Right to life, or prolonged hell?

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The Schiavo case is a hard one. On one hand, you have the husband, who has fought to remove her feeding tube and have her pass on. On the other, you have the parents, who are fighting to keep her alive. Doctors, for all practical purposes have said she is brain-dead and has no chance of coming out of it.

Personally, I think that the husband probably knows best in this one. I imagine that the husband and wife talked about this, and that’s why he is so adamant about not keeping her on life-support. I truly believe he knows best in this one. The reason is simple: he has nothing at stake now. His wife is dead to him. He could have simply divorced her and moved on with his life. Instead he has fought tooth and nail to allow her to die. Someone even offered him a million dollars to allow her to live and he turned it down. This is not about anything other than honoring his wife’s wishes.

Now the parents do not want to let their daughter go. I understand this, and I cannot imagine how painful this is. But they have to realize that the husband probably knows her wishes more than they do. Also, they want to keep her around for themselves. It seems selfish to me. I know that sounds harsh, but they want her to live for them, not her.

The thing I don’t get is all the religious zealots that are trying to keep her alive. They have no stake in this, yet they are dropping to their knees and sobbing over this stuff. I don’t get it. It’s a family matter. Leave it to the family. To this, I also blame the parents. They have talked to every media outlet and enlisted every religious faction they could think of in this. They have made it a crusade of sorts, and that is sad.

In the article I linked above, I did notice a very interesting dichotomy. The religous Republican senator voted against the Senate intervening. She explained it this way:

”Please respect my fundamental belief, it is a true belief,” she said, pausing as she cried. “I don’t want to stop anyone from getting to heaven.”

Argenziano and other senators said they were convinced from the court testimony that Schiavo would not have wanted to be kept alive by artificial means.

”I just ask people to understand there is another point of view,” she said. “I believe keeping someone from getting to heaven is the wrong thing to to do.”

So here you have someone religious who thinks that it is WRONG to keep her alive against her wishes, and wrong to keep her from getting into heaven. Whether you believe that statement or not, I wonder how a religious person reconciles that. Could this prolonged life really be a form of hell or purgatory?

Either way, this is a very sad case. So I recommend that you all talk to your families. Husbands, wives, kids, mothers and fathers. Tell them your views on life support. I personally do not want to be kept alive on machines if there is no chance of survival on my own, or if I’m considered brain-dead. If that happens, please let me go. It’s the right thing for me. It might not be the right thing for you, so tell your families, or construct a legal document, or even record your thoughts on a videotape. That way, no one can question it later, and you will avoid the long painful process that the Schiavo family has gone through.

I feel bad for both sides. I hope that you both can come to terms with her passing… if it doesn’t get stopped by another court order.