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Sunday, March 27, 2005

Well, well, well....
Posted by Jill | 7:39 PM

Tonight the ABC network newscast had a feature about the wife of a news anchor who found herself in 1998 in the very situation Michael Schiavo is in now. This case was in Virginia, but the situation was almost identical: a diagnosis of permanent vegetative state, other relatives who wanted to keep the patient on life support, the patient's wife in favor of withdrawing the feeding tube, government officials getting involved.

That case wasn't publicized outside of Virginia, which makes me wonder what it is about the Schiavo case that has made it a national story.

Now it turns out that many of the pro-feeding-tube principals in this story have their own inconsistencies. As I've blogged before, I hate that I have to feel contempt for a family that's about to lose a beloved daughter, simply because they have allowed a huckster, con man and hypocrite like Randall Terry to speak for them. But it turns out that Terri Schiavo's father has has to make this decision before:

...given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."


And amazingly, so has Tom DeLay:

Exposing a previously unknown episode, the Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who this week championed political intervention in the Terry Schaivo case, agreed to his own family’s decision in 1988 to take his own father off life support and allow him to die.

The man, 65-year-old drilling contractor Charles DeLay, was badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Tom DeLay was a junior congressman from Texas at the time. The patient was being kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator.

“DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls ‘an act of barbarism,’ in removing the tube,” the L.A. Times reported. “In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die."

This account was assembled from court files, medical records and interviews with family members, the paper said.

Doctors advised that DeLay’s father would "basically be a vegetable," the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay, told the newspaper.

When his kidneys failed, the family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes."

His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do Not Resuscitate." On Dec. 14, 1988, the senior DeLay died.

The Times noted similarities between the DeLay and Schiavo cases: “Both stricken patients were severely brain damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without continuing medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared life sustained by machine. And neither left a living will.”


I don't know why this stuff surprises me anymore. Last weekend, George W. Bush made a big show of returning to Washington to sign a bill that allowed the Schindler family to pursue redress in Federal Court, thinking that this would give him brownie points with the increasingly vocal base. Jeb Bush even sent in state agents in a kidnapping attempt. Yes, the Bush Brothers were all over this case like flies on horse manure until the polls started coming in from sane Americans who understand that they will be in this situation someday and they do NOT want politicians getting involved.

And now it's backfired on them. C-Plus Caligula is now utterly silent on the matter as Terri Schiavo's life draws to a close, and Jeb Bush has gone from Hero of the Christian Right to Public Enemy #1, claiming that he lacks the power to do anything. Funny how now that the polls are against him, Jebbie is now invoking the rule of law.

Do these guys really believe that what's left of Terri Schiavo's life must be saved at all costs? One would think so, given their tubthumping of the last week. But now one is silent and the other is whining about the rule of law. Say what you will about the lunatics still outside that hospice in Pinellas Park trying to bring cups of water to someone who cannot swallow -- at least they're willing to stand up, and to be arrested, for what they think is right. I may think they're wrong, but damn it, at leat they have the courage of their convictions....unlike the very Bush brothers they have so ardently supported.
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