Yesterday, someone starved to death.
No, I am not talking about a homeless person in an alley. I’m not talking about an orphan in a third world country. Those deaths are tragic in that no one knows about the peoples’ conditions. No one is there to help and feed them.
Yesterday’s death was tragic in that the starving person was surrounded by people, including family, and was being watched by the entire world.
Yesterday, Terri Schiavo, on her 13th day without food and water, died in a hospital bed.
Let’s put aside the morality of the media coverage. Let’s forget whether Schiavo could feel pain, or if she was even conscious.
Let’s even forget the debate on if she was going to recover. Those questions only cloud what was really going on.
Terri Schiavo starved to death. We watched and waited while a person starved to death.
Every time I watched the latest developments of the Schiavo case, people were arguing left and right about the sanctity of life or who should be considered the proper guardian of this woman.
Her parents claimed that no one had the right to kill her. Her husband claimed that it was her wishes to be taken off life support if she was ever in that situation.
Protesters gathered with “Feed Terri” signs and tape over their mouths. Still other protesters claimed that everyone in such a situation has the right to die.
I could only watch Schiavo’s face. This was a woman who was dying. She was slowly but surely dying.
And this was not the first time this had happened to her. Putting aside that her brain damage resulted from the eating disorder bulimia, Schiavo had been taken off her feeding tube twice before. Not for an hour or two, but for days at a time.
Her parents’ persistent fight to keep her alive and her husband’s persistent fight let her go resulted in days of starvation. While she may not have felt pain, Schiavo’s health must have suffered tremendously from these times of starvation.
And yet they kept taking the tube out and putting it back again.
Once they took the feeding tube out the third time, especially after a day, I was in favor of leaving it out. Especially toward the end of her life, there was nothing anyone could have done.
Even with the feeding tube, she probably would have died. Even the parents were telling people that it was inevitable.
I argue that the feeding tube should have never been taken out in the first place, and the way she has been treated has been atrocious.
Just consider the inhumanity of what has been done to a human being. Treating people humanely is not about if the person is in pain or not. It is about treating a person as a human who deserves to live.
Terri Schiavo could breathe on her own. Her heart could beat. The only thing that she couldn’t do for herself is feed herself.
Well, there are many people who cannot feed themselves, including infants, some of the severely handicapped and some of the elderly. There are even some who are just a few steps away from Schiavo’s condition.
Where do we draw the line between life and death.
Not only did her life ultimately become a news headline and a point of trivia, Terri Schiavo was never truly considered to be a living, breathing person. She was the center of the entire situation, but her humanity was overlooked.
In her unconscious state, Schiavo was not able to feel pain or suffer. Some people contend with that, but I do not. That was not even the point in the first place.
The point is the government did not treat her as a human being. They treated her as a point in a court case. Schiavo’s food and water was taken away from her and given back at the whim of the court.
Was Schiavo’s health even taken into consideration? Only if it pertained to her status as a conscious human being or a vegetable.
Many people have taken away a lesson from this debacle. Many are writing their wills. Some are considering the government’s involvement in private lives’.
What did I take away from this? I learned to be very careful in these political issues and news headlines.
They all involve actual people, or even center around actual people, who get lost in the shuffle and ultimately suffer all in the name of politics.
The Schiavo case was never a political issue. It was not a war or an economic recession. This was the life of a person. It was personal and it was about the person. Let’s never lose sight of that again.
Angela Adair is a senior English major. She can be reached at [email protected].