People have no sense these days.
Cats: miscellanea|Is it just me, or does modern society lean ever more toward ‘drama’? We (I use the collective, though I’d much rather consider myself apart from it) grab issues and events, and make much of them. It’s all so very dramatic and sensational. Yet, I rarely see this commandeering of an issue when it is solely for the benefit of those directly involved. Oh no. These events and the public circus swirling around them are being used for very selfish means by others, things that have nothing to do with the actual situation or its participants.
My point (I do have one): The situation revolving around Terri Schiavo. Others have said what I think in far better words than I could put together, but I’ll just add my two cents. She’s gone. She’s not going to get better. Her husband fought to keep her alive, and to make sure she had excellent treatment, in hopes that her situation would improve. It’s clear now that it will not. Prolonging the vegetative state of her body makes no sense. It is an indignity to the woman she had been, it is a waste of resources, and it is an emotional drain on those who loved her.
What I find even more annoying is that her situation has become a battlefield… “Right to life” and all that.
Please. I have said it before, and I will say it again… Morality CANNOT BE LEGISLATED.
Putting aside my personal conviction that it is more immoral to prolong a non-life than to remove a feeding tube and let the shell die naturally… The government has no right to interfere in a matter that is private, among the family. And there’s no way around this: that woman’s family is her husband. When she grew up and chose to marry, he became her immediate family. She left her parents. It’s what we do when we reach adulthood. She married, effectively choosing the person who would become the person who would handle her legal and medical affairs should she become incapacitated. That’s what happens when one chooses a mate. You’re choosing someone you would trust in these matters.
So, he did what he could for her, fought hard for her life, and her well-being, and her dignity. He’s STILL fighting for her dignity.
It bothers her parents. My heart goes out to them, but the choice is not theirs to make, it is his.
Has he grieved and moved on? Yes…that’s what people do. That’s the healthy thing. Unfortunately they aren’t LETTING him move on with his life.
And now the governor of Florida wants to step in and take over. That’s wrong.
I tend toward the conservative side of things far more than most people I know, and I STILL feel that it’s wrong. Government has no business interfering in matters so personal and private. (Not to mention matters so very emotional and painful.)
People have no sense. This isn’t about the ‘right to life’. It is about the right to dignity. That woman’s spirit has gone, she has no hope of returning to ANY semblance of life except involuntary physical responses to stimuli. That’s no life at all.
Let her go.
And yet it’s all over the news. The state governor wants to take over. The president has said his piece about this. They’ve tried to get federal courts to intervene. Protestors are arrested trying to bring her water.
Drama. Sensation. Circus.
And no one thinks about what is best, or what is right, what allows the memory of her some dignity. Will she be remembered as a wonderful person, a good woman, for the things she did in life?
No. She’ll be remembered as the legal battle about ‘right to life’ and ‘euthanasia’. No one will ever know who Terri Schiavo REALLY was. What was her favorite color? What was her favorite flower? Did she like to cook, or hate it? Was she active and outgoing, or reserved and scholarly?
No one cares about her, really, except as an icon that can serve their purpose.
And that is the most tragic thing of this entire situation.
