> At 12:36 AM 3/30/2005, Leigh Meyers wrote:
>
>>Mark my words: Terri Schiavo's face will replace Jesus on those slices
>>of french toast auctioned on ebay, and in the frost on the windows of
>>churches all over America...>
>
> They are already working on it! The Schindler's authorized the rental of a
> fundraising mail list. She'll be memorialized in perpetual spam
> fundraising. I wonder how long before we get Nigerian spam scams out of
> it?
> Or maybe she'll be memorialized at Snopes.com like Craig Shergold?
---------------------------------
Actually, I think the Schiavo case represents a setback for the Catholic and
Protestant zealots in the US who felt they had the wind at their backs
coming out of the election. In my opinion, that's where it's significance
lies. It's not mainly a circus to distract the masses from more important
issues, as some have maintained, even though it has drawn more attention
than it deserves - something which the religious right provoked and probably
now regrets - and even if it has been exploited by the media and
politicians for their own purposes. I hope it serves to weaken the efforts
of conservatives to roll back social and cultural gains in other areas. I
think it may.
The issue is another good illustration of how material interest will usually trump ideology. As the boomers age, including conservative Republicans susceptible to religious appeals, relief from prolonged terminal suffering and hopeless dependence has become a pressing personal issue - not only as the prospect of their own mortality looms, but even more immediately with respect to their elderly ailing parents where the choice is already being forced on them in many cases.
The issue has become so insistent and widespread that large majorities now even seem ready to go beyond the withdrawal of life support and are prepared to countenance active physician-assisted suicide, as the following article from today's NY Times illustrates. People are in effect claiming their right to die in extreme circumstances as a privacy issue and civil right, invoked against church or state which is preventing them from doing so. In this sense, there is a parallel to the struggle over the right to abortion. In both cases, where people and their loved ones have a deep personal stake in the outcome, they are not so easily persuaded by "pro-life" arguments and readily come to appreciate that "life", as we understand and experience it, is not present as such at the very beginning or, in some cases like Terri Schiavo's, at the very end of existence.
MG -------------------------- In Vermont, a Bid to Legalize Physician-Assisted Suicide By JOHN SCHWARTZ and JAMES ESTRIN New York Times March 30, 2005
SHELBURNE, Vt. - The next showdown over physician-assisted suicide could be in Vermont, where a group of citizens has begun an effort to pass a bill patterned on Oregon's seven-year-old law allowing doctors to prescribe suicide drugs for terminally ill patients who request them.
The bill went nowhere in the State Legislature last year, but was reintroduced in February and could be brought before legislative committees next month. Its supporters say they could make headway in Vermont, a state with a fiercely independent streak and small-scale government that tends to be swayed less by big outside campaigns than by what local citizens want.
In a Zogby poll conducted in Vermont in December, 78 percent of 500 randomly selected adults said they would support a bill to allow terminally ill patients to get medication from their doctors to hasten death.
Issues surrounding choices at the end of life have gained prominence recently because of the case of Terri Schiavo in Florida. But Michael Sirotkin, a lobbyist hired to push the Vermont bill, said the bill protects the right of people to have their end-of-life wishes honored, while the Schiavo case shows what can happen when a patient does not make those wishes known. The bill, he said, "is about patient choice, patient control."
Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/national/30dying.html