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I have a question about the religious right and Terri Schiavo

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jillan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:11 PM
Original message
I have a question about the religious right and Terri Schiavo
If the religious right doesn't believe in science, why did they want to keep Terri alive by artificial means? Feeding tubes are not natural, they were probably invented by a scientist at one time.

Wouldn't a natural death have been God's will? And shouldn't that have been what they wanted for her?
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walldude Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:13 PM
Response to Original message
1. LOL.. you know you are just going to confuse them
with talk like that... STOP MAKING SENSE!
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Dave Reynolds Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:14 PM
Response to Original message
2. If a liberal or Democrat wanted it,
it was bad.

If Bush or Frist or any other of the whackjobs would have said "pull the tube" it would have been hunky-dory with them.
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DemBones DemBones Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:17 PM
Response to Reply #2
4. You're wrong about that. If Bush had said

"Pull the tube," he'd have lost a lot of support. Ditto Frist, who has lost support by supporting stem cell research.
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Dave Reynolds Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:33 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. With proper framing,
I think it would have been fine for them, i.e. God telling Bush it was okay...they seem to buy that shit.

Frist has broken from the reservation on stem cells, hence his fall from favor. He made the mistake of actually thinking and speaking like a person of science and medicine and not a fundie asshat.

Just my humble opinion, though.:hi:
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Somawas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:48 PM
Response to Reply #6
10. You're kidding!
Frist spoke up like a person whose family will make big bucks off stem cell products through their little health care empire. He's still a fundie asshat.
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Dave Reynolds Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:53 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. Well, there is that, too.
He spoke up like a profiteering fundie asshat, it just happened to coincide with science and medicine.

I had actually forgotten the health care business, thanks for the reminder.
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Erika Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:17 PM
Response to Original message
3. It's like asking them why they aren't in Dafor, saving lives
of starving children. They circle into never land.
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Inland Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:22 PM
Response to Original message
5. The natural/unnatural dichotomy isn't very helpful, as you noticed.
I guess the thought that feeding any helpless person who is sick is natural, because they can't feed themselves with our without tubes.

Of course, there isn't anything natural about feeding someone who is brain dead. There isn't anything natural about a body living on without a brain. And if you just stopped the unnatural antibiotics the body would just rot away no matter what else "natural" you did.
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DemBones DemBones Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:37 PM
Response to Original message
7. What they wanted, and quite a few

of us here at DU agreed, was for her to die a natural death rather than be killed through dehydration and/or starvation. She was not in pain, she was not terminally ill.

I don't believe it's right to directly cause a person to die, as was done to Ms. Schiavo. It especailly concerns me when half the country wanted a severely disabled woman to be killed. DUers care about Iraqi deaths, why not about the killing of a profoundly disabled woman?

The "evidence" that she would have favored being put to death that way was very scanty and based on hearsay from her husband, who was ready to have her dead so he could "move on." In fact, he had already moved on -- and I don't blame him for doing so since it seemed Terri was never coming back. My objection was that he insisted Terri had to be put to death instead of allowing her life to end naturally. He had to remove any chance of her coming back. Why?

There's nothing particularly scientific or high tech about a feeding tube, by the way, and few on the religious right refuse all medical treatment. Their objection to science is their misconception that science (specifically evolution) is "anti-God."
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jillan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:46 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. Your last paragraph is what I am referring to.
That's the hypocrisy I see in all of this. This is the philosophy of the religious right. But yet, Terri was the exception.

BTW, the way she died made me ill. I couldn't watch, or even pay much attention. It really broke my heart. It seemed inhumane.

I'm not trying to rehash what happened, I don't know what would have been best for Terri. I'm just trying to understand how THEY think. Why it is okay to use artificial means to help one person, but not another, and knowing that they believe that God's way is the only way, and science should not interject.
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walldude Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 10:05 PM
Response to Reply #7
12. What evidence? Were you in the courtroom?
Edited on Wed Aug-03-05 10:06 PM by walldude
Or are you going by what you've seen and heard in the news? I find it hard to believe that 11 different judges had heard the case, listened to the testimony and all came to the same conclusion on what you called scanty evidence. This womans life was at stake, I think if any of those judges doubted the husbands claim they would have said something. I looked at the removal of her tube as a mercy killing. If she was brain dead, which we now know she was, then she was already gone from us. If it turned out that she wasn't gone and was actually aware of what was going on, then removing her tube was basically freeing her from the prison her body had become.


--on edit Not trying to be rude or anything, just a different opinion :toast:
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Tennessee T Donating Member (46 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-03-05 09:44 PM
Response to Original message
8. No Feeding Tube Needed
Why didn't the 'Religious Blight' just give Benny Hinn a call and have her Healllllllllllllled in the name of Gawd?!!
And while they're at it, maybe they could have had the 'Supreme Benny' raise all aborted babies from the dead? ( He claims to have raised the dead. )
If this sanctimoniously pious bastard can do that who needs a feeding tube.

Maybe Randall Terry didn't have Benny's cell phone number.
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