Death with dignity

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The outrageous and audacious intervention of Jeb Bush and Florida state lawmakers in creating a bill to resume the “invasive resuscitation” to a woman who has been brain dead since 1990 is a blatant violation of an individual’s right to die a natural death. Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was disconnected on October 15, after a Florida judge ruled in favor of arguments that Ms. Schiavo would not have wanted to continue to live as a vegetable. The bill rushed into legislation by Jeb Bush rescinded the court’s decision by ordering the reinsertion of the feeding tube one week after its removal. My mother, Posey Carpentier, (who died earlier this year), was a victim of this obscenity when a feeding tube was inserted into her stomach after she had stopped eating (she suffered a series of strokes that left her incompetent and unable to swallow), only to be followed by a California Supreme Court decision in August of 2001 that does not allow removal of a feeding tube even if the patient is irrevocably brain dead.

The sheer unmitigated horror of watching my mother suffer through four years of “life” on a feeding tube was the most wrenching heartbreak of my life. It is unjust for a person who led an exemplary and compassionate life to be sentenced to the cruel punishment of being trapped in a body that has deteriorated beyond the normal throes of death. The fundamental and cultural disconnect happens when we delude ourselves into thinking that keeping someone alive in this condition is a loving act. Jeb Bush and his cronies have overstepped their boundaries by insinuating their own shallow concepts of what is morally right and wrong on innocent people. Let us allow our loved ones to die gracefully with the least amount of pain, hypocrisy and a modicum of dignity.

Carla Carpentier

San Francisco