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April 01, 2006
The death wish of George Felos
Last year I posted enough about Terri Schiavo to give the issue its own category. The case aroused strong emotions on both sides, and - like the Iraq war - positions cut across political allegiances.
For example, I thought there was no way Terri Schiavo could be classified as anything other than a human being. I was well-aware that to disability activists, her life was a civil rights issue. I'm pro-choice and believe in keeping the government out of our bedrooms. But as a feminist, I appreciate legal structures which can extricate children and other family members from abusive situations; a man does not own his wife or children. Adult humans can be held legally responsible for the life and care of animals. I saw Michael's controlling behavior as of a piece with other husbands who abuse their wives, which put me at odds with the majority of feminists who saw Terri's right to live as a slippery slope which would lead to giving equal weight to the meeting of an egg and a sperm and the woman in whose womb their meeting took place. But I would rather see us address these contradictions than avoid them.
Among many retrospectives on this anniversary of her death, there are books by Terri's parents and her husband Michael. In Michael's book, there is a disturbing account of attorney George Felos indulging his God-complex:
Michael Schiavo made a last-minute decision to give up on his fight to remove his brain-damaged wife's feeding tube last year as he was hounded by protesters and getting death threats, but his attorney talked him out of it, Schiavo said in a book about the end-of-life case that captivated the nation.On March 16, the day before Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed for the last time, Schiavo's longtime fiance, Jodi Centonze, persuaded him "to walk away from Terri," he said in the book released Monday and titled "Terri: The Truth." She was worried about the safety of their two children. He called his attorney, George Felos, to deliver the news.
"(Felos) reminded me that we had to realize that it wasn't just about Terri anymore," Schiavo wrote. "It was about the rest of the people who didn't want the government telling us how we could die and when we were allowed to decide that we didn't want further medical treatment. And it was about who has the right to make decisions between a husband and wife." . . . . In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Schiavo said it didn't take much for Felos to persuade him that he needed to see it through.
If you want to know about the moral credibility of the man who gave Terri Schiavo's death that extra little push, you can find out more about him here and here and here.
Judith | 04/01/06 at 11:29 PM | Categories: - Terri Schiavo
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Comments
You know that if Terri had more than half a brain at the time of her death she would be alive today.
In other words she was an empty shell. A body without a mind.
Consider the lives that will be saved with the money that was to be used keeping the shell alive.
And yes. Michael did it for me.
If I'm costing more than I'm worth, take me out back and shoot me. Just so my position is public.
M. Simon | April 4, 2006 09:07 PM
I feel better for Michael in that, but he really had a tremendous conflict of interest. A fork in the road in Terri's case occured when Michael was granted guardianship with the support of her parents. This seems to have been chosen as a matter of convenience and de facto it represented that decisons were made on a consensus basis of those principals. The way consensus works is everybody has to agree or there is no change in status, but that wasn't how it was taken from there. I don't think the court reasonably recognized the consensus nature of this decision. I think the use of a clang metaphor indicates 3/8 of a brain. Would somebody take take M. Simon 'out back and shoot him/her.'
michael | May 9, 2006 08:29 PM
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