live without the handicap. However, I think many do not consider that the choice I just presented is not the choice we're talking about. The choice we're talking about is the choice between living with a severe mental handicap and being killed because that life "isn't worth living". I think it is very arrogant to say that the life of a handicapped person isn't worth living. We don't know what it is like to live like that and as such it is arrogant to assume that a life in that state "isn't worth living" or said differently, is worth killing.

But the vast majority of people are not willing to kill people who's lives "aren't worth living". Somewhere in their gut they know that there is something bothersome about doing that. I want to make this very clear that this applies even when it is "against the wishes" of the person in that state. If someone were to say "I'd hate being severely mentally handicapped" and then they were to get in an accident that left them as a "vegitable" but that person needed no medical help in living (I don't consider spoon feeding medical help), the vast majority of people wouldn't be willing to kill them even though they may have communicated that it was their wish. We don't let healthy people who think their life isn't worth living commit suicide and we apply the same principle to handicapped people, despite their wishes.

But Terri Schiavo has a second problem: she can't swallow. As such, she needs a feeding tube to eat. This all of a sudden changes things for a number of people. But I think that it only changes things for them because she is mentally handicapped. Last week I saw a local news story about a boy who had some kind of throat or mouth problem that required that he have a feeding tube. In all other ways (well, he might have been mute as a result of his deformity) he was a regular boy. Nevertheless he was going to need a feeding tube for the rest of his life. No one would suggest that this boy is on "life support" and that they needed to pull the plug. I suspect that if the boy said he wanted to die because he felt his "life wasn't worth living" the outcry to prevent his Mom from removing the tube would be overwhelming, as well it should be.

But here we have Terri Schiavo. A woman who needs a simple tube in her stomach to be able to eat and drink. If that alone was her problem, there would be no one who would stand up and ask that her feeding tube be removed no matter what her wishes were. Yet it is only because she is severely mentally handicapped, even in persistent "vegitative" state, that people are willing to consider this. Said differently, it is only their fears of her mentally handicapped state being "not worth living" that opens up the possiblity that her feeding tube is considered "life support".

Handled separately, neither her supposed PVS state nor her feeding tube would be cause for killing her. Why is it we are willing to do it with both symptoms together?