The Long Road

05/04/2005 Archived Entry: "The Schiavo Fiasco"

Around the time of the Terri Schiavo ordeal in the U.S., I happened to watch both Million Dollar Baby and Garden State - two movies that, by oddest chance, had suicidal quadriplegics and inadvertently created a sort of “theme night”. Quadriplegia has got to be one of the most psychologically traumatizing states one can be in. I hate helplessness, abhor it, it gives me this funny feeling at the back of my knees that makes me want to sprint for 10 minute or scratch heavily. Being a quadriplegic would be total and utter helplessness; you have to rely on others 100% for everything in life. The worse is that you’d remember what life was like with mobility – all the memories of the stuff you could do but can never hope to again taunting you till the day you die.

I think that suicides in cases like this are completely personal decisions. But Schiavo’s case was a bit more complicated, I am decidedly undecided on most of the issues brought up but I do think that there has to be a better way to let someone die than to let them starve to death by removing the feeding tube. They basically avoid the “assisted suicide” bit by not actively killing her but I argue that withholding nutrition is even more immoral and led to a death that was too prolonged and unnecessarily painful

Replies: 4 comments

I totally agree with you...the removal of a feeding tube to the extent of causing death is much more immoral than an assisted suicide...

Posted by dAN @ 05/04/2005 03:44 PM EST

but in this case, you couldn't really have assisted suicide. the only other option would have really been euthanasia - and that's a whole other can of worms.

Posted by melpie @ 05/05/2005 01:53 PM EST

I guess they're different...but you're just being picky!!

Posted by Rayne @ 05/18/2005 02:27 AM EST

Don't you think that suicides in _all_ cases are completely personal decisions? No one else except you decide whether your life is so awful that you do or don't have the right to kill yourself.

I don't think that suicide is really a personal decision, but I also don't think that quadriplegia is necessarily THAT pscyhologically traumatizing. I guess it depends on the severity of it.

Posted by angel^eyes @ 06/22/2005 08:11 PM EST