Letter to the Editor

Feeding tubes not life support

In response to the article, "Students views differ about fate of brain damaged woman," I must say I am deeply disturbed at the way the two writers of this article take the side of Terri Shiavo's estranged husband, claiming that “life support” was removed from her. A feeding tube is not life support.

If we begin to label feeding tubes as life support, why don't we label a baby's bottle as a feeding tube? It is basically the same thing. A mother who decides to starve her baby to death because he or she can't feed herself is the same as what happened to Terri Schiavo.

The only difference is that her so-called husband, who has a common-law marriage with another woman and two children with her, made the decision to starve Terri to death. What kind of a Twilight Zone world do we live in? How can we let this man speak for this woman when he obviously moved on with his life a long time ago?

Life support is something like a ventilator that keeps you breathing. And when the actual life support is taken away, you die immediately, not 14 days later. Death row murderers receive a more dignified death.

What happened here was the starvation of an innocent woman who never put into writing that she would want to die in such a way. This was judicially sanctioned murder based on hearsay!

—Steven W. Murphy
Political science major