[Deepblue]

What are your thoughts and opinions?

Mine:
First, lets get one thing strait. The woman is NOT in a coma, I'm sick of ignorant idiots believing she is in a coma and hopeless. In my mind, the term "vegetative state" does not apply to someone that can communicate and respond to stimuli. I'm absolutely horrified by the actions and words of her husband, "is she dead yet?". "when will that ***** die?" The truth is there is now harm in letting her parents take care of Terry, however Micheal Schiavo seems to want her to die. And I'm tired of the crap he tries to pull saying she wanted to die, he only said that what, 19 years after this whole thing began? And I seriously doubt that someone who is 20 (age at the start) would even discuss such matters.
[/rant]

[Deepblue]

Oops.

[Ford Prefect]

I don't care what the medical term for it is. She's as good as a vegetable, she's never going to get better, she's using hospital resources as well as Medicaid money, and the husband has a legitimate desire to move on with his life.

[Deepblue]

A. The husband HAS moved on with his life, he has had 2 kids with another woman.
B. She can get better, other people in the same situation have. People don't seem to realize that her state isn't as bad as some people make it out to be.
C. You are a cold-hearted person.
D. Her husband is freakin' EVIL. He doesn't need to kill her to move on with his life! Yet he persues that goal anyway.

As far as the money is concerned, her husband won a ton of money in a medical malpractice lawsuit a while back promising to "always take care of her." Now he won't use that money for the purpose it was given to him for.

[MatthewPapa]

I believe that they should keep her hooked up.......starving to death or dying of thirst has got to be one of the worst ways to go.

If they are gonna kill (or let her die rather) her they need to find another way.

[Deepblue]

She only will die on her own IF the feeding tube is removed, all of her other bodily functions function well enough to keep her alive as long as she has food.

[Rictor]

Keeping someone in such a state, if they have little or no chance of recovery, is inhumane. If she's been like that for 15 years, do you honestly expect her to just get up one day and say "oh, I'm all better now". Face it, she's gone.

Seems to me that the case for keeping her alive is tinged with a religious agenda, as in "only God can decide who dies, and when".

[Deepblue]

She has not been like that for 15 years you ignorant idiot!!! She used to be able to talk normally, however her husband has made sure she has not recieved the treatment she needed and there is even evidence that he tried to kill her with an injection of insuling! Gah! Get informed!

[Deepblue]

Tell me, how is she gone? Is she in a coma? No. She is very much alive but is being MURDERED.

[StratComm]

I guess my problem with it is not "is she gone" but "have we given her family enough chances to have this reviewed in court".  Quite frankly, she has suffered horrible brain damage and has no "self" to recover to by all indications.  It's not like she's in a coma, where she has a mind to recover to.  She's as close to a vegitative state as you can get without your brain's functions ceasing altogether.  My problem is, every court that's reviewed the case has sided with her husband on the matter, but everyone outside of the judicial system keeps going back for one more chance.  I say get it over with already, as it's not helping her, her husband, her parents (who are still refusing to let go; it's them that need to move on, not her husband) or anyone else to have all of these special laws and repeated reviews only to have yet another court throw it out.  It's not worth my tax money to decide something that's already been decided, that's for sure.

Deepblue: she's not dead in the physical sense, but she's not capable of sustaining even basic needs like feeding herself and she's never going to recover from that.  It's no more murder to remove her feeding tube than it is to take any other dying individual off of life support, she will die without it no matter what.  Extending life indefinitely with no hope of recovery, once consciousness is gone, is not humane.

[Deepblue]

Okay, watch the following clips.
http://hometown.aol.com/GordonWWatts/myhomepage/ConversationWithTerri.wmv
http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-balloon.rmm
http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-big_eyes.rmm
http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-hows_that_cold.rmm
http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-mum.rmm
http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-music.rmm

Her state is better than some severely mentally retarted children? Do you want to start denying them food? Or how about the late Ronald Reagan? In his last years he was utterly helpless? Should we have denied him the food he needed to survive?

[Deepblue]

Originally posted by StratComm
I guess my problem with it is not "is she gone" but "have we given her family enough chances to have this reviewed in court".  Quite frankly, she has suffered horrible brain damage and has no "self" to recover to by all indications.  It's not like she's in a coma, where she has a mind to recover to.  She's as close to a vegitative state as you can get without your brain's functions ceasing altogether.  My problem is, every court that's reviewed the case has sided with her husband on the matter, but everyone outside of the judicial system keeps going back for one more chance.  I say get it over with already, as it's not helping her, her husband, her parents (who are still refusing to let go; it's them that need to move on, not her husband) or anyone else to have all of these special laws and repeated reviews only to have yet another court throw it out.  It's not worth my tax money to decide something that's already been decided, that's for sure.

She has a self, she can laugh, she can appreciate music. Watch the videos. It's interesting to note the number of broken bones she has and the fact that her husband is not being investigated by the PD.

So a person's life isn't worth your money?

[Ford Prefect]

Not someone in that state. There are plenty of people with real hope who need the government's money, but we seem to prefer telling them to get jobs.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Deepblue
So a person's life isn't worth your money?

I didn't say that.  What I did say is that the dispute has been settled by more courts than I care to count in the state of Florida, so there's no reason to move it in to federal courts to give one side one more chance.  The same wouldn't be done if her husband had lost, I assure you, and that's not right by any measure.  It just doesn't need to happen.

[Deepblue]

Watch the videos, there is hope. And the people with "real hope" should get jobs instead of relying on government money, they HAVE THE ABILITY to get themselves out of their situation. It's just idiotic to take away the idea of individual responsibility.

[Deepblue]

Originally posted by StratComm


I didn't say that.  What I did say is that the dispute has been settled by more courts than I care to count in the state of Florida, so there's no reason to move it in to federal courts to give one side one more chance.  The same wouldn't be done if her husband had lost, I assure you, and that's not right by any measure.  It just doesn't need to happen.

To be frank, there is a clear right and wrong in this case and the courts have obviously royally screwed up.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally posted by Deepblue
Watch the videos, there is hope. And the people with "real hope" should get jobs instead of relying on government money, they HAVE THE ABILITY to get themselves out of their situation. It's just idiotic to take away the idea of individual responsibility.

Well, I'm not going to turn this into a welfare debate, so how about this: There are plenty of people in need of organ transplants and cancer treatment who need the resources, on whom the money would be more fuitfully spent.

[Rictor]

I guess the main question is: what are her chances of recovering within the next say 10 years. If its single digits, pull the plug.

Whats the big deal anyway? Its just one person. An innocent, yes, but hundreds of thousands of innocents die every day, and their deaths are easily preventable. What makes her so special?

[Ford Prefect]

The media does.

[Deepblue]

Watch the videos.

Again I point to the money that was won in the malpractice lawsuit but is not being used properly by Micheal Schiavo.