Interesting angle. I'm sure at that age most children don't really understand what's going on, but allegations that your dad is trying to kill his wife probably don't earn you too much street cred at the school playground.

Not having known Terri - and still having their biological mother (as opposed to divorce/stepmom scenario) - probably removes a lot of the personal aspect for the children. BUt they'll always be known as the kids Michael Schiavo had while his wife was veggie - and that could have some traumatic implications in the future. I just hope Schiavo is being honest with a) his children, and b) the rest of the world.

The husband has not moved on with his life. He is fighting to let his wife die as any good American would. FL law and simple common sense says the spouse - not the parent - must have the decision. He is defending Terri's rights and Terri's wishes - at great expense to himself.

What appalls me with Wolf's post is that it demonstrates how the right wing propaganda machine is so powerful. Long after the doctors said too much has already been tried, Michael Shiavo kept trying to revive his wife including a special trip to CA for some experimental treatment. Did your news service forget to mention that CA trip; as Fox News must do to promote their propaganda? Any responsible news source would be saying how much he did beyond what he should have done. But since he represents his wife's civil rights in direct opposition to religious right extremist edicts, then even Wolf has recevied a distorted summary of the facts.

Good people should be calling for the needle. Terri Schiavo has a brain of oatmeal. What we are doing to Schiavo is called torture - if not just a violation of her civil rights and her court acknowledged wishes. (But then the George Jr administration authorized torture meaning what we do to Terri is good and legal.) What we do to Michael Schiavo is just as appalling. We let Fox News lie about everything he did for his wife - and we don't start a post recommending civil disobedience in all Fox Newsrooms - to corrupt the operations of that propagandist.

No, we need not trash the Fox Newsroom. We need a public who is not listening to the same propaganda that promoted WMD, the illegal invasion of Iraq, those mythical aluminum tubes, and will soon advocate the invasion of Iran. A right wing propaganda machine so good that they now hire journalists to ask the questions they want asked. Just another way to promote propaganda. Many of us now think it is good to violate Terri and Michael's civil rights because of that propaganda machine; to impose a religious extremist viewpoint at the expense of civil rights.

When religion was imposed on others, well, nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition. We have that today. A Spanish Inquisition is being imposed upon the rights of Terri and Michael Schiavo. We are suppose to learn from history. Once religion goes beyond a relationship only between a man and his gods, then we end up even with the world's most deadliest wars. This one is simple. May of us who have posted in this topic hate the civil rights of Terri Schiavo. We do this by not learning the facts. Michael Schiavo has done more than anyone should ever be expected, to defend both the rights and the desires of Terri Schiavo - Fox News and Rush Limbaugh propaganda be damned for promoting religious concepts in violation of civil rights.

I think that, ultimately, this is part of the larger neocon agenda of removing the judiciary as a check on the executive and legislature. Find a case in which the law is absolutely on one side (and so the judges can be relied upon to rule one way), but which can be spun as a moral outrage. The many completely unsubstantiated rumors about Michael's moral turpitude are par for the course for this type of campaign, an attempt to get people to care more about the personalities involved than the facts of the case.

Luckily, it doesn't seem to be working[pdf] so far.

you know, i really don't care a lot about this whole issue, as it should have been over a very long time ago. spouse says DNR, then DNR. the problem is that she has to starve to death.

i can't believe i'm going to say this, but i agree with TW. they should give her the needle. it would be more humane, by a long shot.

where is Dr. Jack when we need him?

But could that happen? Could the emotional impact of the needle - euthanasia like she was some kind of animal - be overcome by logical thinking?

Yes, I do have reservations about the use of a needle for the same reasons I have reservations about capital punishment. The legal system has proven quite incompetant in execution of the capital punishment procedure. Could it be trusted to decide when euthanasia should and should not be applied?

Unfortunately the consequences are appalling - Terri Schiavo is said to be one of but hundreds of ongoing similar cases.

We should be moving on from the religious aspect and trying to find out how better to honor a person's civil rights in similar situations. Unfortunately, with Dr Jack imprisoned, we have instead gone backwards.

That's another underreported aspect of this case. Removing life support, including feeding tubes, is the current accepted procedure when there is no hope of recovery, with the consent of the next of kin (In Texas, the hospital can make the decision if the next of kin can't pay). This is literally happening all the time. But suddenly this particular case gets hyped beyond all reason, and pundits start acting as if it is some sort of barbaric execution that judges have sentenced her to. I'm certain that many of the other cases include disagreement between different relatives over when to give up. The only thing that separates this case from all the rest is that Jeb Bush got himself involved, and opened the door to the rest of his party.

a large part of this, i think, is that many people who are pushing an agenda aren't completely stupid. they know they need the perfect case to further their cause. in this one they have a man who they can cast in an unfavorable light (new family, etc.) and a set of parents who will get in front of cameras and draw sympathy.

I think Michael Schiavo's actions are downright heroic. Delay, yet again, reveals himself to be the slime of the earth.

Bingo! :thumbsup:

I'm too busy at the moment to read all the posts in this thread, so this may have been addressed already. Political persuasion, congress getting involved with uncongressional things, and armchair neurology aside, what's the problem with continuing to feed the woman?

We don't know her wishes, and Michael Schiavo's assertion (seven years too late) that she wants to die rings false to my ears. If her parents and supporters want to feed her, let em. MS can be free of the worry by divorcing her, and delusional or not, her parents have invested far more in her well-being than he has. I think he abdicated his spousal rights when he established a common-law marriage with his current partner.

Seven years too late for what?

to suddenly remember, "oh yeah, by the way, she wanted to be taken off life-support."

No no, he's been fighting this in court for the full seven years, ever since it happened. He has maintained from the beginning that she told him she would never want to be kept alive artificially, and he feels he should honor that wish.

Did he say that she wouldn't want to be on life support ever, or that she wouldn't want to have her body kept alive after all hope of recovery was lost? Because the two dates are considerably different, and most people wouldn't want to end life support while hope for a cure remains. But at some point you have to face facts, and Michael has done so long before her parents.

And Michael is the one whose decision it is, no matter how many ghouls want to armchair quarterback, and judge his life, or advance their political agendas. The parents are to be pitied, and it is too bad they couldn't come to an agreement with their daughter's husband, but it's not their call, no matter how many more morality points they have than him. I don't care whether they keep Terri's body alive, and I don't think Terri currently cares either, but Michael does, and it's not my call. It's his.

After reading the description of the condition of Terri's brain, I have tried and tried to understand why her parents refuse to let her body die, and I can't even come close to understanding it. They say that "She could possibly get better??? Her brain will not grow back! I understand going through the denial phase, but they should've passed that a long time ago. And whatever her husband did or didn't do, should've done or shouldn't have done.......at THIS POINT IN TIME, I just cannot see why anyone would disagree about it being time to let her go.