At this point I don't expect the governor to act. I continue to pray for her nevertheless.
Death is not a right. It is a fact, but it is not a right. This is the flaw in the argument which has brought us to this point.
Doctors and hospitals exist in service to life, or they have no point. Its not difficult to observe what has happened in Holland, where the right to die has become entrenched. They have on paper a rather careful procedure by which the decision to die is worked out with the agreement of all parties, patient, doctors, family, and then reviewed by a committe.
In actual fact, the doctors have taken to making the decision on their own, without discussing it with anyone. If the doctor thinks you aren't a good candidate for treatment, you get the syringe with the cocktail in it, without even being told.
In a way, this has always been so, even here. Its too easy for a doctor to decide that it isn't worth continuing the fight, and to simply fail to order some treatment, or reassign a machine that the patient is dependent on. I've seen it done, they say its counterproductive to remain too long on a given treatment, and discontinue it knowing full well that without it the patient is dead.
Then they look solemn and say they did all they could.
But since the public presumption has been toward life, they had to at least go through the motions of trying to help.
Since the "right to die" has become vogue, the pressure now is on the patient to pull the plug on themselves, so as not to be any further burden to their families, and the doctors have been able to come out of the closet, so to speak. So now, if you don't explicitly demand to keep fighting, they may begin to withhold treatment, and if you do demand to fight on, they may quietly withhold treatment anyway.
Everyone understands that at some point some treatments make no further sense and its time to let go. When exactly that is has always been left in the gray areas of the law, between the families and the doctors. In trying to make the law explicit, though, life has been placed on the defensive.
If you have to ask for "extraordinary measures", then the very nature of the fight for life has already been transformed from a noble struggle to a pointless inconvenience. When food and water have been redefined as "extraordinary", we have crossed over into that Brave New World that was once just a writer's imagination.
I'm not afraid to die. If I am injured or ill, I don't want anyone to go to any "extraordinary measures" on my behalf, I want them to do their jobs, and to do them because life matters to them. I don't want to do a "living will" which is a roadmap for your own abandonment. I want to trust myself to people who care about me, who in turn will trust me to people who care about life, and between them I want to trust that they will do the right thing, without trying to define in advance what that might be.
When my death comes, I want it to be because its time, and not because someone has decided that I'm not worth the trouble.
If that makes any sense.
Bttt!
The precedent being set by the Schiavo case strips away this fig leaf of basic decency and humanity. I notice that District Court Judge Whittemore totally ducked the constitutional issue that the Schindler legal team sought to bring to bear in their last dealings with the judge: Whether or not the U.S. Constitution protects the right to life as a fundamental human right. Whittemore's reply was to the effect that no federal or state personnel were involved in the decision, which was unilaterally Michael's to make; therefore, since no governmental personnel were in any way involved, the Schindlers' argument is moot and so the issue of what the Constitution guarantees cannot come into play. Talk about a totally specious argument! (1) Did this guy never hear of Judge Greer? (2) Does the application of the federal and/or state constitution reach only to governmental personnel? What a novel legal theory!!!
If a man kills someone with a gun, he will be prosecuted. But if he can manage things so as to kill a person with a court order, then the fact that the person has been killed is irrelevant: No law has been broken.
There is so much to object to in this grotesque miscarriage of justice. I am also terribly bothered by what appears to be the "take-away" the MSM wants the American public to have in light of Terri's ordeal, even Fox. And that message seems to be: Everyone should have a living will!!! Or a DNR order on file!!! Talk about trying to change the subject in the public mind! Jeepers, the only thing a living will or DNR order would do is expedite the death business. But this case is not about the so-called "right-to-die"; it is about the right to life.
As you note, marron, what is the point of making an eventual, ineluctible fact into a civil "right?"
And I'm with you -- I am not the least bit interested in making a living will or a DNR, preferring to "rest still in God's arms." When He's ready to call me, I'm ready to go. I shall always choose life; and God is Life.
The only other direction one can go in, is the death direction. And speaking as a Christian, that direction goes not only to bodily death, that is to the "first death"; but ever so much more importantly, to the Second Death itself.
It has been said that Satan departed from heaven because he could no longer stand the sight of God. When I look at some of the actors playing in the present tragedy, I think they feel the same way.
Now Satan has always known, from Day 1, that he's playing a losing game -- but he would never tell any of his "recruits" that. Instead, the Father of Lies tells men they can do what they want and get what they want, that they can indeed "turn the wheel on which they themselves turn." And this is the very belief that will seal their fate in the Second Death -- the eternally permanent one.
Sorry to rant, marron. I have been a bit upset lately.
Nevertheless, I am not so distraught that I fail to recognize that your essay was beautiful, and its insights deeply truthful.... Thank you so very much for writing!