I don't want to go in the cart!

[bobquasit]

From a news story in USA Today about the Terry Schiavo care:

Several members of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group, lay on a driveway in front of their wheelchairs.

"Not Dead Yet"? I can only assume that none of these people ever watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Comments

[lubedpumpkin.livejournal.com]

Hahah, quality!

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Actually, I saw in a news bit (I think in the Globe) stating that the name was in fact inspired by the bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The group was founded as something of a reaction to such things as Dr. Kevorkain and "assisted suicide" and euthanasia. I think their real concern is that people with severe disabilities might be treated as "better off dead."

Now, I happen to think that some of these concerns are quite legitimate. Most of the people wanting "assisted suicide do so because of the pain, pain which could be treated if, for example, we didn't have stupid rules where a terminally ill patient can't get a pain-killing drug that might have fatal side-effects eventually or might be addicting. And I think it is certainly possible for people to be pressured into suicide to save money or to "save the family pain" or something.

Having said all that, well, Terri Schiavo from most of what I read has none of the part of the brain that really makes a Human left functioning. There's no mind left there. I see little virtue in keeping flesh alive when there is no mind, and the Reality is that in the Not Too Distant Future we'll probably be able to keep flesh alive pretty much forever with no mind present. The folk with concerns that might be valid in other cases are going themselves no good here.

Let us also keep in mind that by no means do all conservatives support keeping her alive like this and by no means do all liberals want her cut off (see Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, about as liberal as they come). What's special here is that the White House and the Congressional GOP leadership decided that pandering to the extreme Religious Right by making this into a major national issue was a good political choice, and now that the polls have shown that to be hurting them with most everybody else they're trying to distance themselves from what they previously did and are setting themselves up to get bit in the backside by the folk they were pandering to.