
March 31
...serving up your daily dish.
Terry Schiavo's dead. Her death comes just 13 days after her feeding tube was removed and shortly after the Supreme Court refused to hear her parents' appeal for the third time. Details here.
Nice Guy huh?
"Brother Paul O'Donnell, an adviser to Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, said the parents and their two other children ``were denied access at the moment of her death. They've been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside.''
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 10:54:40 AM
kinda weird to say that it was "just" 13 days since the feeding tube was removed. Seems like a long time.
Semantics aside, I hope Terri is at peace now. It seems a shame that she was made a pawn in this whole controversy.
Posted by: Shabe | Mar 31, 2005 10:57:16 AM
Oh, yet more shameless slander of Michael Schiavo. Can't you people give up, ever?
Posted by: Marshall | Mar 31, 2005 11:19:09 AM
It's hard to imagine what it must feel like for parents to have to sit by for almost two weeks after a court decrees that their child cannot be fed. And to know what the only result will inevitably be. Surely that is an issue upon which "you people" and others can find some agreement. Ms. Schiavo wasn't so much a pawn as she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, married to the wrong spouse. I also wonder what Michael Schiavo's current paramour makes of this matter. Is she relieved? Unnerved at what she's seen of her partner under stress? Is she determined to make the best of her own future now? I'm certainly curious, but then, I'm one of "those" people lately.
Posted by: cathar | Mar 31, 2005 11:32:36 AM
"you people" ?
I have nothing whatsoever to do with the AP.
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 11:33:16 AM
Umm, the article says the parents were in the room "minutes before" she died--and the husband was with her at the moment of her death. What is the crime here?
Posted by: latebloomer | Mar 31, 2005 11:38:42 AM
the boston herald article I linked to originally had the quote I posted. It has been revised (such is modern jouunalism, I guess).
It now reads:
"The Schindlers' spiritual advisers said the couple had been at their daughter's besides minutes before the end came, but were not there at the moment of her death because Michael Schiavo did not want them"
(emphasis added)
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 11:48:09 AM
Doesn't sound so bad to me. Obviously he was allowing them to have a great deal of access.
Posted by: latebloomer | Mar 31, 2005 11:52:38 AM
p.s. The revision (and softening) of the AP article is a good example of AP's M.O. Often things are made more "fair and balanced" after the fact with the AP.
I am sure the editors found the original quote too (shall we say) "un-nuanced".
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 11:53:47 AM
To be bared from your Daughter's death which is being caused by the person barring you. Seems pretty bad to me.
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 11:56:01 AM
You know what? She died 15 years ago! Get over it!!
Posted by: latebloomer | Mar 31, 2005 12:00:25 PM
Some things you never truly get over. I would have thought all of us understood this. But then, the one telling everyone else to get over it has chosen "latebloomer" as a screen name. So the rest of us will just wait for the onset of maturity in that person's soul. Or his/her move to Holland.
Posted by: cathar | Mar 31, 2005 12:04:44 PM
That is the ultimate refuge of this moral quandry, isn't it?
"she was already dead"
Making all the legal and moral fuss a charade, I suppose.
Really the same thing as:
"A fetus is not a person."
It bypasses the whole messy (and uncomfortable) mucking about in ethics.
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 12:05:54 PM
Does anyone really now believe she died with "dignity"?
I guess its time to pull the Pope's feeding tube now.
Scott Peterson will die with more dignity...disgusting.
Posted by: Ben's Hog | Mar 31, 2005 12:13:35 PM
It will be telling to see what cause of death is listed on the Death Certificate.
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 12:16:03 PM
Which one of you know-at-alls was there when the Schindlers left the room? The wire service reporters weren't even there. They reported merely the Schindlers' version of events. Did Michael Schiavo, knowing in advance the exact moment of Terri's death, have her parents ejected by force? Or were they merely taking turns visiting her and Michael happened to be there when she took her last breath? And what difference does it make, really? The poor woman is dead--tragedy, and farce.
Posted by: walleroo | Mar 31, 2005 12:48:31 PM
Walleroo,
well, none of us were there, which is why I am relying on the press. Surely you have heard of it.
And goodness knows the press gets it wrong sometimes, but, well that is all we have at the moment.
Now, if your point is that the press should not be believed because the report differs from your take on things, well ok, I see. (hmmm?)
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 12:53:55 PM
Get off your high horse, ROC. This is a blog, for goodness sake, not high mass. Anyway, wasn't it you who kicked off this thread by hurling a mud ball?
Posted by: walleroo | Mar 31, 2005 12:54:44 PM
ROC, the press can only report what they know. In this case, what they know is what the Schindler's told them, and they reported it that way -- according to the SChindlers, etc etc. But surely you can agree that one person's account of an event can be different from another's, especially in a case like this.
(The Schindlers, by the bye, as cathar likes to say, have for the better part of a decade played the media like a violin.)
Critical reading, ROC. That's the ticket.
Posted by: walleroo | Mar 31, 2005 1:00:23 PM
"But surely you can agree that one person's account of an event can be different from another's, especially in a case like this."
Bingo!
In a case like this Mr. Schiavo might have been misquoted and he will suffer what? Unfair scorn.
But, if Mrs. Schiavo wishes were missquoted (by one person) the cunsequences for her were 13 days of starvation ending in her death.
"one person's account of an event can be different from another's, especially in a case like this."
Indeed.
Posted by: Right of Center | Mar 31, 2005 1:09:01 PM
Can't wait to see how the Christians play the Pope angle. It should be fun to watch the media nigtmare with this one. The Pope does not have a living will and the church has no precedent for dealing with a pope left on life support in a vegetative state.
For what it is worth, murder me any time after my odds of coming out of a coma are less than 20%! Of course, if the right to lifer's will pay for my continued life, then allow them too and leave me plugged in.
Posted by: Stu | Mar 31, 2005 1:09:30 PM