Disability groups seek legal protection for 'incapacitated' people

[drdon326]

As legal appeals are exhausted in the case of Terri Schiavo, the long-term issue, say disability groups, is whether guardians should "have carte blanche to starve and dehydrate" people with conditions like hers.

Sen. Tom Harkin 's (D. IA) effort in Congress last week to produce a wider bill was typical of the role he's played for disabled people during his years in Congress.


The Democratic Senator from Iowa, perhaps more than any other member of Congress, has worked diligently for disability rights over the decades, and seems to have no problem understanding that the matter of Terri Schiavo is nothing so much as a disability rights issue.

"The more I looked at the Schiavo case, the more I thought, 'Wait a minute. There are a lot of people in similar situations -- maybe not in her specific situation -- but because of a disability cannot express themselves or cannot in any way make their desires known,'" he told reporters yesterday. "So it seems to me like this would be an appropriate area for us to take a look at."

His understanding is unusual among politicians, and is entirely lost in the save-Terri-Schiavo political free-for-all that this issue has become in recent days, with the likes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) hopping in front of the cameras at every opportunity to intone about "sanctity of life."

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/incapacitated032005.html

[mmonk]

1. Seems one would have to

define incapacitated and to what extent medically speaking. Otherwise, it could be a can of worms.

[Bridget Burke]

2. So--if somebody can't make their desires known....

He KNOWS he's speaking for them. What an ideal constituency.

[endarkenment]

3. Guardians do not have 'carte blanche' to starve people.

Absent a living will, guardians, as in the TS case, must get agreement from the courts to end life support. With a living will, it is nobody's business at all.

If the complaint is about the cruelty of death by starvation, which by the way is quite routine in terminal cases, perhaps there should be advocacy for the use of swifter and more assuredly humane methods.

[drdon326]

4. And MS has some major conflicts of interest.

and 7 years after the fact, and after he told the malpractice jury he desparately needed the money to take care of her , he SUDDENLY REMEMBERED 'oh yeah....she didnt want to live like this'.

[endarkenment]

5. after seven years

MS accepted that all of the treatment he had attempted had done no good, that TS had in fact gotten worse, and that the right thing to do was the painful decision to end life support. The malpractice money went to TS's care and has all been spent.

[Modem Butterfly]

6. Chipping away at choice, bit by bit

Soon, no disabled person will be able to exercise his or her right to die. How terrible that some in the disability community don't see that.