<p><a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,150878,00.html[/url]”>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,150878,00.html</a></p>
<p>It’s a sad time, but ushered in not only by her ailment but also by a bunch of very sad people.</p>
<p>I feel very bad about it. Starving someone to death is savage. How does one know whether she will feel pain or not!! It is heartbreaking.</p>
<p>Especially in a society that says it values life.</p>
<p>Sign your living will and medical directives, people. Make your wishes known to your loved ones. It is so very hard for those left to make these decisions, and it happens all the time.</p>
<p>It certainly does. A friend of mine worked many years in senior care, discussed end-of-life issues with her very competent mother, had a health care proxy, living will, and power of attorney in effect for her mother - and her mother was still put on artificial life support for more than 2 months after a devastating stroke. My friend lived 8 hours away (had just found her mom a senior residence nearby) and was unable to make her mother’s wishes known to the hospital staff before a feeding tube and respirator were in place. The mother was either comatose or unable to communicate the entire time, yet the attending MD insisted that this 89 y/o woman could turn the corner at any time. It was a nightmare that eventually involved the hospital’s ethics committee, which moved at a glacial pace to have the poor suffering woman taken off artificial life support (her own well-considered choice). So even having all the proper legal documentation will not guarantee that a patient’s desires are met. If she could do it over again, my friend would have involved an attorney immediately instead of placing her trust in her mother’s documents and the notion that common sense would prevail.</p>
<p>Values life? How do you then explain our largely cavalier attitude toward abortion? I can’t tell you the number of people on my campus who walk around claiming tout court that a fetus “isn’t a human life” abortion is morally defensible.</p>
<p>Rubbish.</p>
<p>Then these same bastions of moral decency cry “murder” at this case. What’s the matter? A perfectly healthy/normal fetus isn’t a human life but a borderline vegetable is? So save the woman in a vegetative state (and I know she isn’t exactly vegetative) but kill the fetuses! Kill allllll the fetuses, save the woman whose been bed-ridden for over a decade.</p>
<p>You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s very clear that this society doesn’t know what it cares about and this is highlighted by inconsistencies with respect to treatment of lives that can’t speak for themselves.</p>
<p>This is a personal matter and shame on any group whether it is government or otherwise to dabble in such human sorrow.</p>
<p>The problem is that it’s a personal matter between diametrically opposed groups. Not going to get resolved without the law, which leads to the media, which leads to people on college discussion boards talking about it.</p>
<p>I’m with you, Eduzzit. Sign your living wills!</p>
<p>a fetus is not a human life(at least first trimester) it is a pile of expanding goo which MIGHT lead to a life, like any sperm excreted MAY lead to a life</p>
<p>this woman has been braindead for 15 years, she has no capacity for life and is just there because her parents want to get money from Michael</p>
<p>in addition, I am upset that evangelicals have blown this up on the national stage and that republicans in congress are using fishy methods to try and stop her tube from being removed</p>
<p>calling her to testify… come on , what is she going to say ___________ thats right, NOTHING, its just plain stupidity</p>
<p>I’m upset by this but at least this has caused my parents to explicitly say to me that they would never want to be kept alive artificially if they were in Terru’s position, god forbid</p>
<p>I suppose that after this first trimester has completed, the fetus attains human status in your eyes? A couple days before that and it’s still a pile of “goo,” though.</p>
<p>It’s absolutely ridiculous that we’ve made criteria for a human to be considered human by the law. What’s even more ridiculous is that our society calls women who get abortions “strong” and “brave.” What the hell is so strong and brave about murdering your child because you didn’t want to deal with it?</p>
<p>ok, it is not murder just as much as buying sweatshop products causes a mother not to provide for her actual child which dies</p>
<p>we all know that abortions should be avoided and cause tremendous angst on the part of the mother but this crap about the fetus’s “life” is total bs. again the fetus MIGHT become a baby, just like any exreted sperm or eggs when combined Might become a baby</p>
<p>The fetus “might” become a baby? That’s an incredibly dishonest argument and one you cannot consider serious. The fact is that the fetus is a being, independent of the mother’s existence. The mother has legal custody of the fetus (as this man has legal custody of his wife) but we shouldn’t equate a legal right with a moral one.</p>
<p>sempitern555, you are conveniently overlooking a very significant point. Yes, any sperm or egg MIGHT become a baby – i.e., they have the potential to create life under the right circumstances. But once the sperm and egg have successfully joined, you HAVE a baby. A fetus is alive – it is not “goo.”</p>
<p>She should have been taken off life support years ago. If there is any chance she feels pain, give her drugs to make sure she doesn’t.</p>
<p>This really isn’t an abortion thread but it figures someone would turn it into one.</p>
<p>I only brought up abortion because around here people seem to casually accept that this woman shouldn’t be “unplugged,” or what-have-you, while also claiming that abortion is fine.</p>
<p>By comparing the two issues we can more effectively analyze each.</p>
<p>That’s an incredibly dishonest argument .</p>
<p>actually, not its not. The fetus might become a baby, in the 1st trimester it is simply a bunch of semi-organized mass of cells.</p>
<p>and you are right, the individual cells in the fetus are living but by that same regard so is a sperm or egg, those cells are also biologically living</p>
<p>“By comparing the two issues we can more effectively analyze each.”</p>
<p>i agree, let me add another issue to the mix. I find it very interesting that the same states which have such a high population of evangelicals and are so “pro-life” in terms of abortion restrictions also have the highest proportions of executions</p>
<p>for example, Texas, the heart of the bible belt, has executed the most people in the US 300+</p>
<p>so, if we are going to do the religious thing and be consistent with the “culture of life” why dont we just outlaw executions.!</p>
<p>I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I don’t really see a contradiction between supporting it and opposing abortion. Even if there was a contradiction, that’s an argument against those people (ad hominem) and not against either belief, necessarily.</p>
<p>If you look at the protesters against removing the feeding tube it is much the same group that opposes the right to choose an abortion, not the other way around.</p>