Posted on 03/23/2005 7:27:44 AM PST by JesseHousman
If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death" but you can find experts to say anything. In a December 2, 2002 story in the same New York Times, people starving in India were reported as dying, "often clutching pained stomachs."
No murderer would be allowed to be killed this way, which would almost certainly be declared "cruel and unusual punishment," in violation of the Constitution, by virtually any court.
Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience — and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument.
Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."
She is not like someone whose breathing, blood circulation, kidney function, or other vital work of the body is being performed by machines. What she is getting by machine is what all of us get otherwise every day — food and water. Depriving any of us of food and water would kill us just as surely, and just as agonizingly, as it is killing Terri Schiavo.
Would I want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo's condition? No. Would I want to be killed so slowly and painfully? No. Would anyone? I doubt it.
Every member of Terri Schiavo's family wants her kept alive — except the one person who has a vested interest in her death, her husband. Her death will allow him to marry the woman he has been living with, and having children by, for years.
Legally, he is Terri's guardian and that legal technicality is all that gives him the right to starve her to death. Courts cannot remove guardians without serious reasons. But neither should they refuse to remove guardians with a clear conflict of interest.
There are no good solutions to this wrenching situation. It is the tragedy of the human condition in its most stark form.
The extraordinary session of Congress, calling members back from around the country, with the President flying back from his home in Texas in order to be ready to sign legislation dealing with Terri Schiavo, are things that do us credit as a nation.
Even if critics who claim that this is being done for political or ideological reasons are partially or even wholly correct, they still miss the point. It is the public's sense of concern — in some cases, outrage — that is reflected by their elected representatives.
What can Congress do — and what effect will it have? We do not know and Congress does not know. Those who are pushing for legislation to save Terri Schiavo are obviously trying to avoid setting a precedent or upsetting the Constitutional balance.
It is an old truism that hard cases make bad law. No one wants all such cases to end up in either Congress or the federal courts. But neither do decent people want an innocent woman killed because she was inconvenient and a court refused to recognize the conflict of interests in her legal guardian.
The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic — ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.
These are not things that liberals have any track record of caring about. Is what really bothers them the idea of the sanctity of life and what that implies for their abortion issue? Or do they hate any challenge to the supremacy of judges — on which the whole liberal agenda depends — a supremacy that the Constitution never gave the judiciary?
If nothing else comes out of all this, there needs to be a national discussion of some humane way to end life in those cases when it has to be ended — and this may not be one of those cases.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
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Copyright 2005, Naples Daily News. All Rights Reserved.
Bingo!
Thomas Sowell is a national treasure.
Indeed.
Amen.
Thomas Sowell for President.
As usual, Mr. Sowell renders a clear and sensible appraisal of a complex situation.
And Walter Williams for Vice-President, or....Attorney General!
Well said, Thomas Sowell.
These are not things that liberals have any track record of caring about. Is what really bothers them the idea of the sanctity of life and what that implies for their abortion issue? Or do they hate any challenge to the supremacy of judges — on which the whole liberal agenda depends — a supremacy that the Constitution never gave the judiciary?
Exactly so! Take heed, folks. The slide down the slippery slope has commenced and is well underway. Whether it's for money, or a drastic means of divorce, or simply to rid yourselves of an inconvenience--there's a new, legal way to murder your relatives.
Or, to look at it another way, there's a new, legal way for your relatives to murder you....
*And don't count on the courts to save anyone...
"If nothing else comes out of all this, there needs to be a national discussion of some humane way to end life in those cases when it has to be ended —"
Be afraid, be very afraid! If the discussion is turned in this direction only bad things can result.
Women have just been relegated to 1900 standards.
I can't wait for a husband to file a lawsuit to stop his WIFE from getting an ABORTION.
The media plays the public like a violin.
(steely)
BUMP!
The media and the legal pundits play the public. There is no room in legal discussion for words like mercy and compassion and conscience (god forbid!). All the happy little legal suits will glady tell you we should all celebrate that 'emotions' don't play into judicial and legal decisions.....
Of course, when the legals that want to Terri to die are put on the spot they will all of sudden act so compassionate and proclaim she is 'not suffering' as if they know anything about it. These people don't give a rat's a$$ if she is suffering or not. They just want to gloat and smirk that they were 'correct' in their predictions of the legal decisions and they stand on the 'side of the law' with their opinions. Oh, but we don't dare call them for what they truly are.
Cold, heartless, souless, callous, cruel and merciless. They really don't care about those 'qualities' anyway. They just conveniently pretend to know of them when the cameras are on....
Sowell/Williams ticket - wouldn't that knock the socks off the Liberals!
Do you think that taking this case to court has been helpful, or would not everyone be just as well off if this decision had to be hammered out between family and doctors?
That line read like a gnat in the eye to me, too.
Not when a husband wants to kill his wife, a wife who is.... 1. not comatose, 2. not on life support & 3. has no Living Will.
The answer to your question is not only no, Hell No!
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