Nader on the Schiavo Case

Interesting.

Ralph Nader, Wesley Smith call Upon Florida Courts, Gov. Bush, Citizens to Take any Legal Action Available to let Schiavo Live
Thu Mar 24, 6:49 PM ET

To: National Desk
Contact: Ralph Nader (news – web sites), 202-387-8034; Wesley Smith, 510-886-8609
WASHINGTON, March 24 /U.S. Newswire/ — Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith, author of the award winning book “Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America” call upon the Florida Courts, Governor Jeb Bush and concerned citizens to take any legal action available to let Terri Schiavo live.

“A profound injustice is being inflicted on Terri Schiavo,” Nader and Smith asserted today. “Worse, this slow death by dehydration is being imposed upon her under the color of law, in proceedings in which every benefit of the doubt-and there are many doubts in this case-has been given to her death, rather than her continued life.”

Among the many injustices in this case, Nader and Smith point to the following:

The courts not only are refusing her tube feeding, but have ordered that no attempts be made to provide her water or food by mouth. Terri swallows her own saliva. Spoon feeding is not medical treatment. “This outrageous order proves that the courts are not merely permitting medical treatment to be withheld, it has ordered her to be made dead,” Nader and Smith assert.

The medical and rehabilitation experts are split on whether Terri is in a persistent vegetative state or whether Terri can be improved with therapy. There is only one way to know for sure- permit the therapy. That is the only way to resolve all doubts.

The court is imposing process over justice. After the first trial in this case, much evidence has been produced that should allow for a new trial-which was the point of the hasty federal legislation. If this were a death penalty case, this evidence would demand reconsideration. Yet, an innocent disabled woman is receiving less justice.

The federal and state governments are spending billions on what we are told will become miracle medical cures for people with all sorts of degenerative conditions, including brain damage. If this is so, why not permit Terri’s parents and siblings who want to care for her do so in the hope that such cures are discovered?

Benefits of doubts should be given to life, not hastened death. This case is rife with doubt. Justice demands that Terri be permitted to live.

UPDATE: My favorite lefty Alexander Cockburn agrees with Nader, but not without getting some swipes in at the GOP:

Now for hypocrisy, as with the Republicans and Terri Schiavo. Here are the crusaders for states rights rushing to federal courts. I said as much to Ralph Nader the other day, after congratulating him for putting on an excellent show on CNN’s “Crossfire,” making an a– out of Bob Novak. Nader agreed. “Here you have Republicans pouring out speeches on the Hill expressing deep compassion for human life, and yet these same speechmakers are mostly savage opponents of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Highway Safety Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and of regulations designed to reduce the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are killed, injured or sickened through medical malpractice, occupational disease and traumas, air pollution and raw poverty.”

Maybe some of these cold-hearted Reps, having gone through their Terri Schiavo epiphany, will expand their newly discovered compassion for adult human life.

So as the rights and wrongs of the Schiavo case are concerned, I think Nader has it right. “Her parents want to take care of Terri. There is no state interest in letting her die. As far as the ‘persistent vegetative state’ is concerned, Terri is not on life support, heart pump or ventilator. If her biological family wants to take care of her, why should Michael Schiavo retain the power to pull the feeding tube from his spouse? For the last 10 years he has been living with another woman — essentially, his common law wife — who has brought him two children. So it seems to me that the equity of the situation is to have Michael withdraw as guardian and let Terri’s parents be guardians and take care of her. That’s the crux.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no legitimate state interest. Why is it assumed that her spouse has the right to pull the plug?

Nader faults the Republicans. “They should have pushed for legislation to allow removal from state to federal courts, as with criminal law habeas corpus suits. Instead they wrote this specific bill and somehow left out the kind of certainty they wanted. They should have let her parents have the right to have standing to file in federal court and above all to have a de novo review of the case. By leaving that out they insured what the federal district court judge did on March 22, which was to decline to hear the case.”