From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 04 2005 - 14:40:16 BST
Platt,
> Anyone who has had to
> helplessly watch a loved one take her last breath knows the agony of the
> question of whether, in the absence of the person's wishes, it's OK for
> parents and the spouse, by agreement, to pull the plug. If you have some
> thoughts, I'd appreciate them.
Like you, I've been struggling with making sense of all this. What I've come to
over the past few days is that the complexity is that there are three
components to all this that get tangled up in the dialogue. But I'm only
thinking out loud here, not making any sort of definitive statements...
There is the question of "death with dignity". The heart of this component has
at its core the morality of allowing even those *with* legal documents to be
allowed to die. In cases where there is ambiguity, or an absense of known
wishes, it extends to *who* should be allowed to decide? In this case, truly
"pro-life" voices were combatting the concept of euthenasia or death with
dignity "in toto". Others, giving voice next to these, were dealing with the
"who decides when the patient hasn't". Most of these people, I'm gonna guess,
were outraged that the parents had no voice in this decision. This is, it seems
to me, a more abstracted or universal level of dialogue.
Then there is the component that enters the picture when you take a step back
and look at the Schiavo family personally. This situation was akin to a Greek
tragedy polarized by a husband, who had at best lost hope and at worst wanted
too much for his wife to die, and a family, who at best seemed unable to "let
go" and at worst seemed to care more about protecting their feelings than
considering Ms. Shiavo's. This level of dialogue gets "soap operish" and
relates more to the people surrounding this case than the more abstract ideas
above.
Finally, there is the media/politicization component. Here there is dialogue
between those arguing it is intrusive for the government to get involved in
cases like this, and those who see this specific situation and believe the
system to have collapsed. There is also the dialogue of the obvious use of this
to advance political careers. As for the media component, many are outraged
that such a personally painful time was exploited, but many more acted as
"consumers" and bought everything the media doled out.
Anyways, I think talking about it has been difficult because these components
tend to get mixed. This is somewhat evidenced by the array of comments on this
thread. In many ways, these situations are intensely personal. In other ways,
they are part of the abstract dialogue about euthenasia and the "right to die".
And in still other ways, they are about social/political policy. And in the
end, this situation seemed to fail all three.
As for where I am on this *right now*, I think that if the individual's wishes
were to be allowed to die, then I think we must respect that, as the individual
must outweigh the social. In the absense of the individual's wishes, then I
think we should, as Bush said (I can't believe I just said that), "presume
life". That is, even if the spouse *and* the family wanted to pull the plug,
the individual should be kept alive. But the cost and the burden of this should
be carried by society, and we as a society should agree that bearing this
burden is "right". In some ways, I think we should mandate "living wills", to
minimize ambiguous or unknown cases.
As to the specifics of the Schiavo situation, I can't understand why, given the
desire and willingness of the family to support their daughter's care, the
husband wouldn't "sign off" on the whole thing, be allowed to get his divorce,
and have his financial ties severed. That would have, to me, been the "best"
outcome of this debacle. That it did not happen, is to me, very, very, very
sad.
Arlo
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