I'm sure that most, if not all, of you are probably tired of the overexposure of the Terry Schiavo saga in Florida. Poor Terry. I certainly do hope that her journey to the Summerland is smooth and uneventful.
In the course of viewing, reading, and listening to the numerous stories about Terry Schiavo, I remembered a similar flip-side story from my youth in which a young woman named Karen Ann Quinlan became comatose from a combination of alcohol and sedatives. Her parents waged a valiant battle against the powers-that-were to get their daughter off the ventilator so that she could die in peace. After successfully weaning from the ventilator, Karen Ann lived nearly ten more years in a persistent vegetative state due to an enteric feeding tube.
What do these two cases have in common? Besides the obvious, the two young women had serious health issues that were completely ignored in the din and hoopla surrounding the end of life issues that they have come to represent.
Quinlan's apparent problem with chemicals (although the cause of death in her case has been disputed) and Schiavo's bulimia are virtually nonissues in the debate that fseems to focus solely on the rights of her husband versus her family of origin. The critical information and interventions that could have kept both of these young women from suffering the brain damage that eventuated their respective persistent vegetative states are all but ignored in the press.
Both of these issues are front and center for anyone concerned with the health of young women in western culture.
On the other side of the globe, tradition appears to be a major obstacle to women's health and safety. Pinar Hukum heads up ELELE, a Turkish group organized around issues such as forced marriage and marital violence. I often think that tradition is just as imposing an obstacle to the
women in the United States...perhaps the social barriers are not as obvious, but they are just as real and being made more so by the wave of evangelical zealotry that is currently washing over this nation.
One last thing before I depart this evening. I recently heard a rather disturbing report regarding the Log Cabin Republicans and their apparent shift to the right after reconciling with Bushie post-election. I found further evidence for my feelings of disquiet in my inbox this morning. Not satisfied with snuggling up to W, they have embraced his plan to destroy the Social Security program along with other goodies. Surely they aren't cozying up to Jarvis of USA Next as well! Surely these sweet bois of the elephantine persuasion can see that to do so is sheer collaboration with the homophobes from hell.
Ah, I suppose they have to toe the line if they want that drug money to keep flowing. That's what Michelangelo Signorile says quite eloquently in his article. Check it out here.
