Posted on 03/24/2005 8:34:20 AM PST by ElkGroveDan
I suppose those of you who are siding with Michael Schiavo are feeling smug today.
I have to ask a question that I wanted to ask when little Elian Gonzalez was whisked away to the island gulag. Will you cheer? Will you celebrate?
The reason I ask is that we certainly will celebrate if we win. If Terri is somehow saved from this horror at this the 11th hour, those of us who are fighting for her life will cheer and clap, some of us will cry and many of us will fall to our knees in thanks to Our Lord!
How will you feel if your side wins? What exactly is it that you have won?
That a human being who has done nothing wrong is being allowed to die this way is sickening. We afford more rights to criminals.
Well, I agree with you about the forum atmosphere. It's hysterical.
I just think anyone who can say with a straight face that his mistress has done more for his wife than her own mother is in need of a PR makeover, and a conscience.
It seems to me that they have no idea what they are doing. It will come around to bite them when their time comes. Under the slogan of privacy they have let the monster into their own homes.
That's fine, but you have no right to make that judgement on behalf of Terri. And what she actually wants is a matter for dispute. So long as it is, she should be allowed to live.
Ivan
Just as one small example you will find concern here re: this case and states rights.
I would respectively submit that that horse left the barn so long ago it's been dead for years.
Only very recently a federal judge, unelected with lifetime tenure rejected a sticker that the Cobb County school district wanted to place on textbooks. One might disagree strongly with the stickers content, there were arguments on both sides here on FR, but nary a word about states rights that I saw.
A federal judge recently required a school district to reinstate a student who was expelled for writing a poem about killing a teacher. I don't have details, it may have been an unfair explusion, maybe not, but no hue and cry over states rights.
And U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple pretty much took over the Kansas City school district. One guy, unelected.
A lot of school district stuff here because most often school boards are the closest elected body to the people but if you want other examples...
You want the feds to put you in prison? Fill in a ditch on your own property that the EPA has decided is protected wetlands or build where there's an endangered bug. Forget the takings clause, forget state rights, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The list could go on but you get the drift.
No storming of the gates over any of the above yet striving to ensure that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is available to one disabled woman is the end of the republic. If we can't put that in perspective to the erosion that's happened over the last 30 years I fear we will not be paying attention.
>>Are you comfortable with the idea of now, if you suffered a stroke and were unable to speak, that your spouse could have the plug pulled merely based on hearsay?<<
If I was rendered incapable of communication for years, I'd certainly want my wife to be able to make arrangements to let me die based on her knowledge of me and, even more, based on her sympathy for me. If Ms. Schiavo has any awareness, what an utter nightmare! To be trapped in the prison of your own body for over a decade strikes me as a torture beyond my capacity to imagine. And if, as I suspect, Ms. Schiavo has no awareness, her remains should be allowed to die with dignity, not be turned into a public fetish. Our fear of death belittles us all.
Of course, for my own part, I'd want my wife to be allowed to authorize a lethal injection so that I could die humanely. But, after years of being confined to my body but robbed of my ability to communicate and control my actions, I would choose death for myself whether humanely through letal injection or cruelly through starvation. My wife knows that. It would agonize her to let me go and to be forced into making such a hard decision, and I would be horrified if, in such a situation, the United States Congress deigned to second guess her.
My marriage is sacred to me, and the United States Congress has no place in the middle of it. I think our ability to face death with courage and dignity is a real measure of our humanity.
You are absolutely right.
I am constantly insulted for calling people out when I see hypocrisy. On another posting I saw someone praising those who kept an IMAX movie from showing in several states because it touched on evolution. These are the same individuals who cry foul when other wants to remove the Bible from in front of a courthouse.
Why is it okay to walk by a Bible in a public place, but it's not okay for me to CHOOSE to go to another public place and see an IMAX movie involving evolution? The same hypocrisy is evident here. Judges are not allowed to legislate from the bench to take away a state's right to execute juveniles, but they MAY indeed legislate from the bench in this case? I am disturbed by the hypocrisy here, but I am trying in vain to hold out hope, as you've written. I have a young son for whom I am trying to remain hopeful. Here in Texas we have many death row juveniles who may go free because of judicial activists. Our own legislators are now trying to institute Life Without Parole as we do not have that option presently.
Thank you for your insight as I am even more hopeful now that I am not alone in my thoughts.
Bravo.
For the election win.
Do be sure to catch this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1369848/posts
Absolutely great. Such common sense, says many of the things I've felt but haven't been able to articulate.
What part of that do you not understand?
The court decisions are making those decisions on behalf of Terri - and they are no more qualified than you to suggest she should die. In the absence of a clear idea of what her wishes are - she left no will, no instructions of any kind, and what her wishes would be is in dispute among her loved ones - the bias must be to keep her alive. To have the bias in favour of death may open the door to the "disposal" of people who are "inconvenient". Second, it is unspeakably cruel to starve and dehydrate a woman to death who may not be longing for death.
Whether you like it or not, you are supporting a "decision", if it can be called as such, which is killing a young woman who may not want to die. If you can live with that, then I dare say your conscience is in question.
Ivan
I think what a lot of people are missing is that this is NOT a case about "pulling the plug". Terri's heart and internal organs are just fine. It's not like you pull the plug and her heart stops beating.
She is being STARVED TO DEATH. She feels pain. She responds to light. She responds to voices and music. She is being STARVED -- a slow, painful, agonizing death that takes longer than a week.
What humane country allows a woman to starve to death? What humane society treats its animals better than it's citizens? What humane people think it's for the best to allow someone to starve to death instead of "suffering" by being in a "vegetative state"?
What could possibly be worse than starving to death?
I am so deeply saddened by what has happened in this case. But what disturbs me more is that so many people think that slowly killing Terri is the "right thing to do."
Today is Holy Thursday, the day Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
Somehow, I think the sin being committed right now on this woman is among the greatest of all.
Jesus said in one of the Gospels something like, "Whatever you do to the least of mine, you do to me."
Even if you're not religious, even if you're an atheist or an agnostic or some sort of quasi-Christian religion who thinks euthanasia and abortion are A-OK, let me repeat one last time that Terri is being tortured to death.
THAT is something I am having a very difficult time accepting -- that other people think starving--torturing--a human being to death is acceptable.
gophack
(ElkGroveDan's wife)
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