by Charles
Eleanor Clift is not a pundit I admire (and that’s putting it mildly), but I respect the compassion and dedication she had in handling the final months with her husband, who succumbed last Wednesday to cancer. Her role, unpleasant and painful as it was, was as it should be in a husband-wife relationship. They were as one flesh, living under the implicit premise within the bonds of marriage that each would act in each other’s best interest. Ms. Clift did everything she could to make the waning days of Tom Brazaitis’ life as comfortable and noble as possible, and I pray that she can find comfort in the loss of "the person I have been closest to for more than 20 years."
And that is exactly what has bothered me about Michael Schiavo choosing to end the life of his wife, Terri Schiavo. While the courts consistently ruled that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri, the presumption that he would act in her very best interests does not and cannot hold (I’m speaking on a moral plane here, not a legal one). In effect, Mr. Schiavo is either a bigamist or he is a widower who became de facto married to Jodi Centonze, whom he has lived with since 1995, has called her his fiance since 1990 and now has children with Ms. Centonze aged one and 2½. Michael Schiavo emotionally, spiritually and physically moved on over a decade ago. Three years into his effective marriage with Ms. Centonze, Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998, based on hearsay evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way. The age-old phrase "you cannot serve two masters" applies here, or in this case a man cannot serve two wives because one of the spouses is going to get the short end. Tragically and wrongly, Terri got the short end, and the fatal end as well.
Herma Hill Kay of UC Berkeley said, "Marriage is viewed as a consensual contract entered into by people who have legal capacity to marry, to in effect forsake all other bonds and cleave only to the other person, to take the words from most marriage ceremonies." Michael Schiavo clearly did not foresake all other bonds and he clearly has cleaved to Jodi Centonze. The trouble with the law as it stands now is that it does not make sufficient moral distinctions on marital relationships. There is a gap between what is right and what is legal, and it’s a gap that can and should be closed. Joe Carter wrote this:
The locus of this tragedy is Terri’s husband, Michael Schiavo. Although he is still married to Terri, he is currently cohabitating with Jodi Centonze, a woman with whom he shares two children. Under Florida state law, if Michael attempted to marry Jodi while Terri is still living and their marriage remains undissolved, his action would be considered "illegal, bigamous, and void from its inception." In fact, it is likely that if a marriage license were found showing that Michael and Jodi had secretly married, he would no longer be considered a suitable guardian for his invalid wife. Yet because Florida repealed common law marriage laws in 1968, he can live like a bigamist without having to suffer the legal consequences.
Florida is also a "no fault" divorce state, which means that a history of infidelity is of no concern to the courts. While adulterous conduct might be used in determining the "moral fitness" of a parent seeking custody, it apparently can’t be used as evidence of lack of "moral fitness" to be a husband. Even though he has committed adultery, sired illegitimate children, and openly shares Terri’s marriage bed with another woman, he is still considered fit to undertake his role as a "husband." By giving Michael Schiavo guardianship over his "wife", the Florida courts have exposed the absurdity of marriage laws.
James Taranto also tosses in healthy amounts of common sense:
Supporters of Michael Schiavo’s effort to end his wife’s life have asked how conservatives, who claim to believe in the sanctity of marriage, can fail to respect his husbandly authority. The most obvious answer is that a man’s authority as a husband does not supersede his wife’s rights as a human being–a principle we never thought we’d see liberals question.
But why do those of us who aren’t right-to-life absolutists side with Mrs. Schiavo’s parents, who want to keep her alive, over her husband, who wants her dead? It’s a fair question, and it raises another one: What kind of husband is Michael Schiavo?
According to news reports, Mr. Schiavo lives with a woman named Jodi Centonze, and they have two children together. Surely any court would consider this prima facie evidence of adultery. And this is no mere fling; a sympathetic 2003 profile in the Orlando Sentinel described Centonze as Mr. Schiavo’s "fiancée." Mr. Schiavo, in other words, has virtually remarried. Short of outright bigamy, his relationship with Centonze is as thoroughgoing a violation of his marriage vows as it is possible to imagine.
The point here is not to castigate Mr. Schiavo for behaving badly. It would require a heroic degree of self-sacrifice for a man to forgo love and sex in order to remain faithful to an incapacitated wife, and it would be unreasonable to hold an ordinary man to a heroic standard.
But it is equally unreasonable to let Mr. Schiavo have it both ways. If he wishes to assert his marital authority to do his wife in, the least society can expect in return is that he refrain from making a mockery of his marital obligations. The grimmest irony in this tragic case is that those who want Terri Schiavo dead are resting their argument on the fiction that her marriage is still alive.
To me, Mr. Schiavo lost his moral presumption. Consequently, the decision on the fate of the life of a human being should have erred on the side of life. Because of how this all played out, the death of Terri Schiavo is a blot on our society and on the law.
Changing gears, Karol Wojtyla has shown the world–through his acts for the past 26 years–how live, and now he is setting an example to the world on how to leave it. The phrase "two out of three ain’t bad" does not apply here. There are many things to be taken from these recent events, and there are lessons to be learned on how to live and how to die when that time comes. I just hope they are the right things and the right lessons.
(cross-posted at Redstate.org)
As I commented over at Redstate, this is a selective reading of the facts, and a poorly arrived-at moral conclusion as a result. You pay lip service to the possibility that he functionally widowed when Terri lost higher-level brain function. Yet you spend the remainder of the post exploring only the possibility that he did not consider himself to be, from a moral standpoint, bereaved.
From the jarringly formatted piece on Ms. Centonze:
Whether you believe these accounts or not, can you say they are not plausible? Does this not argue against your moral interpretation of his fitness as guardian?
It doesn’t matter, Gromit. From the time the DeLay hit the fan, it’s been the clarion call for the easily-led to begin bestowing all manner of scarlet letters on Mr. Schiavo: Murderer, liar, adulterer, perjurer. And it’s only going to get worse. I won’t be shocked to discover that the man now gets daily death threats.
oh, for God’s sake. Let her go, Charles. Let her go.
Any notion that “Terry got the short end” assumes that one has knowledge as to what Mrs. Schiavo (I do not preseume to be on friendly terms with the deceased) would have wanted. In fact, the court found clear and convincing evidence that Mrs. Schiavo would not want to persist in a vegatative state. That finding was critical to the court order not to reinsert the feeding tube.
What is truly remarkable is how many people can come to a conclusion on an issue where they could not possbily have any direct knowledge.
By the way, the court documents also indicate that the Schindlers encouraged Michael Schiavo to date before the fall-out regarding the money received from the malpractice settlement. What sort of parent would encourage (or countenance) their son-in-law cheating on their daughter?
Judge not lest ye be judged.
Three years into his effective marriage with Ms. Centonze, Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998, based on hearsay evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way.
Wrong.
Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to determine what Terri Schiavo would have wanted; in other words, he left it up to the court. You should know this by now.
You are also playing fast and loose with the word “hearsay.” If A tells me he wants a pony, and I tell you “A said he wants a pony,” that isn’t hearsay — that’s eyewitness testimony. If you go on and tell another party “A said he wants a pony,” that is hearsay.
Michael could be all those things Bird and still doing right by what Terrri wanted.
It would seem to me that Micheal put a very high value on Terri’s life, upwards of a million dollars. Doesn’t quite fit your profile does it?
If A tells me he wants a pony, and I tell you “A said he wants a pony,” that isn’t hearsay — that’s eyewitness testimony. If you go on and tell another party “A said he wants a pony,” that is hearsay.
And even that isn’t necessarily excluded hearsay. My understanding is that such evidence can be presented and accepted in court only if the witness is testifying simply that X said it, and not to the truth or falsity of the statement.
I’ve been wondering what the new growth industry in America will be after the Internet boom. It’s starting to look like filing slander and libel lawsuits for M. Schiavo might be it.
Charles: it’s not right to say that ” the courts consistently ruled that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri.” The Courts ruled that there was clear and convincing evidence that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to be kept on a feeding tube in the circumstances she found herself in. (link, pdf; see pp. 8-9.) See also the Appeals Court’s decision, which states:
As the Trial Court notes on p. 8, all sorts of other issues, including “the quality of the marriage between Michael and Terri Schiavo”, are irrelevant to the issue it has to decide, which is what Terri Schiavo would have wanted. (In this context, it’s also worth noting that the Court did not rely on Michael Schiavo’s word alone in determining what Terri Schiavo would have wanted.)
That being the case, I think it’s wrong to say that this is about “Michael Schiavo choosing to end the life of his wife, Terri Schiavo.” Michael Schiavo didn’t make this decision; the Courts did. And they didn’t make it based on what anyone other than Terri Schiavo wanted.
And I think you go beyond factual error and into what is, to me, morally dangerous territory when you suggest not just that Michael Schiavo made this decision, but that he did so because “a man cannot serve two wives because one of the spouses is going to get the short end. Tragically and wrongly, Terri got the short end, and the fatal end as well.” As I read this, you’re suggesting that Michael Schiavo made his decision at least in part because he was no longer sufficiently concerned with Terri Schiavo’s interests to do right by her.
Now: I have absolutely no knowledge of Michael Schiavo’s character beyond what I have gained from news reports, the legal record, and so on. I therefore have absolutely no basis on which to challenge the idea that, if Michael Schiavo had made the decision whether or not to remove the feeding tube, which he didn’t, he would have made it in this way. But the thing is, neither do you have any evidence that this is what happened (unless you know the man personally.) And you are suggesting at best that he talked himself into the view that she would have wanted to have the feeding tube removed, and at worst that he decided to have it removed because he just wanted her out of the way. Even the most favorable construction of what you say is, in my view, a serious accusation, and I don’t think it’s responsible to make it without knowing a lot more about Michael Schiavo than any of us who are observing this via the media do.
Stop demonizing that poor man. What options do you have once your spouse is dead to the world, incapable of interacting with you or anyone else? For how many years could you be satisfied with no romantic relationship to anyone who was capable of uttering a word or even signaling anything to you? If Michael Schiavo hadn’t already found another woman, you would probably be attacking him for killing his wife so that he could date other women. But he did not kill his wife, as the other posters have made clear, it was the courts who made a judgment of fact about Terri’s wishes. And any speculation of yours about his motives is just that – speculation – and in this case it seems to be a particularly malicious sort of speculation.
Phil: It doesn’t matter, Gromit. From the time the DeLay hit the fan, it’s been the clarion call for the easily-led to begin bestowing all manner of scarlet letters on Mr. Schiavo: Murderer, liar, adulterer, perjurer. And it’s only going to get worse. I won’t be shocked to discover that the man now gets daily death threats.
Worse than that. From the St. Pete Times piece, my emphasis:
Oh, and I recently learned that it is actually acceptable to call a child a “bastard” in polite society. The things you learn from the “Culture of Life”.
Yes, and it’s also cool to see how those who are concerned with the terrifying prospect of watering down our concept of marriage by allowing gay couples to marry have no problem applying it to people who are not, in fact, married at all, in a state that last time I checked did not recognize common law marriage. I shudder to think how many times I have been married and divorced without even knowing it.
Consequently, the decision on the fate of the life of a human being should have erred on the side of life.
how many thousands died in Iraq because W and his supporters suspected there might be banned weapons there? no proof, mind you, just speculation, rumor, conjecture, fear and loathing. W and his supporters erred on the side of Death – no, make that they chose the side of Death, willingly and proudly.
and now you and your political pals have the balls to accuse anyone of not respecting life.
bah
I should say that my last comment was not directed at Charles, but at commentators who clearly do oppose gay marriage. I was following up Gromit’s point, and forgot that Charles had used similar language about ‘as good as married’ in this post.
Charles, you have neither facts, nor law, nor consistent philosophy on your side. Give it up.
So, Charles, this is your “postmortem” on the Theresa Schiavo case? One “dignified death” piece from Eleanor Clift (anent an awful and heartwrenching tragedy, but one way WAY removed from the Schiavo situation); a nod to Pope John Paul II, and the main course a big plate of rehash from one blogger and one WSJ pundit, all basically to push home the theme that, what? “Michael Schiavo is an adulterous sleaze”?, and therefore should have forfeited any and every say in his (legitimate) wife’s care or guardianship?
Would your opinion of the fundamentals of the Terri Schiavo case been any different if Michael Schiavo had lived a solitary and celibate life for the ten years or so since he became convinced (via pretty strong medical evidence) that his wife Terri already was functionally “dead”? Would you still be spending your blogtime pontificating about “moral presumptions” if he had moved into a closet at the hospice for the last decade, rather than following his in-laws’ advice and getting back into “life” outside?
Here’s a nugget of thought to ponder, BD: How about the proposition that neither Michael Schiavo (or Theresa Schiavo, for that matter), nor Robert & Mary Schindler are any sort of “saints” or “villains”, but rather mere mortal humans, trying to do their best in dealing with the terrible tragedy that befell them in 1990, and has dogged their lives ever since. No one deals well with these awful situations, rarely is there any truly “right” solution, families and loved ones are always left devastated by a death – and it is in the family that these terrible feelings should be worked out: NOT played out in public in a ghoulish circus of publicity.
I know Michael Schiavo makes an easy target for moralizing and opinionating – especially by those who have never met him, or know of him only through what they read on equally uniformed blogs; but really: is this truly the most thoughtful piece you could produce?
It hardly seems a radical notion to posit that issues of Life and Death are far more complicated in real life, than the Sunday-School comic-book simplicities which the “save-Terri” political jackals have tried to paint the issue as.
blar: Stop demonizing that poor man.
It’s one of the ugliest aspects of the whole thing, to me. Michael Shiavo was accused of everything from spousal abuse to murder – I saw no one on the side of the “culture of life” who was willing to acknowledge that, though they disagreed that Terri Shiavo ought to be allowed to die, still Michael Shiavo could be acting from the best of motives.
I could see how it would be possible to make an ethical case for having Terri Schiavo live on – Felixrayman did, though I didn’t agree with him, and a couple of other people raised good points. But for the most part, they were shouted down by people who were – to quote Anarch from another context –
But why do those of us who aren’t right-to-life absolutists side with Mrs. Schiavo’s parents, who want to keep her alive, over her husband, who wants her dead? It’s a fair question, and it raises another one: What kind of husband is Michael Schiavo?
When asked “why side with the parents,” the answer is, “we don’t like the husband.” I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.
If “why side with the parents” is a fair question, I have another fair question. Why ask “what kind of husband” he is, but not ask “what kind of parents” they are? Pretend this is the scenario: (1) Good and faithful husband says she wants to die, (2) parents with a history of child abuse say she wants to live. Do you side with the parents? Is your first question, “what kind of husband?”
And how is any of that relevant to determining what the patient wanted?
One more thought about Michael Schiavo: he received $300,000 in damages was for “loss of consortium” (i.e., loss of the ability to have sex with his wife). Then he turns around and has sex anyway, via adultery. And even if he couldn’t keep his zipper up, was it really necessary to sire two chldren out of wedlock?
And now he’s being downright spiteful toward the parents about cremation, burial, etc.
I have come to the conclusion that this man is a 100% sleazeball.
In keeping with the title of this post, the Pope has now died. Requiescat in pacem, Karol Wojtyla.
What Anarch said.
Yes, and it’s also cool to see how those who are concerned with the terrifying prospect of watering down our concept of marriage by allowing gay couples to marry have no problem applying it to people who are not, in fact, married at all, . . . .
I almost brought this precise point up, hilzoy. I’m glad you did. Apparently the “sanctity of marriage” isn’t so sanctified after all, if there’s a subset of conservatives prepared to go around imposing it willy-nilly on people who clearly don’t want it.
Mr. Shiavo didn’t make the decision to let this woman move on, the courts of Florida did. Both conservative and liberal judges in multiple trials, appealed right up to the Florida Supreme court with judgement consistently upheld that this woman did not want to be kept alive in this undead state. The Federal Supreme Court’s refusal to take the case is their approval of the actions of the Florida Courts.
The rule of law and the Constitution of the United States should not be selectively ignored.
Not to agree with CB, but I think it would have been wiser for Mr. Schiavo to have permanently resolved his relationsip with his wife before starting new relationships. I would think that after two or three years he could have decided to honor her wishes to be allowed to be freed from her broken body, or he could have decided not to. Perhaps for long years he held false hope due to awful advice from poor doctors – then the above is wrong. But CB‘s “two masters” argument speaks to me. I would not want to put myself in the position of feeling torn between my old love and my new family, at least if I believed that the former’s family was loving and responsible.
“Requiescat in pace” I think. “R.i. pacem” would mean “may he rest into peace”.
Not to agree with CB, but I think it would have been wiser for Mr. Schiavo to have permanently resolved his relationsip with his wife before starting new relationships.
It would have been still wiser for the Schindlers not to have explicitly encouraged Mr Schiavo to date other women, and to not have accepted Mr Schiavo’s paramour into their home, had they chosen to take this tack.
Rilkefan, what do you mean by “resolve[d] his relationsip with his wife before starting new relationships”?
Divorce her? – I’m actually not sure one *can* get a divorce if one of the spouses is incapable of consenting or not consenting to it. And even if he could, that would simply have left her in her parents’ custody – and the parents have stated, quite clearly, they had no intentions of honoring her wishes.
Or do you mean he should have asked that her feeding tube be removed before he went out on a date? – You’re essentially saying he should have ensured she was dead, based not on her medical condition, but on his relationship status. That’s awful.
He waited until he was absolutely, positively sure nothing could help her, and that took 7 years.
I’m not even sure I buy this “two masters” idea. There’s no evidence to suggest his S.O. was pushing for marriage, much less that she was pushing him to “kill Terri!” They’ve been together long enough to have two children, and stayed together even through the ugliness of the last few years: that argues a lot of emotional stability and strength. Michael Schiavo strikes me as someone with a strong sense of personal responsibility. He had fallen in love again, but wasn’t about to turn his back on his wife, because he had made a promise to her and intended to keep it.
“Requiescat in pace” I think. “R.i. pacem” would mean “may he rest into peace”.
I stand corrected; “pace” is apparently the ablative, “pacem” the locative.
Anarch: “It would have been still wiser for the Schindlers not to have explicitly encouraged Mr Schiavo to date other women, and to not have accepted Mr Schiavo’s paramour into their home, had they chosen to take this tack.”
I wasn’t there, but it seems fine to me for the Schindlers, under the false belief that there had been a permanent decision to support Mrs. Schiavo, to encourage their son-in-law to continue on with his life.
CaseyL: “Divorce her? – I’m actually not sure one *can* get a divorce if one of the spouses is incapable of consenting or not consenting to it.”
Maybe it’s state-dependent, but it’s possible in some places. You can give up guardianship to someone, and that person can accept the divorce.
“And even if he could, that would simply have left her in her parents’ custody – and the parents have stated, quite clearly, they had no intentions of honoring her wishes.”
It took him seven years to decide to honor her wishes by that argument…
“Or do you mean he should have asked that her feeding tube be removed before he went out on a date? – You’re essentially saying he should have ensured she was dead, based not on her medical condition, but on his relationship status. That’s awful.”
Her medical condition was fixed and (from my non-doctor perspective) quite clear from her initial heart attack. If I were struck down like that, it would be important to me that my wife would be able to continue on without being chained to me – I think that’s an excellent reason for not wanting to linger. I don’t want to be in that state for my own selfish reasons, but I also don’t want to be a burden on my family.
Rilkefan: It took him seven years to decide to honor her wishes by that argument…
At what point should he have decided there was no hope of her ever recovering? If you feel that seven years was too long, what would be the right amount of time?
To put it bluntly, what a pile of shite.
Remark refers to the column, in case there is any confusion.
oh, for God’s sake. Let her go, Charles. Let her go.
Oh, for God’s sake, spare me, prak. I’ve haven’t written even one half of a phrase on Schiavo until today.
Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to determine what Terri Schiavo would have wanted; in other words, he left it up to the court. You should know this by now.
If Michael had no desire to shorten Terri’s life, he wouldn’t have filed the petition in the first place. I can’t find the actual May 11, 1998 petition, but the 11th Circuit in its Statement of Facts wrote this:
As Terri’s guardian, it was always in Michael’s hands to forego pulling the feeding tube.
As for several making the argument that Terri’s parents were morally deficient when they encouraged Michael to date, I agree it wasn’t moral to make such a suggestion. But that was made when relationship between Schindler-Schiavo was amicable and when their interests in Terri’s welfare were consonant. It still takes nothing away from the fact that there is a conflict because it is well nigh impossible for Michael to act in both Jodi’s and Terri’s best interests. The honorable thing should have been to end the marriage with Terri, rather than stay married and shack up with Jodi. Either the marriage bonds are taken seriously or they’re not.
Charles: I am not trying to argue that Micael Schiavo is a good guy. I do not think I’m in a position to judge one way or the other. I do dispute your claim about what the court ruled. It did not, in fact, give Michael Schiavo the right to decide whether or not to remove the feeding tube. For this reason, I also dispute your claim that what happened is a blot on the law.
Jes: “At what point should he have decided there was no hope of her ever recovering? If you feel that seven years was too long, what would be the right amount of time?”
As I said, it seems to me that her situation was more or less immediately discernable. However, I wasn’t there, listening to what the doctors were saying. But I would think that when he decided he was ready to start dating he should have been able to realize his wife wasn’t going to recover and should then have been able to resolve what his future course of action would be. That would at least have been a good time to discuss the possibilities with everyone concerned – what if she recovers? what if we come to accept that she is in a PermanentVS? how do we feel about the fact that she wouldn’t want to be kept alive without hope? do we all agree on the facts? what if there is new info?
I’m not blaming him for changing his mind – that’s why I used the word “wiser”, which I pretend has a different meaning than “smarter”.
Charles Bird: As for several making the argument that Terri’s parents were morally deficient when they encouraged Michael to date, I agree it wasn’t moral to make such a suggestion.
I certainly don’t think they were morally deficient. In fact, it sounds like they were quite humane and moral to think of his emotional needs. I simply think that the above is a logical consequence of your position that should have been acknowledged from the start, and which would color the question of whether the Schindlers had Terri’s best interests at heart any more than did Michael.
It still takes nothing away from the fact that there is a conflict because it is well nigh impossible for Michael to act in both Jodi’s and Terri’s best interests.
Your formulation is ridiculous, as if you can only ever act in one person’s best interests. And even if I were to accept it, his new partner, and their children, have been receiving death threats. How does this lend credibility to your notion that he valued their interests over Terri’s?
Rilkefan, we don’t know that Michael Schiavo didn’t have precisely those discussions.
There are, as has been noted, hundreds and possibly thousands of others in situations similar to this one: someone is in a PVS/terminal condition, who happens to be married to someone who is not.
Do you advocate all of those marriages be ended if the non-PVS/terminal spouse wants to ‘go on with their life’? Regardless of whether or not they still feel responsible for the care and welfare of the PVS/terminal spouse? If so, what timeline do you propose; and how many medical opinions should be sought in the process?
If so, who do you advocate taking responsibility for the PVS/terminal (ex)-spouse? The parents – regardless of the kind of relationship they had with their child? Some other relative? A close friend? The State?
What if there’s disagreement over who should have custody? How should that disagreement be resolved?
What if the PVS/terminal (ex)spouse is an indigent? Who pays for the care; who decides when there’s no point in going on? Do you propose full federal or state funding for all PVS/terminal cases for the rest of their lives? Or do you propose a national version of Texas’ “Futile Care Law,” which allows hospitals to discontinue medical care if the case is hopeless and the patient can’t pay for medical care, even against the wishes of the patient’s parent/spouse/family?
Most of the people pounding the drum over Terri Schiavo haven’t addressed any of these questions. They specifically haven’t mentioned the Texas law.
Rilkefan: But I would think that when he decided he was ready to start dating he should have been able to realize his wife wasn’t going to recover and should then have been able to resolve what his future course of action would be.
I honestly don’t see that the two have, or should have, anything to do with each other. I’m really confused why people think they do. Two people can be legally married, with all the rights and benefits and responsibilities of marriage, and have a personal understanding that neither of them will be sexually faithful. That does not change the legality of their marriage, or remove any of their rights/benefits/responsibilities towards each other under law.
The difficulty here is simply that Terri Schiavo could not give consent to her husband forming a new relationship with another woman and having children with her. We could suppose that, had she looked ahead and imagined herself in a PVS, she would have told Michael Schiavo “And you’re to stay completely celibate, no dating, no children with anyone else, until I breathe my last – because if you ever have sex with anyone else while I’m alive, even if I have no cerebral cortex and won’t know a thing about it, I want a divorce.” But in fact, this is no one’s business except Michael Schiavo’s: if he feels that Terri Shiavo wasn’t that kind of person, he may be right or he may be wrong, but it’s not an area where anyone else has a right to second-guess him.
Michael Schiavo had legal and moral responsibilities towards Terri Schiavo which he was clearly unwilling to walk away from, even when bribed with a million dollars.
Let’s suppose that in 1997, instead of asking the courts to decide what Terri Schiavo would have wanted, he’d shrugged, told her parents that this was now their problem, and walked away from it – by getting a divorce, or just by relinquishing his right to have a say? What would have happened?
Most likely, given the reports of the Schiavo family’s involvement in Terri Schiavo’s day-to-day care, Terri Schiavo would have died some time ago from an infected bedsore. Christopher Reeve lasted nine years: had Michael Schiavo walked away from Terri Schiavo’s care, would Terri Schiavo have lasted eight more years without a serious bedsore?
The one thing that may have been left as awareness in Terri Schiavo’s brain was the pain reflex. Christopher Reeve couldn’t feel a bedsore: it’s just conceivable that what was left of Terri Schiavo’s brain would have. It would have been more painful than dying of dehydration, but it would still have been death.
If Michael had no desire to shorten Terri’s life, he wouldn’t have filed the petition in the first place.
What if he didn’t have the desire himself, but knew that is what she would have wanted?
Or do you live in a world where no man does something he doesn’t want because his wife wants it that way?
“Most likely, given the reports of the Schiavo family’s involvement in Terri Schiavo’s day-to-day care, Terri Schiavo would have died some time ago from an infected bedsore.”
From my perspective it’s sad this wasn’t the outcome.
If I knew I would end up in a PVS and someone would offer my wife $1M to keep me on a feeding tube, I’d probably say go for it if it feels ok. She can sell my organs to the highest bidder. Whatever is best for her is fine.
Jes? What about the Schindler’s day to day care of their daughter? I’d heard that Michael got training to care for Terri (as a respiratory therapist, an addition to what he was already certified to do); and also that he sometimes badgered the people at the hospitals and hospice to do more than they were doing. 15 years of PVS with no bedsores, no pneumonia, no gangrene, and none of the other usual ailments does indicate and uncommon vigilance.
But I haven’t heard much about how much the Schindlers knew, or did.
Rilkefan: From my perspective it’s sad this wasn’t the outcome.
Looked at without any regard at all for what any of the families involved would have wanted, it would certainly have been better if there hadn’t been this whipped-to-a-frenzy mob about it: and Michael Schiavo and several other people wouldn’t be receiving death threats from “pro-lifers”: and other people at the hospice would have been allowed to die in peace rather than have their last days disturbed by the mob outside: so, yes, it would impersonally have been “better” if Terri Schiavo had been abandoned by her husband and left to die of an infected bedsore. But that is clearly not what Michael Schiavo wanted to do, and I can see why.
If I knew I would end up in a PVS and someone would offer my wife $1M to keep me on a feeding tube, I’d probably say go for it if it feels ok. She can sell my organs to the highest bidder. Whatever is best for her is fine.
She might feel badly about that, though. I’m just sayin’.
CaseyL: But I haven’t heard much about how much the Schindlers knew, or did.
I haven’t heard that either of her parents, or her brother and sister, were willing to give up their lives and look after her to the same degree as Michael Schiavo. Maybe if they’d had no choice – if in 1997, Michael Schiavo had said okay, you do everything I’m doing, I quit – they would have. But that degree of care is, frankly, really pretty unusual. No blame to the Schiavo’s if they weren’t capable of it: but it’s clear to me that Michael Schiavo’s care for Terri Schiavo was pretty damn extraordinary.
CaseyL – wait a minute, I see where you’re coming from. No, I’ve heard nothing bad about the Schindler’s care for their daughter, and I didn’t mean to imply I had – but from reports about Terri Schiavo’s care, it seems clear that Michael Schiavo was the one responsible for making sure that the 24-hour care she got was extraordinarily good. As Christopher Reeve proved, sadly, it isn’t money exclusively that buys that: it’s unremitting and knowledgable vigilance.
CaseyL, I tend to think that the pair bond should be recognized as primary, and in cases where one partner wants to form a new bond the courts should decide guardianship, with presumption going to the parents or adult children then other relatives.
Re the conversation I suggested should have taken place, I rather suspect one side or the other would have mentioned the discussion and its outcome during the various hearings.
Is Reeve really a useful data point here? He was engaged in a heroic struggle, both private and public, to combat his injury – and that put stress on him that a less strong-willed person would not have undergone.
I am appalled at the narrowness and presumption with which the author of this post views “marriage.”
and that put stress on him that a less strong-willed person would not have undergone.
According to this website, one reason why he was battling pressure sores was because he spent so much time in his wheelchair. So in a sense Reeve died because he wanted to do “too much”.
I used Reeve as a high-profile example of how easy it is for someone who can’t move (Terri Schiavo wasn’t paralyzed but had no control over her voluntary muscles) to develop bedsores, and how ultimately lethal they can be. In all other respects, his situation was utterly different from Terri Schiavo’s.
A Proper Guardian
Charles at Obsidian Wings labors over the moral standing of Michael Schiavo to serve as his wife’s guardian and to make the decision to end her life. Charles, do you think the Schindler’s might have felt the same way?
I’m done trying to persuade anyone on the “other side” of this issue that this was a tragic, personal case that mirrors so many others in this country, and that the assumptions and conclusions that have been drawn by people who can’t possibly know what happened are offensive.
One thing I will point out in response to Charles’ denouncement of Michael Schaivo: on the two sides of this case, there has been one person who (1) stayed by the side of and provided excellent care to Terri Schaivo; (2) respected the other patients and families at the hospice*; (3) did not participate in making his loved one a spectacle; (4) spent all of the money he was supposedly so greedy for in service of her wishes and care; (5) has not put himself in any kind of spotlight; and (6) has not put up the list of his supporters for sale.
*this, to me, is one of the most telling things about the Schaivo family. They could easily have had all their “press conferences” at another location and could have insisted that their supporters join them there. Surely some church would have been glad to provide that venue. Instead, they made a circus out of a place where families are grieving.
There’s nothing to say to Charles and Josh and those who see Michael Schaivo as a murderer, and those of us who support the conclusions of the legal system as accomplices.
One thing I will point out in response to Charles’ denouncement of Michael Schaivo: on the two sides of this case, there has been one person who (1) stayed by the side of and provided excellent care to Terri Schaivo; (2) respected the other patients and families at the hospice*; (3) did not participate in making his loved one a spectacle; (4) spent all of the money he was supposedly so greedy for in service of her wishes and care; (5) has not put himself in any kind of spotlight; and (6) has not put up the list of his supporters for sale.
*this, to me, is one of the most telling things about the Schaivo family. They could easily have had all their “press conferences” at another location and could have insisted that their supporters join them there. Surely some church would have been glad to provide that venue. Instead, they made a circus out of a place where families are grieving.
Sorry about that double post! I thought I checked. Oops.
But I haven’t heard much about how much the Schindlers knew, or did.
I don’t want to do the inverse of what Bird’s post did, which is attempt to drag the Schindler’s name through the mud, but after the PVS was diagnosed, Terrie was taken home to be cared for and after 3 weeks, the Schindlers were ‘overwhelmed’ and she had to be returned to the hospice.
I’m also suggesting a ‘just say no’ policy on commenting on Terrie Schiavo. It may be tough when spurious facts are offered up, but I think it might be for the best.
In my opinion, Micheal Schiavo was widowed in 1990. A widowed spouse does not cease to love his or her late husband or wife, even if he or she remarries. My grandmother continued to visit my grandfather’s grave even after she remarried. In a sense, I think Schiavo was doing the same thing: taking care of what was left of his wife, honoring her memory and carrying out her wishes even after he had fallen in love again. I’ve read that he was offered several large bribes (in the millions of dollars range) to get a divorce. If he was just out for money or didn’t care about his wife any longer, why didn’t he take one of those offers?
And speaking of the “culture of life” and its advocates, has anyone else seen this article on what Tom DeLay did when his father was in a PVS?
lj: I actually took just such an oath yesterday after she died, but I included an exception for factual errors, and another to the effect that some responses to this might get commented on — e.g., further incitements to disobey the law are not covered by the oath. FWIW.
On “just say no”, I at least learned something about what I think in the process of responding above. Since I’m getting married soon it was good to find out.
This is really a despicable post. The points have all been made and I won’t repeat them all, but it’s amazing that the cheap shots are still coming. One point that’s worth noting again, though, is that if Michael Schiavo had a conflict of interest, so did everyone on the Schindler side, and so does every one of us who’s married and who participates in end-of-life decision-making for a family member. We all have other claims on our emotions. But it turns out that in the real world, it’s possible to love more than one person at a time. If I were ever in Terri Schiavo’s position, I’d hope my wife would be willing to see to it that the right thing was done, but I would also hope that she’d do what she could for her own happiness, and if she found someone else to love, I’d wish her Godspeed.
hilzoy: I actually took just such an oath yesterday after she died, but I included an exception for factual errors,
Heh, you might as well said “except on days ending in Y”, given how this debate has proceeded so far.
At what point does Charles’ penchant for writing screeds like this turn him into a legal liability for ObWi? The crack ObWi legal eagle team may want to have a good think about this one.
At any rate, allow me to add another voice naming this post for the despicable, intellectually bankrupt calumny that it is. Others have already called out and destroyed most of the points on which Charles has distorted or omitted facts and tortured the bounds of logic in order to justify the position he already held, so it appears I’m late to the party.
The woman is dead. She is dead because conservative and liberal judges alike ruled, consistently over the course of over a decade and based on a broad range of evidence not limited to her husband’s testimony, that she would have wanted it that way.
Your fetishizing of her plight and use of it as a political prop, as Bush and those in Congress did, is deserving of nothing less than naked contempt.
I think Michael Schiavo is probably going to be murdered within the year. I want you to know Charles that I think you will bear a measure of responsibility for that murder.
“I think Michael Schiavo is probably going to be murdered within the year. I want you to know Charles that I think you will bear a measure of responsibility for that murder.”
Jeez, people, some balance, please.
Okay, Frank, enough of THAT. Charles has not called for any harm to the man, and his is hardly the most vitriolic treatment of Michael Schiavo I have seen today.
I want you to know Charles that I think you will bear a measure of responsibility for that murder.
Not cool, Frank. Not in the slightest bit cool.
I hope you’re wrong, Frank. But if you’re not, it’ll be fruit loops like this guy, not Charles, who will have to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror. I think Charles is dead wrong here, but he’s a long way from inciting violence.
Maybe I should have said a very small measure, but the very least this post implies is carelessness about his wife’s life. I don’t see being a minor part of the hatefest against a private citizen who didn’t do anything to deserve his 15minutes of infamy.
(I hope I’m wrong too.)
Oops, I don’t see being a minor cog in that machine as ok.
I think, Frank, that there’s a difference between expressing one’s disapproval of another’s choices, which is what Charles has done, and calling him a murderer, which is what the loon I linked to previously has done.
The worst Charles is guilty of here, (besides being wrong, IMHO) is not minding his own damned business. But we’re all guilty of that at this point.
JKC- I’m not sure you looked at the implications of this:
“Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998, based on hearsay evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way. The age-old phrase “you cannot serve two masters” applies here, or in this case a man cannot serve two wives because one of the spouses is going to get the short end. Tragically and wrongly, Terri got the short end, and the fatal end as well.”
I don’t see how you can say Charles isn’t claiming Mr Schiavo wanted to kill his wife for selfish gain.
I admit I think there is a diffence between letting someone go and killing them, perhaps Charles does not. Like many others I don’t see any evidence Mr. Schiavo has any possible selfish motive here.
(I hope he sues everyone who has defamed him and wins a lot of money, but I don’t see how he could have forseen the opportunity. I would prefer being poor and unknown to being rich and hated by a substantial minority of the population, particularly a minority that has committed terrorist acts against individuals they hated less.) Google: abortion clinic bombing
There’s nothing to say to Charles and Josh and those who see Michael Schaivo as a murderer, and those of us who support the conclusions of the legal system as accomplices.
That’s a smear, Opus. I’ve never used the word murder in regards to Michael Schiavo, and I’ve never said that the legal system was an accomplice to murder. You’re better than making statements like that.
I want you to know Charles that I think you will bear a measure of responsibility for that murder.
That was low and despicable of you, Frank. If you think my pointing out that Michael Schiavo’s issues of marriage to Terri and maintaining a family with Jodi is going to lead someone to murder, then there’s nothing more to say to you.
Charles – that’s my sentence construction at fault. You have not made that accusation.
No. Merely implied it in a way designed to carefully avoid saying it directly but unmistakable in meaning. SOP when he wants to smear someone but recognizes that coming right out and making the smear would get him jumped on even harder.
Charles- What part of “Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998” Didn’t you understand when you wrote it?
No one begrudged Terry food. Some people thought she wouldn’t want it shoved through a hole into her abdomen.
Frank, it’s true that Charles in writing this has placed himself on the same side as the people sending death threats to Senator Frederica Wilson, the judges George Greer and James Whittemore, and of course, Michael Schiavo. You know; the “pro-life” crowd.
But let us be fair and assume that he meant well, even though he’s on the wrong side and he’s not bothered to do any real research to discover that things he is asserting are not true: given that he was unaware of so many facts about the Terri Schiavo case, it’s reasonable enough to assume that he was also unaware that the side he’s picked is the one sending death threats.
Might be a good time to take that oath, folks.
“Frank, it’s true that Charles in writing this has placed himself on the same side as the people”
umm. Well, when Charles joined I welcomed him in part as a challenge to my own magnanimity and acceptance that disagreement need not have its source in either side’s bad faith, ignorance, or base motives. And that his partisanship, tho perhaps placing him in some distant peripheral association with the odious, would force me to measure Charles by standards other than his associations.
I have a history that leads even myself to understand I could use some improvement in this regard.
Unlike Catsy… who wants to smear just blantly does it…
‘SOP when he wants to smear someone but recognizes that coming right out and making the smear would get him jumped on even harder.”
A question for Charles:
Will your opinion on this change if the autopsy reveals that Ms Schaivo’s cerebral cortex was largely gone?
If someone tries to kill Michael Schiavo, I will not hold Charles in any way responsible for it. Likewise, if someone tries to kill Charles, I will not hold Frank responsible for it.
I am spooked by the way Terri Schiavo’s tragedy has led people to make serious accusations about someone they don’t know without anything like good evidence. For precisely this reason, I don’t want to throw around claims about responsibility for murder either. There is too much of this stuff already without our adding to it.
Once again, this article is still a pile of shite.
Thank you, Opus, for clarifying.
What part of “Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998” Didn’t you understand when you wrote it?
Excuse me, Frank, but if I thought that Michael Schiavo murdered his wife, I would have said so directly. As for you Catsy, I don’t do implied. The problem is yours for trying to read what’s not there.
Will your opinion on this change if the autopsy reveals that Ms Schaivo’s cerebral cortex was largely gone?
I deliberately did not address Terri’s condition for a reason, JKC. For me, the presumption that Michael is acting in his state-certified wife’s best interest comes before any issues involving her medical condition.
Frank, it’s true that Charles in writing this has placed himself on the same side as the people sending death threats to Senator Frederica Wilson, the judges George Greer and James Whittemore, and of course, Michael Schiavo. You know; the “pro-life” crowd.
No, it’s not true, Jes. They may (or may not) have similar opinions as me about Michael Schiavo’s moral fitness as guardian, but they’re not on my side. In fact, I’m much more against those sending death threats than against Mr. Schiavo, whom I give credit to for working within the system and following the law to achieve his ends, unpleasant though those ends may be.
Charles: In fact, I’m much more against those sending death threats than against Mr. Schiavo, whom I give credit to for working within the system and following the law to achieve his ends, unpleasant though those ends may be.
I take your word for it, Charles, but after all, when you chose to put together a 1000+ word blogpost (however riddled with inaccuracies it was) you didn’t choose to write about the people sending death threats to Michael Schiavo and the others involved: you chose to participate in the demonization of Michael Schiavo that has led to people sending him death threats.
For me, the presumption that Michael is acting in his state-certified wife’s best interest comes before any issues involving her medical condition.
It seems kind of silly to me to think that they are easily separable, or that there is a better way to determine the first besides determining what Terri Schiavo’s best interests are, and comparing Michael Schiavo’s actions against that standard.
You may think that the Schindlers have only Terri’s best interest in mind, but I know from personal experience how easily one can lose sight of what a loved one’s best interests are. Around nine years ago, my father died of cancer. Hours before I saw him for the last time, he had sunk rather suddenly into a state of delirium. My desire for one final lucid moment with him was so strong that when the slender hope of artificial life support was offered, I was ready to take it, even though he had personally told me that he would not want it. Fortunately, my sisters and mother were there to overrule me, because I would have done a horrible thing to my father had it been up to me. I can only imagine what the situation would have been had he only told some of us, or had I had a position in the family where nobody would have dared to gainsay me.
So let’s not automatically assume that Michael Schiavo is the only one with a possible conflict of interest here.
Stating that Terry Shiavo was “starved to death” is inflammatory and pejorative. It is no more accurate to say that Ms. Shiavo was “starved” than it is to say that Sun Hudson was “smothered” or Tom DeLay’s father was “poisoned”.
The honorable thing should have been to end the marriage with Terri, rather than stay married and shack up with Jodi. Either the marriage bonds are taken seriously or they’re not.
I disagree. The honorable thing is what he did – try to do what he understood Terri wanted done. Suppose, Charles, it was the other way around and the parents wanted the feeding tube removed while Michael wanted it to remain, and that the only way he could fight for this was to remain married to Terri.
Would you be saying that he was behaving badly by having a relationship with Jodi Centonze? Or would you instead be praising him for not just getting a divorce and walking away to leave Terri to her fate at the hands of her parents?
And how, if divorce had been a possibility, is there any conflict of interest here. If he could divorce Terri and mary Jodi any time he wanted to where is the conflict?
This idea that he is somehow morally unfit makes no sense. Read Opus’ April 2, 7:53 PM comment about his actions. The evidence simply does not support you.
Lots of people, clearly including you, don’t like the outcome of this case. But it is worse than outrageous that they resort to groundless attacks on Michael Schiavo to argue their point.
To put it bluntly, what a pile of shite. sillycanuck, and the fatal end as well. [Emphasis added]
This point should be expanded upon. The post is intellectually dishonest, and reflects either sloth in trying to get it right or crass partisanship by peddling bogus talking points. Examples:
the courts consistently ruled that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri
This is a blatantly false statement and an example of the right’s talking point lies to distort this controversy. The decision was based on testimony of witnesses as to the wishes of T. Schiavo — M. Schiavo’s wish could not and did not compel the result. The court decisions expressly note that M. Schiavo’s testimony alone regarding T. Schiavo’s wishes was not sufficient.
the presumption that he would act in her very best interests does not and cannot hold
Except that there was no such presumption, and the court rulings explicitly acknowledge that he is subject to a conflict of interest and that his statements should be viewed in that light. Again, more right wing lying about the basic and indisuputable facts of this case.
In addition, there was also significant litigation on the corollary quetion of M. Shiavo’s fitness to serve as guardian for T. Schiavo (even though that role had nothing to do with authorizing the withdrawal of the feeding tube, but it did affect many other aspects of T. Schiavo’s day to day care). The courts and the guardian ad litems appointed by the courts for T. Schiavo all concluded on several different occasions, based on the evidence and after hearing the Schindler’s endless calumny about M. Schiavo, that he was extremely dedicated to the best interests of T. Schiavo and no grounds existed for disqualifying him to act as guardian for her.
Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998, based on hearsay evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way. The age-old phrase “you cannot serve two masters” applies here, or in this case a man cannot serve two wives because one of the spouses is going to get the short end. Tragically and wrongly,
She died from dehydration, which is one of the most common methods for such patients to die. The doctors unifomrmly describe it as peaceful, and to insure a lack of sufffering, hospice administers drugs to prevent any sensation of suffering (which T. Schiavo had no abillity to sense anyway, but she nonetheless received this treatment). The right spins the “starve” meme to falsely portray what is happening.
The evidence was not “hearsay” — you know not of what you speak. Again, this is the right’s talking point that is false and serves to create a false sense of illegitimacy in the court process.
When the isue in a case is what someone said (for example, in a slander case as to what slander was spoken), the witnesses always testify to the out of court statement since the issue is what words were spoken. It is never hearsay, and such evidence is routinely accepted without diminishment as to its probity.
Finally, the logic of the post repeats the error that allegedly this occurred based on M. Schiavo’s say-so, and T. Schiavo got the “short end.” This is just made up nonsense.
The “err on the side of life” meme is more propoganda that ignores what actually happened in this case — the courts enforced T. Schiavo’s wish that she not be kept alive, which was “clear and convincing.” The law already provides that the courts err on the side of life, and the decision was not the result of some opposite presumption.
Finally, it is ironic that you reference the final moments of the Pope, who was allowed to die by withholding further medical care that would have prolonged his life. The Terrry Randall’s of the world would have instead rushed into his apartment, brushed aside the evil chamberlains who were allowing him to die without proper medical care, and rushed him to a hospital to plug him into machines so that his ruined body would remain “alive”, since we must err on the side of life, after all.
Why is it that when rehashing insipid moralizing memes, authors such as Charles Bird fail to realize there are two common motivations for not wishing to have one’s body kept alive after one’s ability to be conscious and communicate has been destroyed? 1) To avoid the horror of the “locked-in” condition: able to suffer but unable to communicate. 2) To allow one’s loved ones to grieve and to live again a full life with love. What a terribly cramped moral universe Charles Bird must inhabit not to grant to Terri Schiavo the generousity of spirit implied in motivation #2. Is it really the case that he would wish his loved ones never to grieve, never to love again? Can he really not grasp that, in addition to refusing continued intubation for her body, that in loving another person Michael Schiavo was precisely fulfilling Terri Schiavo’s wishes?
Coprophilia
A pungent example, from a minor master of the medium.
For years I have considered Charles Bird to be among the biggest assholes in all of blogdom, and this post just makes me all the more confident that my assessment of him is accurate and just.
People: the posting rulesrequire civility, and forbid profanity. If any of you have criticisms of Charles’ post, feel free to make them. Elaborately. In detail. With all the passion you can muster. Then we might all learn something. But don’t just call him names.
Can we have some banning warnings or just plain bannings? Thanks.
rilkefan: I meant my last post to be an implicit banning warning. But on reflection, you’re right: explicitness is in order. Sillycanuck and John Simonetti: obey the posting rules in future, or I will ban you.
We try hard to make this a site where people on both the left and right can argue fiercely but respectfully. To do that, we need to maintain civility. You can make your points by explaining what you think is wrong with what Charles said. There’s no reason at all to attack him personally.
The honorable thing should have been to end the marriage with Terri, rather than stay married and shack up with Jodi. Either the marriage bonds are taken seriously or they’re not.
Excuse me, but that’s total bulls**t. From a moral point of view, Terry Schiavo has been dead for years, for all that her body retained the capacity to keep breathing on her own. A husband should not have to divorce his dead wife before he starts a new relationship, just because he and her parents disagree on what should happen to her body. If I am ever in a PVS, with my cerebral cortex gone, I certainly hope my wife can find someone new, without waiting as long as Michael Schiavo did. And if anyone has the nerve to call her an aldulterer because of that, or a murderer becase she respects my wishes that my body not be kept alive in that state, they had better hope there’s no afterlife, because my ghost will be waiting to kick their ass when they come to the other side.
One other thing Charles, I can respect that you have a different point of view. That’s the beauty of ObWi, we can come together and air our differences (somewhat) civilly. However, I’m completely non-impressed by your non-willingness to back up your arguments. Many of the posters above have corrected you on factual points and challenged you on moral perspectives, but you haven’t really responded in depth to anyone except a couple of people who were pushing the line of civility. The way to have an enlightening discussion is to respond primarily to those people who are making clear and cogent points, and I don’t see you doing much of that.
In case you do decide to intellectually engage with those of us who strongly, strongly disagree with your conclusions, would you please consider answering the following questions so we could see where we have common ground to build a discussion on?
1) What, if any, do you see as the moral value of maintaining the life in a body where the cerebral cortex is gone and no consciousness, memory, or thought will ever be possible?
2) Do you think that a person’s wishes as to whether he/she should be kept on life support in this sort of condition should be honored? If not, why not?
3) If Michael Schiavo did indeed hear his wife express the wish not to be kept on life support under these sorts of conditions, do you feel that he had a moral obligation to act according to her wishes? If not, why not?
4) Can you understand the emotional reasons why a husband, considering his beloved wife to be functionally dead and himself morally free to move on, would nevertheless not wish to divorce his (to his mind) dead wife?
5) Can you understand the possibility that a person, if they were going to be in a PVS, would want their spouse to a) let them die and b) move on to a new relationship? (Hint – see the example of myself, above.) In such a circumstance, do you think the surviving spouse would be immoral for comforming to those wishes? (In other words, if I end up in a PVS, and my wife does exactly what I have said in the above paragraph that I want her to do, would you consder her to be acting immorally?) If so, why?
In return, for answering these questions, please feel free to post any questions about the viewpoint of myself or others that you find incomprehensible. That way, perhaps we can actually get somewhere besides posting diatribes at each other.
I would like to apologize for the opening line of my previous comment. While the sentiment is one I strongly believe in, it is not in line with the rest of my comment where I invite Charles to explicate on the moral values which lead him to his conclusion. When trying to encourage someone to engage in a dialogue, it is not good practice to start out by telling them their argument is bulls**t. My comment evolved as I was typing, and I neglected to go back and edit.
I tried and failed to come up with a reasonable comment on Charles’s post, which, as the descendant of mostly honorable polygamists, I tend to find silly, and which, as a liberal, I tend to find offensive. I didn’t post earlier because there was something in Charles’s line of thinking that I thought important, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. To take a stab at it, finally.
The reason this case should resonate is that it shows the problems that entail when one enshrines the one man one woman one will formula that is the conservative model of marriage. Who will speak best for the muted voice of Terri Shiavo, her father or her husband? Of course this is a false dilemma, as Hilzoy and Von’s posts about the patient’s right to refuse treatment and about the legal process to determine the patient’s intentions point out, but Charles’s post lands us back in the most interesting territory for conservative thinkers: what are the limitations of marriage as a determining institution? What values trump marriage as understood as coverture?
This is a conversation that conservatives should be having, even though their ways of thinking through this topic might appall liberals. My only real contribution to this conversation would be to urge conservatives to remember that even Edmund Burke thought that emotional affections were not easily dissolved, that one could, over the time, feel responsible towards many ideas and people simulteneously. I have every reason to believe that my great-great grandfather was a honorable polygamist, who looked after the welfare of all of his five wives. Maybe this sad case of Michael and Terri Schiavo can be a chance for right-thinking people to think more seriously through the idea and institution of marriage.
What I find weird about this post — I was so struck by it that I was telling my girl friend about it and she is never interested in what I read on blogs — is that the guy who wrote it seems to have the weirdest concept of marriage, love, responsibility and being an adult. He seems to think that the government’s licensing creates some sort of special _moral_ bond. (A legal one of course.)
But this guy is acting like you can’t still love an ex-lover and that that ex-lover might not feel totally comfortable giving you, as legal guardian no matter what the marital status, these ultimate rights.
The post struck me as just so stiff and out of touch with the way it really works in the world of adult love.
Charle’s primary audience isn’t ObiWi, it’s redstate and tacitus. Both are winger sites, and wingers don’t ‘do’ nuance, neither in politics nor relationships. Nuance and complexity are for cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be married to one.
If a tree falls in the woods with noone around, does it make a noise?
If BD writes on a blog which noone read, would he still ruin it?
Folks, chill a bit. Please.
I apologize for my blunt assessment of Mr. Bird and his blogging abilities. In the future I will try to find a more subtle way to express myself.
Had I the skill to have done so, I would have written a comment similar to those written by David Sucher or CaseyL.
If a tree falls in the woods with noone around, does it make a noise?
If BD writes on a blog which noone read, would he still ruin it?
Caleb, please. The words “no one” always have a space. “Noone” is not just wrong, it’s ugly.
PS: Also, posting rules.
Besides the sneering tone throughout, the post has the most basic flaw.
There is NO gap between what is right and what is legal, contrary to what the post argues. Autonomy is vested in each individual, not in her husband and most certainly not in her parents.
CB is factually wrong, as many have pointed out, as to the weight given by the court to MS’s testimony.
CB is morally wrong to assert that the courts should err on the side of life. Courts should not err. Moreover, CB already has the presumption he’s looking for, given that the court had to decide by the clear and convincing evidence standard that TS’s desire was not to have the feeding tube.
For more on how social conservatives view MS, try The Right Coast and Volokh Conspiracy’s support of that post. I’m so appalled that I won’t provide the courtesy of a link.
you didn’t choose to write about the people sending death threats to Michael Schiavo and the others involved: you chose to participate in the demonization of Michael Schiavo that has led to people sending him death threats.
It’s unfair and unreasonable to be criticized for not writing about every issue of importance on a given topic, Jes. The line of “Ah ha! he didn’t write about this” is not a place to go. As for “the demonization of Michael Schiavo”, it’s matter of opinion and I reject the notion that writing about his marital and extra-marital relationships fall under that category.
Stating that Terry Shiavo was “starved to death” is inflammatory and pejorative.
How you react to the phrase takes nothing away from the fact that starvation (or more specifically, dehydration) was the cause of death, Chuch.
Charle’s primary audience isn’t ObiWi, it’s redstate and tacitus.
Wrong again, Casey. Since the Tacitus interrugnum, I’ve written in almost equal amounts at Redstate and here, and just a smattering of diaries at Tacitus and Dean Nation.
Many of the posters above have corrected you on factual points and challenged you on moral perspectives, but you haven’t really responded in depth to anyone except a couple of people who were pushing the line of civility.
Tony, I responded to hilzoy, for example, on the issue of the 1998 petition to discontinue life support. I don’t agree with her on critical facts, and given that impasse, I see no point in going further. I respectfully disagreed with her and went forward. I’ve read the challenges on “moral perspectives”, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Since you asked, I’ll answer your questions:
1) What, if any, do you see as the moral value of maintaining the life in a body where the cerebral cortex is gone and no consciousness, memory, or thought will ever be possible?
God only knows the true moral value. I really can’t judge.
2) Do you think that a person’s wishes as to whether he/she should be kept on life support in this sort of condition should be honored? If not, why not?
Yes. The court was satisfied with what Michael’s side brought forward, and I have serious reservations.
3) If Michael Schiavo did indeed hear his wife express the wish not to be kept on life support under these sorts of conditions, do you feel that he had a moral obligation to act according to her wishes? If not, why not?
She may very well have said those words and he may very well have felt a moral obligation.
4) Can you understand the emotional reasons why a husband, considering his beloved wife to be functionally dead and himself morally free to move on, would nevertheless not wish to divorce his (to his mind) dead wife?
I can understand the emotional reasons for not divorcing, but if he is going to move on emotionally, create a whole new life, cleave to another woman and to sire her children, it still remains that there is an unbridgeable conflict by staying married. He is in the here-and-now with a common law wife and two kids–his future–with whom he is obligated to support and uphold. For all intensive purposes, Terri is his past.
5) Can you understand the possibility that a person, if they were going to be in a PVS, would want their spouse to a) let them die and b) move on to a new relationship? (Hint – see the example of myself, above.) In such a circumstance, do you think the surviving spouse would be immoral for comforming to those wishes?
Yes to the first question. The second question is a sticky one, particularly if the surviving spouse entered into a new lifetime relationship while still betrothed to the former.
As for “the demonization of Michael Schiavo”, it’s matter of opinion and I reject the notion that writing about his marital and extra-marital relationships fall under that category.
Uh, it actually isn’t just a matter of opinion, as you were not privy to whatever Michael and Terri’s marital arrangements and opinions concerning worst-case scenarios were; and, in fact, any conjecture by you as to Michael’s motivations (let alone Terri’s) is the kind of mindreading you claim not to engage in.
The court was satisfied with what Michael’s side brought forward . . .
See, you’re doing it again. It was not Michael’s side that the courts (plural) were considering, it was Terri’s side.
. . . it still remains that there is an unbridgeable conflict by staying married. He is in the here-and-now with a common law wife . . .
1. It’s only your opinion — and it appears to be not universally shared — that it’s an unbridgeable conflict.
2. The second part is a lie. He does not have a common-law wife, no matter how much you want to bend reality and actual law to align with your wishes and preferences.
For all intensive purposes . . .
Hahahahahaha. That’s funny.
“He is in the here-and-now with a common law wife and two kids–his future–with whom he is obligated to support and uphold. For all intensive purposes, Terri is his past.”
Charles, do you also believe that it’s improper for adults who have spouses and families to make end-of-life decisions for their parents, and if not, how do you distinguish that situation?
I note that your opinion differs from mine, Phil, I’m glad you were able illicit a guffaw at my expense.
Charles, do you also believe that it’s improper for adults who have spouses and families to make end-of-life decisions for their parents, and if not, how do you distinguish that situation?
I don’t believe it’s improper, nor do I think that the son or daughter of a PVS parent is going to move on and find a new parent to take up a relationship with.
Charles: It’s unfair and unreasonable to be criticized for not writing about every issue of importance on a given topic
But it’s perfectly fair and reasonable to assume that the area you chose to write about is the area where you feel a primary interest – especially when you choose to write about it despite being so uninformed. It is also perfectly fair and reasonable to note that the misinformation you are writing from appears to be the same kind of misinformation that appears to be triggering death threats from “pro-lifers” to Michael Schiavo and others involved. Therefore, it seems odd to me that since you say you oppose the death threats, you nevertheless choose to repeat the misinformation that has led to the death threats.
As for “the demonization of Michael Schiavo”, it’s matter of opinion and I reject the notion that writing about his marital and extra-marital relationships fall under that category.
You know nothing about either his marital or his extra-marital relationships: therefore writing about them seems singularly pointless. Then again, where the facts were available, as others have pointed out, you managed to get rather a large proportion of them simply wrong.
As for your participation in the demonization of Michael Schiavo, I note your inflammatory choice of words throughout your post, as others have already noted in more detail above, as well as the inaccuracies and plain untruths you repeat here.
Charles, thank you for responding to my questions. Your answers bring me at least a step closer to understanding where you’re coming from. Would you mind if I followed up and asked for some clarifications?
1) “God only knows the true moral value. I really can’t judge.”
??? I’m confused here. The impression I got from your initial post, especially from such lines as “Tragically and wrongly, Terri got the short end, and the fatal end as well.” is that you feel Terri Schiavo’s death was a bad thing. How do you come to that viewpoint without an opinion on whether keeping her body on life support was a good thing? Or am I completely misunderstanding the implication of your original post?
2 & 3 “Yes. The court was satisfied with what Michael’s side brought forward, and I have serious reservations.” “She may very well have said those words and he may very well have felt a moral obligation.”
OK, what I’ve getting here is that you do agree that Terri’s wishes should have been followed, and you do agree that she might have expressed the wish not to be kept on life support and you do agree that if she expressed that wish then her husband might feel a moral obligation to support that wish. (Although you remain non-committal on whether you think he would have such a moral obligation.) However, you think there is the possibility that her husband is lying about her wishes.
Given the above, do you think it might have been more fair and honest to express your initial post along the lines of “I tend to doubt Michael Schiavo’s word because of what I see as a conflict of interest on his part. However, if he is telling the truth (and I have no way of knowing), then he has acted according to his moral obligations.”? Your initial post as it stands leaves no doubt that you consider Michael Schiavo’s decision to advocate for letting his wife die to be immoral. However, your words in response to my questions indicate the possibility that he indeed was fulfilling his moral obligation.
5) “The second question is a sticky one, particularly if the surviving spouse entered into a new lifetime relationship while still betrothed to the former.”
My question specified that the spouse in the PVS wanted the surviving spouse to enter into the new relationship. Just to clarify my example, I would prefer that my wife just let me die without divorcing me in the hypothetical situation I proposed. I wouldn’t really care if she started her new realtionship before my body died or not. (In fact, I’d prefer that she find someone reasonably soon and not suffer through years of loneliness.) Could you clarify exactly why it would be morally sticky for my wife to follow my wishes in this scenario?
I have some issues with your viewpoint on question #4, but I think I at least understand it, even though I disagree with several of your underlying premises.
“…I responded to hilzoy, for example, on the issue of the 1998 petition to discontinue life support.”
Um, respectfully, I don’t think that you responded to her actual point. You said, “If Michael had no desire to shorten Terri’s life, he wouldn’t have filed the petition in the first place.” and “As Terri’s guardian, it was always in Michael’s hands to forego pulling the feeding tube.” In fact, hilzoy neither states nor implies that Michael Schiava did not want to let Terri die. The point she did make was that the courts did not make their decision on the basis “…that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri…“. Instead, the courts made their decision based on the determination of what Terri Schiavo would have wanted. hilzoy backs up her point with actual cites. You never respond to this, but instead answer claims that she never made. If you are of the opinion that the courts erred in their determination of what Terri would have wanted, on the grounds that you don’t trust Mr.Schiavo, then say so. Just don’t say you’ve answered hilzoy’s point when you haven’t.
“I don’t agree with her on critical facts, and given that impasse, I see no point in going further.
In fact, I think it would be quite productive to lay out which critical facts you disagree with, and lay out your evidence. hilzoy has been excellent about providing documentation for her factual claims. Perhaps you could do the same? How is it even possible to have a discussion if we can’t establish which facts we agree and disagree on, and what our evidence is for believing those facts?
Charles: you wrote: “While the courts consistently ruled that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri…” — As you noted, Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to allow him to disconnect the feeding tube. But the quote you cite is not from the 11th Circuit Court; it’s from a brief filed by the Schindlers in that court, and thus I don’t see it as the clear and impartial statement of facts that you do. I agree that a pdf of the original petition would be nice, but in its absence I’m prepared to accept the word of the appellate court that heard their first appeal, which, as I noted above, said:
In this context, it’s also worth reading the original decision, whose conclusion is not that Michael Schiavo is entitled to decide what to do about the feeding tube, but that Terri Schiavo would not have wished to be kept alive with it, and whose arguments all turn not on the nature and extent of Michael Schiavo’s authority in the matter, but on what can be known of Terri Schiavo’s wishes.
If the courts had ruled that Michael Schiavo was entitled to decide whether the feeding tube should be removed or not, then I would agree that his motives would be of interest not just to him, but also to us in our evaluation of the law. But since he was not allowed to make that decision, I don’t see his motives as being relevant to our view of the law, and thus I don’t see how claims about his motives could possibly imply that “the death of Terri Schiavo is a blot on our society and on the law.”
Charles, I would like to reiterate that at this point I am honestly mostly trying to understand where you are coming from, not to persuade you. I’ll save that for after I understand your position, assuming I have any energy left. 😉 Along those lines, I’ll repeat my offer to answer any questions you might have about the underlying assumptions/values/whatever of the viewpoints that I apparently share with many of the commenters here. Perhaps you already understand exactly where I’m coming from, but I tend to doubt it. When writing to persuade, a good writer will take into account the underlying assumptions of his target audience and work to convince them that either those assumptions lead to the desired conclusion or that the assumptions are wrong. You seem to be a passably good writer, and yet you haven’t done that. Your apparent misunderstanding of hilzoy’s point is another piece of evidence.
We may not convince each other, but at the end of the day, if I can express your worldview in an insightful way that you would agree with, and you can do the same for mine, then we’ll both be wiser.
I see that within minutes of my attempting to clarify hilzoy’s point, she comes back to do it herself. I should know that a writer of her caliber doesn’t need me to speak up for her. 🙂
Ah, but I had just gone off to answer the phone immediately after posting, hadn’t seen yours, came back to look, and just want to say: you (Tony) had my point right. It wasn’t about whether Michael Schiavo wanted to disconnect the feeding tube or not, but about the basis on which the court ordered it disconnected. I should also say: the original court order did not rely only on Michael Schiavo’s testimony; it cited the guardian ad litem’s statement that his testimony alone would not constitute clear and convincing evidence, and said it did not need to take a position on that question since there was other testimony on the matter.
“I don’t believe it’s improper, nor do I think that the son or daughter of a PVS parent is going to move on and find a new parent to take up a relationship with.”
Charles, I take from this that you believe that romantic/marital love is intrinsically different from the love of a child for a parent, such that one cannot form a new marital or near-marital relationship without “moving on” from the previous one in a way that prevents you from continuing to have the original partner’s best interests at heart. I think you’re just fundamentally wrong about that as an empirical matter. I see no reason why someone whose spouse is no longer able to participate in the marital relationship cannot continue to feel a strong familial bond with that individual–similar, perhaps, to one’s relationship with parents, siblings, etc.–while also forming a new romantic relationship, and I’ve seen several situations of that sort described in blogosphere discussions over the past few weeks. Against that, you make the bare assertion that there’s a “conflict of interest” that somehow makes it impossible for the “cheating” spouse to have his or her original partner’s best interests at heart. Could you explain in more detail precisely what you’re talking about? To me, it just looks like a facile condemnation built on a strange and narrow understanding of love and little experience of hardship, but perhaps I’m missing something.
“But since he was not allowed to make that decision, I don’t see his motives as being relevant to our view of the law…”
This confuses me – is there any question about whether the events would have unfolded as they did if Mr. Schiavo had supported coninuing treatment? There’s no evidence to this effect, but he might have swayed the other witnesses who testified as to Mrs. Schiavo’s disinterest in living in a PVS – I thought they were his relatives.
Rilkefan: is there any question about whether the events would have unfolded as they did if Mr. Schiavo had supported coninuing treatment? There’s no evidence to this effect, but he might have swayed the other witnesses who testified as to Mrs. Schiavo’s disinterest in living in a PVS – I thought they were his relatives.
As I understand it (probably from an earlier post by Hilzoy) the people entitled to make a decision about a patient’s care are, in order, the patient, if the patient’s wishes are known: a court-appointed guardian, if the patient can’t make their wishes known: the spouse, if one exists: the parents / the adult children (I forget which get to decide first, but in Terri Schiavo’s case it’s immaterial), and presumably after that other near relatives.
As I understand it, all hospitals when making decisions of this magnitude prefer that the whole family is in agreement. But I think that according to the law, Michael Schiavo could simply have overridden the parents protests and instructed the hospital that Terri’s wishes had been not to be kept alive in PVS. As there was absolutely no medical doubt by any neurosurgeon who had examined her that she had no cerebral cortex and not only was in a PVS but would never come out of it, I suppose he might well have got his way, if that had been what he wanted.
(I am guessing here: I really don’t know. The case might have ended up in the courts anyway.)
But in essence, I suppose you’re right: if Michael Schiavo had decided to forget that Terri Schiavo said she never wanted to be kept alive in that state, and had simply abdicated his responsibilities towards her and let her parents do what they liked with the body of their daughter, it would also never have been a matter for the courts.
But once the court was petitioned to appoint a guardian ad litem and to discover what Terri Schiavo would have wanted, I don’t see that Michael Schiavo had much alternative.
He could have not informed anyone of any other witnesses to Terri Schiavo’s assertions: or he could have specifically asked the witnesses he knew about not to testify about what they’d heard Terri Schiavo say.
Basically, yes, things unfolded as they did because the Schindlers were unwilling to accept that their daughter had not wanted to be kept alive (their beliefs that perhaps their daughter wasn’t in a PVS seem to have taken hold later, after various medical charlatans had asserted that she wasn’t, or she might not be, or new treatments ought to be tried): if the Schindlers hadn’t acted, Terri Schiavo would have died in 1998.
And things unfolded as they did because Michael Schiavo was unwilling to abdicate his responsibilities towards his wife, and leave her in the care of her parents. If he had done so, I think she would probably have died sometime before 2005 of an infected bedsore or other complication.
And things unfolded as they did because the Christian right-wing were willing to pay medical charlatans to examine Terri Schiavo and give fraudulent opinions. Not to mention whipping up a segment of the Christian right into a feeding frenzy.
And, I suspect, because Tom Delay badly needed a big news distraction from the news of his misconduct.
All sorts of reasons why things unfolded as they did.
“And things unfolded as they did because Michael Schiavo was unwilling to abdicate his responsibilities towards his wife”
You believe that, and I believe that, but there isn’t any evidence for that position beyond our faith in the Schiavo family’s veracity, is there?
rilkefan: sorry; when I wrote ” I don’t see his motives as being relevant to our view of the law”, I should have been clearer.
As I understand it, if Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers had not disagreed, then what they all agreed on would have happened. Since they disagreed, Michael Schiavo might have asserted his right, as her guardian and/or the person entitled, under law, to determine what her wishes were, to decide what to do about the feeding tube. Instead, he asked the court to determine her wishes. None of this would have happened had he and the Schindlers not disagreed. Since they thought the feeding tube should be kept in place, in practice this means: had he not thought the feeding tube should be removed, none of this would have happened. (I am deliberately not describing this as: wanting to follow her wishes, or anything else that presupposes something about his motives or her wishes.)
Now: is the fact that, in cases of familial disagreement, one option is to allow courts to determine whether someone would want a feeding tube removed or not, a blot on the legal system? Not that I can see: it certainly beats flipping a coin, or having Solomon offer to cut her in half, or even Michael Schiavo asserting his right as her husband. So I don’t think that the fact that what he did affected the outcome in this way as a blot on the legal system. And since he did not make the decision about whether the feeding tube was removed, I don’t see questions about his motives as showing anything about whether or not that decision was made correctly either.
“You believe [Michael Schiavo was unwilling to abdicate his responsibilities towards his wife], and I believe that, but there isn’t any evidence for that position beyond our faith in the Schiavo family’s veracity, is there?”
What kind of evidence do you mean? It seems to me the evidence is in the actions: Michael Schiavo put up with 7 years of escalating ugliness from the Schindlers, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Terri’s medical care and on legal fees, was in and out of court on a regular basis, still found time and energy to see to Terri’s daily care, never divorced her (assuming he could do so) and certainly never abandoned her (turning down at least two bribes to do exactly that).
Put yourself in that situation for a moment. Other than a determination to uphold your responsibilities to the person in the hospital bed, what motive could you possibly have for enduring 7 years of that?
Charles, while I agree it was a cheap shot to jump on “intensive purposes,” I would like to focus on the following sentence of yours for reasons of content and for an analysis of your rhetoric:
The second question is a sticky one, particularly if the surviving spouse entered into a new lifetime relationship while still betrothed to the former.
First, in terms of content, I would like to second “tonydismukes” when he asks you about the “sticky” bit:
My question specified that the spouse in the PVS wanted the surviving spouse to enter into the new relationship. Just to clarify my example, I would prefer that my wife just let me die without divorcing me in the hypothetical situation I proposed. I wouldn’t really care if she started her new realtionship before my body died or not. (In fact, I’d prefer that she find someone reasonably soon and not suffer through years of loneliness.) Could you clarify exactly why it would be morally sticky for my wife to follow my wishes in this scenario?
The second point is the rhetorical one. First, you misuse “betrothed” which means “engaged to.” MS was not “still betrothed” to TS, he was in fact no longed betrothed to her, but in fact married. Second, when you employ archaic language (“as one flesh,” “serve two masters”), I take it you intend to lend the weight of tradition to your moral intuitions. But that’s precisely the wrong thing to do in this case, as precisely what we’re all struggling to do is to come up with new language and new intuitions that are adequate to the new reality in which we find ourselves. All the moral intuitions based on marriage vows such as “in sickness and in health” no longer hold, since the notions of “sickness” to which that phrase refers no longer refer to the truly weird case of PVS. Neither do terms like “starvation,” for that matter.
CaseyL, I can see one other possible motive, and that’s antipathy toward the Schindlers. I think it’s appropriate to give Michael Schiavo the benefit of the doubt, but it’s conceivable that one or both sides reached a point at which the strongest motive was winning the fight, regardless of the merits. I tend to think that’s unlikely in Michael Schiavo’s case and somewhat more likely in the Schindlers’, but that’s largely because I’m repulsed by the way they conducted their public campaign of vilification, which may indicate that they’re moral monsters but could also just mean that they were grieving and handling it (very) badly.
CaseyL, let’s just say I can think of ugly scenarios in which Mr. Schiavo apparently behaved like a saint (in our view) for evil reasons. I don’t care to speculate about his character in public, but I could.
hilzoy: “And since he did not make the decision about whether the feeding tube was removed”
I think you’re begging the question here. If x pushes y off a cliff, we don’t say “Gravity killed y, not x”.
DaveL: I can see one other possible motive, and that’s antipathy toward the Schindlers.
I can see antipathy toward the Schindlers motivating a lot of Michael Schiavo’s actions, but I don’t see how that motivates him to take such good continuing care of Terri Schiavo, which apparently he did.
Rilkefan: let’s just say I can think of ugly scenarios in which Mr. Schiavo apparently behaved like a saint (in our view) for evil reasons.
True. I can think of ugly scenarios in which the Schindlers were behaving as they did for evil reasons.
Hell, I think (human nature being what it is) that you can come up with ugly scenarios and evil reasons for most people carrying out most actions.
But the fact that one can invent an ugly scenario and a set of evil reasons for someone’s actions, does not in fact make that scenario/those reasons more than invention.
rilkefan: if x pushes y off a cliff, that y will fall is predictable. If I cause a court to decide a question, it is not predictable how the court will decide, unless the evidence is quite clear.
In any case, I didn’t say that Michael Schiavo had nothing to do with this case, which would have been nutty. I only said that the fact that he played the role he did is not a blot on the law. I stand by that.
“If I cause a court to decide a question, it is not predictable how the court will decide, unless the evidence is quite clear.”
I suspect that Mr. Schiavo, with a good lawyer hired with the settlement money, and the facts on his side, was told that he’d win if he stayed the course.
I can’t really argue the other side’s case very well, but I think the idea is that _if_ Mr. Schiavo had reason to want his wife dead, and _if_ that wasn’t what Mrs. Schiavo would have wanted, then …
I think the execution of people without what I consider satisfactory representation is a blot on the law. I don’t think this is such a case, but …
(… = gotta skedaddle)
Immersing Myself in Conservative Thought …
I recently decided to try to immerse myself in more conservative blogs. I’ve even added the National Review, the New Republic, and the Cato Institute to my blogroll, if you can believe that. As I said
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I was much too angry when this was posted to reply in a way that I thought would be constructive.
Here’s what I think has people so upset: the man and his family are receiving death threats and are under police protection. I am sure you disapprove of this about as strongly as I do, and this post is neither an attempt at or actually likely to provoke threats or violence against him. (The good ol’ Brandenburg test for incitement–it requires BOTH of these things, you are nowhere remotely close to either of them.)
But. When someone is facing wrongful threats of violence, at what must already be a very painful time for him, it seems to me we ought to stand in solidarity with that person rather than make the same sorts of charges–bigamy, starving his wife to death–that the thugs are using to justify their threats of violence. Especially when at best those charges are based on insufficient evidence, and are at worst false.
I also think it would be wrong to make these charges even without the context of death threats, etc. But the death threats makes it much, much worse.
For a much, much more extreme example of this see John Cornyn’s truly vile remarks.
Cornyn’s more clearly factually wrong then Charles (the deranged murderer of Joan Lefkow’s family was upset about Justice Kennedy’s use of comparative constitutional law in the juvenile death penalty case? Yeah, real plausible), is a U.S. Senator rather than a blogger, is actually arguing that judges may have caused the deaths of other judges and their families, and is speaking in a context where murders have happened and not merely been threatened. So it’s worse in every single respect–to the point where I think it’s a difference in kind rather than in degree. (Cornyn was being an apologist for violence, Charles was doing nothing of the sort.) But what I’m saying is: the context changes not only how people take what you write, but also whether it’s a good thing to write about.
I don’t get the Cornryn thing. Seems to me it’s more likely he’s being an ill-informed Senator, not being an apologist for violence – (mis)explaining, not explaining away.
No one’s that ill-informed unless it’s deliberate at some level. I don’t see a big moral difference between lying and reckless disregard for the truth. And, come on rilkefan, this is either touchingly naive, or just contrarian–you know the context. Have you heard a word DeLay’s been saying for the last few weeks?
I seriously doubt Cornyn or DeLay or any of the rest of that crowd wants to incite or excuse violence against judges. I’m sure they simply thinks it will be useful in the upcoming fight over the “nuclear option”. But they’re playing a dangerous, unacceptable game here.
Umm, I think I can imagine people on the right calling you “touchingly naive” for thinking that people explaining the insurgents’ actions in Iraq in terms of the context of the American invasion aren’t secretly anti-American.
In this case, I’m going to assume that Cornyn is a) not that bright b) busy c) ill-informed d) very partisan e) not threatening judges with violence – that is, until I see evidence against some of the above.
I don’t know how to judge DeLay’s statement – if he clearly denies he meant “judges would pay with their lives” or anything of the sort, I’ll chalk that one up to embattled emotion/dumb rhetoric/partisanship.
In this case, I’m going to assume that Cornyn is a) not that bright b) busy c) ill-informed d) very partisan…
To what level must these rise to make him guilty of “reckless disregard for the truth”? Do you make a moral distinction between that and lying and, if so, what would you say the distinction is?
I think he gets to make badly informed statements as long as he publicly retracts them when made aware of the truth. Too many and he should be voted out of office.
I don’t necessarily think that this is in fact germane as regards the outrage – I insist on distinguishing “explain” and “explain away”.
See this CT thread for more, including facts from Katherine that weaken my argument.
I think he gets to make badly informed statements as long as he publicly retracts them when made aware of the truth.
Made aware by whom? The information’s publicly available and none-too-hard to come by; do I have to send him a gorillagram or would a link suffice? Less snarkily, why should the onus be on us (ha, I love that) to educate him on something he should already know?
[And thanks for the CT link, btw. Thanks too to Katherine for her factuality, as per usual.]
“Made aware by whom?”
His staff, his reality-based colleagues, the press?
hilzoy, we’re talking right past each other. The fundamental issue is whether or not Michael Schiavo had the authority as guardian to pull his wife’s feeding tube. The court ruled in his favor, agreeing that he did. The title of the May 1998 petition described exactly what Michael was seeking. The December 2003 Guardian Ad Litem report stated the following:
I still haven’t seen the May 1998 petition, but that document is what drove the whole case. Michael, through his lawyer Felos, was seeking authority to pull the feeding tube, and the GAL’s job as court-appointed disinterested expert was to determine whether such an act was legally within the scope of Michael’s role as guardian. If Michael had changed his mind at any point in the last six years, no court would have stopped him from doing so. This fundamentally has to do with Michael Schiavo and his choice. The evidentiary issue for the court was her medical condition and whether there was sufficient evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way. Judge Greer was so persuaded. The pivotal question is: If for whatever reason Michael’s position changed, would the court have still mandated that the feeding tube be pulled? The answer has to be no, otherwise the court would have been seen as ruling against Terri’s guardian (and her parents) and putting Terri on some weird kind of death row. Those are the facts as I see them.
Therefore, it seems odd to me that since you say you oppose the death threats, you nevertheless choose to repeat the misinformation that has led to the death threats.
Jes, I disagree with your premise (not to mention the rest of your commentary) that my post contained misinformation, therefore I saw no need to segue to the other issue of death threats. Again, this “look what Charles didn’t write” business is just silly.
You know nothing about either his marital or his extra-marital relationships:
What I know is that he is in a ten-year long extra-marital relationship which has produced two children. That should be enough.
How do you come to that viewpoint without an opinion on whether keeping her body on life support was a good thing? Or am I completely misunderstanding the implication of your original post?
To clarify, Tony, whether her life has intrinsic moral value, God only knows. To her parents and others, her life had value. To me, because I don’t know her true moral value, then I would err on the side of life. I can’t speak with certitude that her life had no value, and valuable or no, her death was tragic.
However, you think there is the possibility that her husband is lying about her wishes.
There is that possibility, but I didn’t go there. My main point was that there is a cloud or taint to his role as guardian, and therefore his judgement is in question because there are two children and another who are now his top priorities. Even if he thinks he was doing the right thing, the influence on him by this de facto marital relationship with Jodi remains. How much simpler it would have been had he ended the marriage–truly moving on–or not gotten into an extra-marital relationship in the first place.
I would prefer that my wife just let me die without divorcing me in the hypothetical situation I proposed.
That may be true for you, Tony, but that is an unknowable in the Schiavo case without specifying what “moving on” meant to the couple and how that was spelled out.
“That may be true for you, Tony, but that is an unknowable in the Schiavo case without specifying what ‘moving on’ meant to the couple and how that was spelled out.”
I totally agree with you there, Charles. It’s entirely possible that Terri Schiavo would have preferred her husband to divorce her before moving on. It’s also entirely possible that her preferences would have been the same as my own. Since neither of us knows, it seems to me that the fair thing to do would be to either refrain from judging Michael Schiavo on the issue, or else to acknowledge up front the possibility that he was indeed acting according to his wife’s wishes. In any case, that’s why I phrased my question as a hypothetical. If you, as a matter of principle, would regard my wife as wrong to follow my wishes in that situation, then obviously you would regard Michael Schiavo as wrong, regardless of Terri’s wishes. On the other hand, if you believe my wife would be right in following my wishes, then your condemnation of Michael would seem to follow from a belief that Terri’s wishes would not be the same as mine. That’s what I was trying to figure out with my question.
“To clarify, Tony, whether her life has intrinsic moral value, God only knows. To her parents and others, her life had value. To me, because I don’t know her true moral value, then I would err on the side of life.”
I think I sort of understand this. By this line of argument, allowing Terri to die would be a harm to her parents, if not to Terri herself.
I might make a counter-argument to your “err on the side of life” phrase, though. Unless you dine exclusively on milk and fruit, you yourself are responsible for deaths every day, by virtue of the living organisms which are killed to provide you with nourishment. I suspect therefore that when you say “life”, you mean human life. Fair enough, I myself value human life more than the other varieties. I have to ask, though, what it is that makes human life so special. I don’t think there’s any particular moral virtue to bipedalism or opposable thumbs, so the difference must be in the human mind, the capacity for thought, feeling and awareness beyond that of our animal cousins. This is why, once that capacity is permanently gone, when a human body will never again have the awareness of a cow, a pig, or even a chicken, then I personally see the issue as one of what a person wanted done with her body, rater than one of protecting a life with sacred value. Even if you have a religious belief in an immortal soul, you’re faced with two possibilities. Either the soul has moved on, leaving only a shell with sentimental value, or the soul has been trapped in a windowless prison (for 15 years in Terri’s case) and will only be freed by death. Obviously, this isn’t a line of reasoning that you buy into, but I admit I’d be curious what your response to it is.
“… his judgement is in question because there are two children and another who are now his top priorities. Even if he thinks he was doing the right thing, the influence on him by this de facto marital relationship with Jodi remains.”
I can buy that as a plausible argument. If in fact, Terri’s needs were in contradiction with Jodi’s, then there would be an obvious strain on Michael’s judgement. I don’t take that as a given, however. At this point, Terri’s needs from Michael were no longer the husbandly duties that he was performing for Jodi. In fact, her needs from Michael were functionally indistinguishable from those of a parent in the same medical state. If she had indeed expressed a wish to be let die, then Michael’s duty towards her, after years spent determining that no recovery was possible, was actually to let her die. The fact that this duty would probably make things easier on Jodi does not alter the fact that it would nevertheless be his duty.
I can certainly understand the statement that Michael Schiavo’s judgement might have been suspect. Heck, after years in that situation, probably anyone’s judgement would be clouded, regardless of whether they had moved on or not. If he had refused to start a new relationship until Terri died, you could argue that his judgment was clouded by his desire to meet someone else and start dating again.
That said, I fail to see the fairness of stating that you know Michael Schiavo acted wrongly, when you yourself have acknowledged that he may have been acting according to his wife’s wishes and that his wife’s wishes should have been honored. If your point was only that his judgement may have been impaired, then it seems you should acknowledge that he may have, nevertheless, come to the right conclusion.
(OK, with that last paragraph I have moved from trying to understand to trying to persuade. If you fail to see the justice of the point, however, then it is likely there is still some aspect of your argument that I am still not getting, and I would appreciate enlightenment on the subject.)
Charles: I disagree with your premise …. that my post contained misinformation
Let’s list it off, shall we?
1. You asserted “While the courts consistently ruled that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri”
No: the courts made no such ruling. Misinformation.
2. You asserted “Mr. Schiavo is either a bigamist or he is a widower who became de facto married to Jodi Centonze” – misinformation.
3. You asserted “based on hearsay evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way” – I think Phillip J. Birmingham was the first but not the last to point out to you that if A says “B told me this” that is not hearsay, it’s eyewitness testimony. Misinformation.
All three points are clear examples of misinformation from your writing: I won’t bother with the quotes.
Correct your factual errors, first.
I disagree, like many others in this thread whom you have not troubled yourself to respond to, that a man cannot be loyal and caring to two women at once, and further, I think your factual errors blur the point:
Terri Schiavo’s cerebral cortex began to necrotise and liquify inside her skull in 1990. She was in a persistent vegetative state for nearly fifteen years, during which time Michael Schiavo ensured she received the best of care, and refused to walk away from her, despite attempted bribery of a million dollars. Those are facts.
The courts established, over seven years, that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to be kept alive in that state. Her parents disagreed: but parents are not allowed to make final decisions about treatment of an adult child when the patient’s will can be established. Those are also facts.
Your argument that “one of the spouses is going to get the short end. Tragically and wrongly, Terri got the short end, and the fatal end as well” looks highly implausible unless you ignore those facts, which you have. I can’t say whether ignoring facts is active misinformation or simple ignorance, but I can say that once you are made aware that those facts exist, it seems only responsible to include a reference to them in your blog post.
Especially under the circumstances when the man you are demonizing is receiving death threats with people who agree with the trend of your post, who believe the misinformation that you have repeated her to be true, and who are ignorant of or who have ignored the facts that you have declined to include in your post.
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