Three deaths made the news this week-Pope John Paul II, Terri Schiavo and stand-up comedian Mitch Hedberg.
I was most affected by Hedberg’s death, truth be told. The Pope was a great man for whom I have much respect, of course. However, I cannot say the Pope brought me the same hours of laughter and joy that Hedberg did through his CDs and stand-up act which I had the privilege to attend last fall at Birmingham’s Comedy Club.
It was a true tragedy ranking right up there with Chris Farley’s and Phil Hartman’s untimely deaths, in my opinion.
As for Terri Schiavo, a search for her name prompts news articles such as “Schiavo death prompts chorus of grief,” “Terri Schiavo dies, but battle continues” and “Finding Terri: The woman behind the existential debate.”
In “Finding Terri,” I learned that she once hit a squirrel with her car, making her so distraught her brother Bobby found and hid the dead squirrel in the woods so she wouldn’t be more upset. I also learned she had a good time at a birthday party at the zoo when she was a little girl and that on Sundays her family had roast beef for lunch.
What are these stories meant to do?
They are supposed to make her a real person to the public, or so the article says. The media wants us to remember that Schiavo wasn’t just a woman in a vegetative state whose every twitch was analyzed for 15 years.
Despite their altruistic claims, I disagree with their motives.
Making Schiavo a real person with a real personality and real feelings is supposed to prompt sympathy for her death and bitterness towards the “evil” people who made the decision to pull out her feeding tube.
I call it shameless publicity. I call it a cry from the media to get Americans riled up over something that is none of our business. I call the actions of her family to change the laws of the United States and end up ‘heroes’ to a million pro-lifers wrong and ill-motivated.
The fact is, who Schiavo was before the heart attack that sent her into a vegetative state is not the issue. Who she was post-heart attack is the Schiavo under question.
Sometimes ethics and emotion can go hand-in-hand, but not in this case. Reading grief-ridden accusations of the public make me positively livid.
The Vatican ruled Schiavo’s death a “violation of the sacred nature of life.” President Bush made the weepy declaration, “The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak.”
Someone commented on MSN that it is “a dark day in our nation. An innocent life has been unjustly eliminated by the hands of evil people.”
There is a difference between being alive and having a life. The Terri Schiavo who had fun at the zoo when she was a little girl died 15 years ago when she slipped into a vegetative state, and as hard as this may be for her parents to accept, “what Terri would’ve wanted” is moot because Terri had long ago lost the capacity to want anything.
Of course they didn’t want her feeding tube removed. What parent wants to prompt their child’s death? Regardless of how sad they are, though, they absolutely did not have their daughter’s best interests at heart.
I believe it turned into a husband versus parents battle, leaving Schiavo herself out of the picture entirely.
The money is not the issue. Whether her husband is greedy and selfish or not is not the issue. I believe that Michael Schiavo had Terri’s best interests in mind, regardless of other motives. He had simply come to terms with reality, and her parents had not.
Her parents were the selfish ones, keeping their daughter’s heart beating in hopes that one day a miracle would happen and Schiavo would essentially return from the dead.
If her parents had any consideration for their daughter whatsoever, they would’ve listened to the court-appointed physician when he testified, “her brain damage was so severe that there was no hope she would ever have any cognitive abilities.”
Once coming to terms with this, the parents should have sided with their son-in-law and let Schiavo die.
Another MSN reader said, “This is so unjust, that their daughter has been taken from them by such unnecessary means.” I would think that after 15 years their deluded hope would have receded and they would’ve faced facts-the facts being that their daughter was “taken from them” 15 years ago.
Schiavo was not the first ever right-to-die case, but the media has conveniently failed to recount how the other cases panned out.
Karen Quinlan lived over 10 years in a vegetative state until New Jersey courts let her parents take her off a respirator. Nancy Cruzan lived for eight years before the Supreme Court allowed her parents to withdraw her feeding tube.
All it boils down to is that her parents simply had not come to terms with reality and were still clinging to a false hope.
President Bush even jumped on the bandwagon of getting the nation so riled up over the issue, cutting his vacation short to deal with the Schiavo case.
On March 21, Red Lake, Minnesota suffered the worst school shooting since Columbine. Ten people died, including the shooter.
Jeff Weiss shot his grandfather and grandfather’s girlfriend, drove to school and shot five students, a teacher and a security before turning the gun on himself. There were also multiple injuries.
Something like this would have gotten extensive television coverage a few years ago. In fact, something like this has gotten extensive television coverage in the past.
Did you even know about all this? No?
That’s because President Bush failed to mention it for a week while Schiavo held the headlines.
Who cares about a school shooting when one dying, mostly already dead, woman has sent the media into a frenzy? Little else could be heard over cries of ‘It’s murder! It’s unChristian! It’s immoral!’
The ruling that Schiavo’s tube be removed was not cruel, nor was it murder. The woman her family (and much of a misguided nation) was clinging to died long ago.
What happened to any consideration of quality of life?
Her family claimed she was responsive to their words and actions and therefore could potentially be rehabilitated. Video footage of her seeming interaction with her family was broadcast nationally. The doctor said, though, that the noises and facial expressions were “merely reflexes.”
I just read an article-a post-mortem wrap-up, if you will-about plans to cremate Schiavo’s body, where she will be buried, etc. This makes national news but the people who die every day in even more gruesome and inhumane ways get less attention.
Americans love drama to the point that it’s sickening and unhealthy.
The undeniable fact is that Terri had lost function in the parts of her brain that make us human. Reading the enraged comments from countless people over letting this woman go on to a better place enrages me.
The comments I have read make me truly frightened for the country and humanity. So many people are so delusional and non-analytical that they will say or do anything, or condemn almost anyone, without looking at the facts-facts that would undoubtedly change their agenda.
The political influence that this case has accumulated is equally frightening, and that the president and Congress sided with Schiavo’s family, willing to violate the Constitution by passing a bill for a single person is appalling.
I have no doubt that everyone close to Schiavo is suffering right now, and my heart goes out to them, but keeping her feeding tube in would have done nothing but prolong their suffering, for there was no recovery for which to hope.
At least now the much-awaited process of acceptance and recovery can begin for those involved, and sanity has prevailed in the court system. For now.
Erin Clyburn is a sophomore English major. She can be reached at [email protected].