Posted on 03/21/2005 3:38:56 PM PST by goldstategop
RUSH: Brian in Ocean City, Maryland. Glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. My thing about this, you started to mention something in your argument before about we don't treat animals this way, and I noticed you caught yourself because we wouldn't keep an animal alive like this because we would consider it cruel to the animal.
RUSH: I didn't catch myself at all. I wasn't going to make that point. It was going to be just the opposite. We go out of our way to protect animals.
CALLER: We do, but if an animal is hit by a car --
RUSH: We'll kick people off their land to protect animals.
CALLER: True.
RUSH: That's what's so convoluted about this. We will kick human beings off their land, prevent them from earning a living in order to protect an animal.
CALLER: We can, but once the animal is hurt, we don't keep -- you know, if that animal couldn't move we wouldn't say that--
RUSH: So why would we want to treat her like an animal? Let me turn it around. Why do we want to treat her like an animal?
CALLER: I don't think we should. That's exactly right. I was in a car accident four months ago and I was stuck in a room for three months. I couldn't walk, I couldn't get up, I couldn't move. That was torture to me. If I couldn't talk and I was stuck in a room like that, that is cruel and unusual punishment, to keep someone alive in that state where they can't communicate.
RUSH: All right. Look, you're speaking for yourself, and that's fine. I respect it. If that's the way you feel, get a living will and have it put in your other last will and testament file, so that there's no concern about it. But don't project what you would do onto others when you don't know. See, I think the trap of doing that is this is how you justify your position on this. "I wouldn't want it happening to me. And so if I wouldn't want it happening to me, I don't want it happening to Terri Schiavo." It's not anybody's decision but hers, and there were four people over the course of all of the trials and hearings before various judges in this case, there were four people that came forward, including her husband, who said that they recalled her saying she'd never want to live in a vegetative state or this sort of thing. Now, who knows? I mean, is that conclusive evidence? That's for courts to decide. Certainly isn't for me to decide. If a court wants to decide it's conclusive enough evidence, then they can, and apparently they have and they did. But people all my life have asked me this question. "Nah, I wouldn't want to live." You get into these philosophical discussions with people. Whether or not they actually constitute a statement that would be akin to placing it in your last will and testament is quite possibly a different thing. I mean, when you actually sit around and ponder it. I think this case is probably going to hatch a new living will industry if nothing else, because if there were just that, if there were some indication from her, then all these arguments wouldn't even be necessary, because we'd have the final authority from her, and it would be in something that is legally acceptable and understandable, signed and sworn, notarized and all that. That's not here.
So if any of you out there wouldn't want these circumstances for yourselves, I totally understand. I probably wouldn't either. But we make those decisions while we're healthy. Let you find yourself in a situation like this and you can't even imagine it. You can try, you can try to relate to it. You can't imagine it 'till it happens. It's at that point you have to decide if you can. But this game of projection is a risky thing. How many people have you heard say, "I wouldn't want to live like that," if they see a picture of somebody on TV in squalor or in a whole mess of trouble, "I wouldn't to want live like that." Well, go to that situation and then see what you'd say. You'd probably change your mind. The will to live is pretty strong in 99.99999% of all human beings, regardless of the circumstances they end up in.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, Brian, from Ocean City, Maryland, I like to take people's arguments verbatim and react to them. He said that we wouldn't keep animals alive if they were in the state that Terri Schiavo is in. If that's the position, we don't starve animals to death because it's considered inhumane. We give them an injection, they never know, they fall asleep, and that's it. The other side won't say that Terri should be killed humanely. They try to say starvation is humane. There are more humane ways of ending a life than starvation, but, see, that then takes the cover away. If you remove the tube, and she can't feed herself, she just died, nobody's killed her. But if you end her life humanely as we do animals, then somebody has killed her. They know what this is about. They just want the cover.
There's a man up in Lynchburg, a rancher. He got depressed. I think he lost a family member. He neglected his cows. They noticed the cows were badly malnurished and locked him away. [105.9 Morning Line. Lynchburg radio.]
The first born of Israel.
People often say... dying with dignity. Well, it's quite undignified to die of starvation and dehydration. It's a painful, awful death.
I disagree, El Rushbo...
If Terri's feeding tube is not reinserted, she will die of starvation the same way a person or animal would die if locked in a room with no food available. It will be an act of homocide if Terri dies and her death certificate should accurately state the cause of death as 'starvation' as ordered by the estranged husband and upheld by Judge George Greer. Anything less would be a lie to humanity......
Sounds good to me. Take care
Last year, I also lost my mother and my only aunt to cancer. Both of them technically starved to death -- they quit eating and drinking, gradually. The doctors explained that, because of the advanced state of their cancer, it would be cruel to prolong their misery with IVs and feeding tubes. They were both heavily medicated because of the cancer pain, but the doctor at the hospice facility told me that my mother was also suffering the pain of dehydration and starvation. No one will ever, ever convince me that this is a painless, easy way to die. Nevertheless, I think that there is a vast difference between a terminally ill person and one who is not ill, but simply has suffered an injury that makes it impossible for them to care for themselves.
If the kind of injection that was given to my Polly had been available and legal for my mother, I'm sure that she, as well as I, would have happily chosen it for her instead of the slow and painful death by starvation and dehydration. But I never would have presumed to make that decision for her, no matter how much it hurt me to watch her suffering and be helpless to ease it.
I have to admit that I don't completly understand all the legal arguments on both sides of this issue. But in my heart I know that it is wrong to kill this woman. I just can't see where the harm is in letting her live. Who is hurt by that?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.