 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
ON EUTHANASIA
II.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to some domestic issues as well. Terri Schiavo, an issue that energized Congress. The president flew back from vacation to be involved in that particular case. There's now been an autopsy which indicates her brain weighs half of what was expected in a human being and she was blind. The majority leader of the Senate, Bill Frist, went on the Senate floor, second time in 12 hours to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state. "`I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking in my office,' he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. `She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.'" Was that appropriate?
SEN. McCAIN: I didn't see it in the context, Tim, and I don't want to criticize Bill Frist. He obviously had very sincere feeling feelings about this issue. All of us were very emotional. We-Terri Schiavo had a loving parents and siblings that wanted to care for her for the rest of her life. I think our hearts went out to her in that situation and her family. Maybe we didn't use our brains as well as we should have. So I can't--I know that Bill Frist has denied that he "diagnosed" Terri Schiavo. I think we ought to get this issue behind us and move forward. It's an American tragedy and I hope that the next time we're presented with one of these situations we'll perhaps approach it in a more measured and reasoned fashion.
MR. RUSSERT: Would it be fair to say in hindsight Congress should not have been involved in the Terri Schiavo case?
SEN. McCAIN: I think it's easy in hindsight to make a judgment. But I do know at the time that many of us, or the overwhelming majority of us as well as the American people saw a young woman whose life was going to end, whose parents and brothers and sisters wanted to care for her. That's what I think made it so compelling. So in hindsight, perhaps we shouldn't have. At the time, I understand the emotion, all of us. Who was not moved by seeing the films of this woman, young woman?
MR. RUSSERT: And yet it turns out that she was blind.
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah.