Video shows Haleigh Poutre writing, feeding self - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe.flv

Haleigh Poutre was beaten nearly to death by her adoptive mother and step-father. A few days later. the Massachusetts Department of Social Services attempted to have her starved and dehydrated to death, because she suffered severe brain injuries.

• Category

  News & Politics

[amy2226]

Haleigh was beaten into a coma Sept. 11, 2005, at the hands of step-father Jason Strickland and allegedly his wife, Holli Strickland, Haleighs adoptive mother and biological aunt.

A Judge has just sentenced Jason Strickland to jail for more than twelve years.

The Massachusetts Department of Social Services tried to have Haleigh Poutre euthanized(murdered) and even were given permission by the court but during the appeals she started to improve.

God Bless Haleigh Poutre

[KiddVid]

I'm sorry about your family member.

I wasn't putting words in your mouth. I was explaining to you the difference between futile care and futile people. It's a shame you still don't understand.

Thank you for clarifying that it's not just the fact that she was disabled that bothers you, but the nature and extent of her disability. I don't know why a woman with a severe brain injury should have less right to life than a woman with kidney disease.

[chili41192]

She is a hero, and still so beautiful.

[savanna brandon]

that was so sad:(

[KiddVid]

All the doctors said she had some level of consciousness, but that's a convenient insult for people who don't wish to be bound by stubborn facts.

[WashashoreProd]

You're putting words in my mouth. We are not talking about simply "disabled" here. We are talking about situations where someone suffers such profound brain injury that consciousness is no longer possible. If such a thing is misdiagnosed as it was in Poutre's case, then I feel safe in saying that everyone who was trying to "kill" her was happy to find out that she had any recovery. But hey, what would I know. I have a family member who went through something similar two weeks ago.

[WashashoreProd]

The parts of the brain that create the mind and personality were gone, atrophied well past the point of any meaningful communication or function; the autopsy showed this, and it is well-documented. The only function was the low-level stuff in the brain stem that kept her breathing and other functions going; the person that had been Terri Schiavo was long gone.

[KiddVid]

You measure quality of life with the wrong instrument. Your "better dead than disabled" viewpoint reveals a lack of humanity on your part. Because of your lack of humanity, you are the one with zero quality of life. Should we starve and dehydrate you to death? Or maybe just give you a slight overdose of morphine -- quick, painless, even plausibly deniable.

[KiddVid]

All of the doctors stated that she did have brain function beyond her brain stem. Her estranged husband, his lawyer, the judge who repeatedly ruled against her, and both guardians ad litem agreed that she had brain function. In the end, the medical examiner agreed with all of them that she did have brain function. Are you saying they all lied?

[WashashoreProd]

No. The only brain function Terri Schiavo retained was her brain stem; her cortex was destroyed. The hospice workers knew it, her husband knew it, her doctors knew it, and most importantly her parents knew it too. But the parents and their allies were lying through their teeth because they couldn't bear to let go. As for futile care: why subject someone with zero quality of life and zero chance of recovery to further medical work when it will have no meaningful effect at all?

[KiddVid]

Dead bodies don't breathe on their own, vocalize, and function at the level Terri Schiavo did. I don't know any adults (or children for that matter) who believe in zombies, the undead, the living dead, or whatever science fiction fantasy you're engaged in.

Futile care is literally futile care. It is care that is futile. Somehow you've found a way to get confused, and think it means futile person, aka life unworthy of life, aka Lebensunwertes Leben. We settled that decades ago. Never again.