ABC Nightline update -- new topic: Florida feeding tube case

[Bozita]

 
Nightline Daily E-Mail
October 21, 2003


TONIGHT'S FOCUS HAS CHANGED: We were going to bring you Nightline's next installment in the ABC week-long health care series "Critical Condition: Healthcare in America", but there's a breaking news medical story that we feel deserves our attention tonight.

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Terri Schiavo is a 39 year-old woman who has been in a vegetative state for 13 years. A heart attack left her comatose in 1990. Her parents say she is responsive and they feel that she should continue to live, assisted by a feeding tube. Her husband told her doctors to discontinue the feeding tube last Wednesday and a Florida court backed his request. He says that his wife told him she wanted to die. That's the main debate. Tonight, Governor Jeb Bush signed a bill passed by the Florida legislature ordering the feeding tube reinserted. Many people are scatching their heads tonight. Why does the legislature have the right to do that? The case had already been through the Florida court system and will probably end up in the United States Supreme Court. Others feel that anyone who is alive — in a vegetative state or not — has the right to live. We'll have a background piece by Jeffrey Kaufman, he's covering the story for ABC News in Tallahassee. Ted will talk to several guests about the various aspects of the case: medical, ethical and legal. We hope you'll join us.

Gerry Holmes and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
Washington, D.C.

[pandatimothy]

1. Here husband is a scumbag

Apparently he wants her killed for money.

[mbartko]

2. I heard something like that, too

n/t

[Red State Rebel]

3. I agree!

I'm glad they were able to stop this cruelty.

[candy331]

4. The thing is

I wish it had been done some other way rather than getting the Governor and legislature to rewrite law. Could the judges not have been asked to look at this again and make a report to the Governor before writing law? I understand this was made for this one case, so how do you rewrite law for one case? That just doesn't bode well.

I'm sorry but I see this as another intrusion into people's rights and this in this instance done purely for political reasons. The parents should have long taken this issue to the Governor years ago if they felt like this. Well I suppose the people in Florida will be eternally grateful to the ballot box in 04.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi SaidFred!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Clark Can WIN]

5. Absolutely! The man has a "fiance" whom he has had 2 kids

already with! If he remarries, legal custody returns TO HER PARENTS THAT WANT HER TO STAY ALIVE. That would totally bum him out apparently. So he wants to kill her so he can get the MONEY.

[radwriter0555]

7. No, so he doesn't have to pay her money. See, if he divorces her, he

would have to pay her estate half his assets.