Ultimate irony: Schiavo simply sought thinness by Paul Campos

As I write these words, Terri Schiavo is being starved to death because she was once a chubby little girl.

Almost everyone has heard about how, 15 years ago, Schiavo’s heart stopped for several minutes, causing massive brain damage that left her severely disabled. What very few people are aware of, because it has gone largely unreported, is that Terri’s heart stopped as a consequence of an eating disorder.

Terri was a chubby child, in a culture that tells children that not being thin is both a disease and moral failing. And our children get the message: Fully half of all 9- to 11-year-old girls either are or have been on a diet.

Terri was one of these children. …

Indeed, the civil judgment that has paid for Terri’s medical care was based on the failure of her doctors to diagnose her bulimia, despite what should have been obvious symptoms.

Such diagnostic failures are caused by the same factors that have led the media to largely ignore this tragic irony at the center of Terri’s story. After all, Terri was merely being a “good girl.” She was fat, and she made herself thin – a transformation for which she surely received endless praise.
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Creators.com – Creators Syndicate by Molly Ivins

For your information, while he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed the Advanced Directives Act in 1999, which gives hospitals the right to remove life support in cases where there is no possibility of revival, when the family cannot pay, no matter what the family’s wishes are in the matter. In Texas, you can only live in a persistent vegetative state if you are accepted in one of the few institutions that provide such care or if your family is both willing and able to take care of you. …

The very Republicans who pushed for this arrogant, interfering bill, which if used across the board would take away everyone’s right to make their own decisions in these awful cases, are the same people who voted to cut Medicaid, which pays for the care of people like Terry Schiavo across the country.

That the main player in this fiasco is Majority Leader Tom DeLay — who is in the midst of yet another scandal himself — is enough to make anyone throw up. This is a man whose sense of morality is so deformed that upon being chastised three times by the House Ethics Committee, his response was to change the rules and stack the committee. …

Those who passed this bill are the same politicians who want to outlaw medical malpractice suits like the one that provided the care for Terry Schiavo for many years while she was in “a persistent vegetative state.” They are the same politicians who have just finished changing bankruptcy law so that it is now much harder for families hit by tragedies like this one to get out from under the staggering medical bills. How dare they talk about morality?