Slate editorial on Schiavo case

This article does a good job of distilling the disability rights argument:

http://www.slate.com/id/2115208/">Why Congress was right to stick up for Terri Schiavo.
By Harriet McBryde Johnson
Posted Wednesday, March 23, 2005, at 4:50 AM PT

The Terri Schiavo case is hard to write about, hard to think about. Those films are hard to look at. I see that face, maybe smiling, maybe not, and I am reminded of a young woman I knew as a child, lying on a couch, brain-damaged, apparently unresponsive, and deeply beloved—freakishly perhaps but genuinely so—living proof of one family's no-matter-what commitment. I watch nourishment flowing into a slim tube that runs through a neat, round, surgically created orifice in Ms. Schiavo's abdomen, and I'm almost envious. What effortless intake! Due to a congenital neuromuscular disease, I am having trouble swallowing, and it's a constant struggle to get by mouth the calories my skinny body needs. For whatever reason, I'm still trying, but I know a tube is in my future. So, possibly, is speechlessness. That's a scary thought. If I couldn't speak for myself, would I want to die? If I become uncommunicative, a passive object of other people's care, should I hope my brain goes soft and leaves me in peace?

<snip>

http://www.slate.com/id/2115208/

bites the dust! The fact that SLATE now appears to have joined the other MSM is extremely disappointing to me. Why should I be surprised, I haven't been able to figure out the "hows & whys" of what has happened to MSM.

I didn't think it was possible for this administration to get to all of the, but something is going on and I smell just one more RAT!!

We've got to keep the pressure on, and we need to be sure and send a message to our representatives. What are they so afraid of??

I have a Labrador Retriever who is still a puppy who has yet to "roll-over" as well as our Democratic Leaders! Others have argued it's better to keep the Democrats we have now and hope things will change, but I'm increasingly becoming more disenfranchised. Bill Nelson does NOTHING for me and I don't think I can support his re-election. In fact, I told him in a several letters just how I feel! Got the usual auto-response and am looking for a replacement that I can support.

She did a great article about Peter Singer awhile back, too. I was actually searching around last night to see if she'd said anything about this, but couldn't find anything.

getting Harriet McBryde Johnson a voice in what is at least the fringes of the MSM might be it. (Then again, she has been in the New York Times...) She's one of the few people with a disability writing about disability issues anywhere outside our own publications (Ragged Edge, Mouth, etc.) Everyone should read her pieces on the Jerry Lewis telethon (she finds it insulting and demeaning) before Labor Day comes around.

1. Ms. Schiavo is not terminally ill. She has lived in her current condition for 15 years. This is not about end-of-life decision-making. The question is whether she should be killed by starvation and dehydration.

2. Ms. Schiavo is not dependent on life support. Her lungs, kidneys, heart, and digestive systems work fine. Just as she uses a wheelchair for mobility, she uses a tube for eating and drinking. Feeding Ms. Schiavo is not difficult, painful, or in any way heroic. Feeding tubes are a very simple piece of adaptive equipment, and the fact that Ms. Schiavo eats through a tube should have nothing to do with whether she should live or die.

3. This is not a case about a patient's right to refuse treatment. I don't see eating and drinking as "treatment," but even if they are, everyone agrees that Ms. Schiavo is presently incapable of articulating a decision to refuse treatment. The question is who should make the decision for her, and whether that substitute decision-maker should be authorized to kill her by starvation and dehydration.

~snip

9. The whole society has a stake in making sure state courts are not tainted by prejudices, myths, and unfounded fears—like the unthinking horror in mainstream society that transforms feeding tubes into fetish objects, emblematic of broader, deeper fears of disability that sometimes slide from fear to disgust and from disgust to hatred. While we should not assume that disability prejudice tainted the Florida courts, we cannot reasonably assume that it did not.