Life, Death and the Courts

It always seems I go to the “Stained Glass” series of fractals when I post about matters religious or moral. I chose Stained Glass 2 because the monochromatic color scheme reminds me of how I feel about today’s question. (You might think the question is a simple "black and white" issue but in reailty there's a lot more "gray" in the question.) Read on and you’ll see what I mean…
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The question of when someone should die who should make the decision has been important to me for a very long time. It started when I was in Second Grade (I think) when our neighbor who we all called Grandma Moses (I don‘t know if that was her real name) was taken to the hospital after a massive stroke. They put her on life support and she survived for years--totally unconscious. In my adult life, my maternal grandmother suffered much the same fate: I don’t know what caused her to go into a coma but she was unconscious for quite a long time--and ended up having parts of her body whittled off due to gangrene. Frankly, a death like that has always been one of my biggest fears…
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Hopefully you remember the case of Terri Schiavo a few years ago. She was reduced to a “persistent vegetative state” after a brain injury. Ten years went by before she was finally taken off life support. Her parents and siblings objected and turned it in to a national issue--going so far as to send “manipulated” video to national media outlets to pressure the (by then ex) husband Michael to release guardianship. Then, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) reportedly characterized the case as a “gift from God” for the Right to Life cause.
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No matter what you think about the morality of the issue, the legal issue was simply this: Michael Shciavo had the legal right to make the decision to remove the feeding tube. I sympathize with the family on their loss but I think they went WAY too far. (Of course, the case would have been so much easier if Michael Schiavo had totally “clean” hands--but comments about that are for another time and place.) In the end an autopsy showed that Schiavo’s forebrain had completely deteriorated so there was no way she could have had reacted consciously to any outside stimulus. (The lights were on but nobody was home--no matter how much her family wanted something different…)
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Now another somewhat similar case has made the news: this time where a woman under guardianship of Fresno County was removed from a feeding tube at the county’s request. She was surviving and showing some slight improvement so her brothers went to court and the county relented after the story hit the local and state news.
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This story creeps me out and gives me a lot of questions. (I looked for the answers on line and wasn’t able to find anything.) Why was this woman (who had living family) under the County’s guardianship? How did a county bureaucrat even get the authority to make a life-or-death decision? (And who was this individual who made the choice?) I’m a huge advocate of “Death With Dignity” but I strongly object to the government making this decision for anyone! Maybe this woman will end up being like Terry Schiavo but I really think health care decisions need to be made by family members rather than a faceless government.
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More than anything else, these cases highlight the importance of making health care decisions well before there’s a need. Once the need arises it is already too late (at least in most cases). Medical tragedies aren’t limited to folks over 65: they happen at any age and people need to be very clear (probably in writing) about what they want done in case they should become incapacitated. I haven’t done that yet myself--but I plan to remedy that soon and the rest of you should do that as well.
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Think about it…