Posted on 03/30/2005 9:07:57 PM PST by syriacus
It's astounding how many people want Terri Schiavo dead and aren't afraid to say so.
I got clobbered by readers who reacted to Tuesday's column about how the "culture of death" has placed its compassionate arms around Terri, the brain-damaged Florida woman who is being starved to death.
E-mail and phone calls (more than 150 at last count) are running 2-1 against me.
"It's nuts, this 'life at all costs' mentality," a caller said.
There was general agreement: Terri should die and starvation ain't so bad.
"Her parents are being very selfish by keeping her alive. Your reference to her starving like the prisoners [at] Dachau and Bergen-Belsen? Oh, come on. She will not be in any pain. She will go gently to sleep. I'm a nurse."
So let's starve death row inmates instead of killing them with lethal injections. I mean, if starvation is so gentle and painless. Ignore the faint-hearted who gripe this is "cruel and unusual" punishment.
"Her brain is mush. There has never been a case of a person being in a [persistent vegetative] state this long and having any kind of recovery. There's not gonna be a recovery. She's 40-some years old. Who's gonna take care of her? Her parents? They're going to die soon themselves."
A 1984 car crash left Terry Wallis of Mountain View, Ark., a quadriplegic. He lay silently in a "persistent vegetative state" for 19 years. Suddenly, in summer 2003, he began talking. He asked for his mother - and for a Pepsi. I spoke with his parents.
Terry Wallis' wife, after swearing she would care for him forever, left him for another man and had kids with the guy. (Sound familiar?)
Custody was given to his parents, who were often depressed. They prayed a lot.
Today, Terry Wallis is determined to walk. His daughter, Amber, 6 weeks old in 1984, is 21 and cares for him.
The most frequent gripe readers have is that I am not a doctor and so should not comment on Terri Schiavo's medical condition.
"Interesting that you put yourself above trained doctors. As a doctor myself, I find this low mentality repugnant. You and Bush spread this dribble for your own good and care nothing about Terri, her wishes or her husband. Have you, Bush and the Republicans gone brain dead? If this is the case I hope someone pulls your plug." - Bill Helton
I received many comments like that. Reading them gave me a headache - oops, I'm not a doctor. I'm not qualified to make that diagnosis. Sorry.
A neurologist from New Jersey sent me this:
"I fear that our culture will push the line further as to who should live and who should die. I fear for the old, the young, the sick and the helpless. I fear becoming one of the helpless. - Maria Choy, M.D.
Me, too. After Terri Schiavo, who will the culture-of-death vultures circle? A hint. Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist whose medical opinion was key to a Florida judge ordering Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, was on TV this week candidly admitting he doesn't believe Alzheimer's patients have constitutional rights.
So first it's people like Terri, then the Alzheimer's sufferers, then perhaps end-stage cancer victims, and so forth.
Why not? Who would want to live like that? Are they not burdens?
Charles Dickens captured it when he had Scrooge confront the do-gooders who wanted to save the helpless, deemed worthless to Victorian England.
"If they had rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population."
No,the honour is MINE, having YOU as a friend. :-)
and the laws passed by the state legislature.....
A close friend has read a lot about Hitler's rise to power. She has often wondered aloud if anything could have been done to stop the Nazis at an earlier stage.
I sent her a copy of Forced Exit by Wesley Smith about a year ago, thinking she might be interested in seeing how inhumane people can gain power.
But she doesn't seem able read the signs of dehumanization all around us.
Euthanasia advocates claim that assisted suicide would be restricted to a "last resort" for people already on the verge of death and in unrelievable agony. But, as consumer activist and attorney Wesley J. Smith shows, these premises have already been proved false.
Oh dear, I don't read GARFIELD EITHER. Neither is in the N.Y. Post.
By the way, if you're a military man, you swore the same oath.
Article One, Section Two of the Florida Constitution simply echoes what the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution says...except that it includes disabled persons in its protections by name.
ya see I dont read the NY POST :)
the Columbus Disgrace errr Mismatch errr Dispatch.... :)
yeah and I also swore to uphold the laws and to follow orders form the Commander in Chief too.
insurrectionist BS is what I am reading here....thats about it....
Oh dear, that's why we read different comics. :-(
There is no earthly power except what God gives.
Jeb laid his hand on a Bible and swore to protect the lives of his citizens.
yeah....
tell me you read Dilbert.....
I don't understand why some are trying to protect Pilate, I mean, Jeb. He's accountable, as is the Florida legislature. Is this just another one of those "but he's a Republican" kinds of things?
and to uphold the laws of his state....
you seem to forget what the oath says and instead are paraphrasing and using it to your advantage....tsk tsk....
no its a "she would have been dead 2 years ago if this man hadnt saved her then" kind of thing.
Let's make this simple........I read MALLARD FILMORE and HEART OF THE CITY.
oh wow :)
figures I havent heard of either of them LOL!
I never mentioned insurrection. I've talked only about dereliction of duty by the entire chain of command.
But if you must discuss insurrection, fine...Greer has demonstrated it quite vividly.
All we're waiting for is an Executive with the cajones to disabuse this out of control judge of the strange and foreign notion that he has the right to issue death warrants on citizens who have never been charged with a crime much less a capital crime.
It's not too late to salvage his honor, but it's getting close...
Oh, I see, it's a "Hey, God, I did my 'good works' already" kind of thing.
ROTFLOL...that figures.
sure thing ET....time to phone home now....
Greer was elected by the people of Pinellas county. It is up to them to get him out of there.
I wonder, were you with the group of idiots that were holding signs asking "Barbara Bush, are you proud of your sons now?"
Seriously, I am fully expecting you to go on and blame Jeb and W for everything meanwhile the true culprits, who, in the case of Greer has sworn a similar oath to Jeb's, get less attention.
Something seems wrong from that. Not that I care what you think. i think you need to go join that nut with the bullhorn again and start screaming at terminal patients other than Terri in that hospice.
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