Blogs For Terri

Please visit www.blogsforterri.com. There are well over 200 bloggers working in concert to get facts about Terri Schiavo out in a civilized and responsible manner before it is too late.

This is not a case of 'letting someone die'. Terri is not helplessly and miserably waiting to die. She interacts with people, smiles at her friends, and has a limited vocabulary. She does not act like she wants to die.

She is not on life support. She just gets her food through a removable tube, and there are medical professionals who think she could eat the usual way if she were allowed to get therapy. Would we say that people who carry oxygen tanks around with them are on life support? Or would we say that they're entitled to the extra help getting the oxygen they need? Should we stop doing bowel surgeries that leave people in need of waste-collecting bags? Face it, a little plastic can be useful, and doesn't make monsters or subhumans out of people.

Michael Schiavo has denied Terri therapy for more than a decade, even to the point of admonishing a nurse who put a rolled-up washcloth in her hand to keep her from making tight fists. Many of his prohibitions have had nothing to do with prolonging life, and everything to do with quality of life: whether or not she can watch television, listen to music, have visitors, leave her room, etc.

The Florida courts are basing their decisions on the testimony of two 'expert witnesses' and ignoring the protests of a dozen medical professionals, half of whom are neurologists. One of the expert witnesses is an outspoken advocate of mercy killing.

Michael Schiavo forbids not only any rehab, but any testing to see if Terri might benefit from rehab. He also got an order from the court prohibiting her family from taking pictures of her. If the pictures would lend weight to his contention that she is suffering a fate worse than death, you'd think...

Well, but here's his problem. The pictures taken of Terri and smuggled out for the world to see show a woman who can sit up a little and smile when friends walk into the room, who turns her head to watch people, who scrunches up her face when her dad threatens playfully to tickle her with his mustache.

Terri is defenseless. Defenseless is not the same as hopeless.

If we do not defend people too weak to help themselves, what does that make us?