So it was OK to sit back and watch her die, without lifting a finger to help her?
I want to know if this is the official position of the right-to-life movement!
Is this the official position of the RCC and its leader??
I want to hear Dr. Kennedy, Dr. Dobson, Pat Robertson, Rush, Hannity and Savage say that it was fully justified to let Robert Schindler's mother die but somehow its different for Terri who has been brain-dead and PVS with no hope whatsoever of recovery for 15 years!
It appears that they did try to save her. The Church does not require "extraordinary means". She was probably given nourishment and hydration until she died of natural causes. Terri Shiavo is not dying of natural causes. She is being starved to death. That is the difference. There is a distinction. The Church believes that nourishment and hydration are never extraordinary means.
Terri Schiavo has no loss in autonomic function at all, in contrast to Schindler's mother. Withholding the artificial sustaining of autonomic function is a far, far different thing than witholding sustenance. Most if not all of the people you quoted will have no difficulty differentiating between the two.
All Terri needs is basic food and water, and she continues to live indefinitely. It's no different than people in a coma, people with swallowing disorders, babies, you name it. One of the McCaughey septuplets required a feeding tube for awhile. So did a little girl from Great Britain until our American medical system concluded that she was misdiagnosed and could swallow on her own. Should they all have been doomed? Of course not.
Now let's look at the other side of the coin. Here's a question for you, Walkin' Man. Open-heart surgery is possible today thanks to the development of the heart-lung machine---a machine that keeps blood oxygenated and circulating without the assistance of either the heart or the lungs. Presumably, there's no reason such a machine could not be used with anyone who isn't going through open-heart surgery---maybe they had a heart attack and their heart stopped and won't start again.
Is it murder not to connect someone to one of those machines? After all, it could keep the brain oxygenated for an extended length of time after the body's autonomic respiration and heartbeat functions cease. Think about the countless numbers of people whose lifes could be "prolonged" with these machines. Why aren't we passing legislation requiring that people be connected to heart-lung machines if their own tickers give out?
Actually, we'd better watch out! People are now perfecting heart surgery that takes place without the use of the heart-lung machine, by operating on the beating heart in place. The machine itself could go obsolete! Maybe we need to subsidize the continued development and production of these machines, or even step up production! Murder is happening on a daily basis because we're too heartless (pun intended) to have a full stock of these machines in ready supply!