Posted on 04/03/2005 6:42:45 PM PDT by Gondring
Some people talk real big until it's their turn to die.
Right now, they find it easy to kill someone else.
with the rule of law, the Constitution, the millions and millons of people who get this, tons of smart Freepers, Hannity, Rush, Senator Santorum, Governor Bush, President Bush, Congressman Sensenbrenner, Congressman Delay, Senator Frist, The Constitution Sub committee, Judge Bork,Both houses of Congress, the Pope,...I could go on and on. ( you won't start name calling because I said the Pope will you?)
There has been much lunacy - enough to make my stomach churn. However, I would never high five a liberal %$&@ like Cynthia Tucker to make my point.
I remember reading he left of his own accord. Tho' I think if the church *had* asked Greer to leave, it would have been completely appropriate.
Y'all still ignoring the Fifth Amendment and its corresponding verbiage in the Florida constitution??
A person has to ask themselves how so many intelligent people can become so incredibly foolish as our judges and their apologists have become.
Can't even read plain English anymore.
But even if you folks are too hardhearted to care, the right to life is still God-given and inalienable.
This fact is the cornerstone of the underlying principles of the American republic.
Keep hacking away at it. But the more you do, the more resistance you're going to meet from fair-minded decent Americans.
Terri did not die in vain.
Terri
She will always be
Simply 'Terri' to me
The one who lost her life
To a cruel conspiracy
But many hearts were touched
Her will to live still speaks
Her smile a testimony
To God's power in the weak
And on the Day of Judgment
The Lord will save the meek
But the Lake of Fire awaits the ones
Who wouldn't give a child a drink
EV
So you are saying that we could starve her to death over 14 days because feeding her orally would have killed her? Huh?!?!? What's the difference? If she wanted to die and was PVS (couldn't feel anything), then why not try to feed her orally? If she dies from the feeding, she's dead. If she can't be fed and dies, she's dead. Either way, (according to you) she feels nothing. So what's the difference?
In fact, why wait for her to starve anyway? Wouldn't it have been far more humane to just end her life witha drug to stop her heart? Once you deny her food, she is GOING to die. So why make her body go through 14 more days?
The problem with your argument is that it is far more irrational than you accuse the other side of being. It revolves around personal quality-of-life opinions that have no place in the law. The legal question here is simple, does Greer have the authority to order that Terri SHALL NOT be fed (note that this would be the case even if M.S. had changed his mind. M.S. wasn't given a decision; the court ordered Terri to be starved)? The fact that you avoid the question says everything about what your position is...
P.S. What is the difference between the court ordering Terri starved or electrocuted? The outcome is 100% certain death either way. When you order extarordinary means removed from patients, there is always a chance, however minute, that they will not die (several of those cases have been posted on FR recently). You are letting nature take it's course. But ordering a person to not be fed is a death sentence. So what is the difference between that and ordering her to be given drugs to kill her? Why not do it that way? So you must agree that Terri was killed by court order...
I agree completely.
It truly bothers me that there are some out there who claim to be Christian but get so excited about dehydrating and starving an innocent, helpless person to death.
The Lord gave us discernment. And discernment tells me that kind of attitude is *not* of Christ. It is of evil.
This is patently ridiculous. I am not a "bibler", don't even go to church. You don't have a clue what 80% of the "base" thinks...they just might not agree with you. This is an issue the majority of people have yet to face. Bogus push polls may show that people think Terri should die, but most people only have the most superficial knowledge of her plight. At this point they hear "bulimia", "permanent vegetative state", "right to die" because that's what the media has (hysterically) reported. However, the truth does have a way of coming out, just like the constant barrage of bad news coming out of Iraq couldn't forever hide the majority of good things that were happening. A "big" event, like Terri's death or the Iraqi elections give people a chance to reflect and look more closely at an issue. Some of the controversies are already making their way into the mainstream (when my mom knows that MS was a jerk to Terri and downright nasty to her parents, that few of dollars from the malpractice suit went to her care and that she's been languishing in a hospice for 5 years, I know people aren't necessarily buying the Peter Jennings version of events.
Besides, our president is one of those "biblers". He makes no attempt to hide it or to hide the fact that he looks to God for guidance when making decisions. The American people have known this about him since before he was elected in 2000. Had they thought this was a problem they had a chance to vote him out of office in the 2004 election. His best speeches, the ones that inspire and are talked about for days afterwards always reference God. The only people who seem to have a problem with it are very far left wing dems and republicans who seem more concerned with the party "image" than party values.
Kiss off the judicial nominees, the filibuster killer vote, new Supremes------IT'S ALL ABOUT TERRI!
Now this is just downright hysterical. There are many other news items posted on FR with lively discussions. There is a national march planned to deal with just this issue. And, not to rain on your paranoid parade, but Bush can't nominate a new Supreme until one of those currently serving decides to retire. I'm pretty sure, just like we on FR can handle more than one discussion thread, Bush, congress and the American people can handle more than one issue at a time.
However, in answer to your rantings, well yes, it was all about Terri, people were trying to save her life. But it's much more than that...Terri could be any of us and the issues being raised go well beyond the tragic life of this one woman. Feds vs. states rights, states rights vs. individual rights, constitutional protections, diabled rights, how far should an appointed guardians control over the life of the person he/she is supposed to be looking out for go, in a dispute of this nature should the disabled person be given their own legal representation, should monies earmarked for the care and rehabilitation of the person be used to pay for someone else's legal representation...even to the more philosophical issues of how we treat those citizens least able to protect themselves or how far should we, as "average", healthy people go in projecting our thoughts of "I wouldn't want to live that way" into judging the quality of a handicaps person's life.
Guess what? Tragically, she is dead. The circus that was made out of the thing was appalling. We deserve the fall-out from the foolish actions of people sending their children up with water knowing they would be arrested and the protesters acting like snake-handling morons.
You know, I would rather have people coming here for the first time read ANY post by one of these "biblers" than you. On any given topic discussed here there are simultaneous discussions about the religious/philosophical implications, legal, cultural, etc. The threads about Terri are no different. It looks a heck of a lot more immature to come into one of them and whine about what everybody ELSE will think, sling insulting one-liners in an attempt to prove yourself clever and "oh so much more sophisticated and above it all" or screech hysterically that someone's religious beliefs are going to damage the republicans. If you can't or don't want to share in part of the discussion (pro or con) in a reasonable manner then find another topic more to your liking...there's plenty to choose from.
I wouldn't have sent my children up there to get arrested either, but that was their choice and they thought the life of a fellow human being important enough to allow their children to participate in demonstrating that. Beyond that, I must have been seeing a different event than you because what I saw was people who cared deeply about the sanctity of life and wanted to show support to Terri and her family.
Something you might want to consider, thought, is that one of the main reasons the republicans are gaining support is because they put principles before image. Dems try to present a pretty picture of caring about others and valuing life, but their actions don't support their words. It takes more work to get your message out when you're more than pretty catch-phrases, but once people see that their values are more in line with ours (including thosed "dreaded" right-to-lifers...see public opinion on partial birth abortion), as witnessed by the last few elections, the tide does turn. Anybody who DOESN'T know there are conservative Christians in the GOP by now has to be living under a rock. Who cares? There's enough room for all of us. Remember, the dems have so narrowly defined what their beliefs are that they are losing all across the political spectrum. I NEVER want to belong to a party like that.
Cindie
BINGO! Thank you for sharing your insight and excellent analogy.
Thank you for that information. I did a quick check and found that a TV movie called In the Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan was released on September 26, 1977, about two months before Terry Schiavo's 14th birthday. A friend of Terry's testified that they saw a replaying of the show in 1982, when Terry was 19.
Because for all of their sophisticated rhetoric, their argument is still based on personal opinion and emotion. They have an "idea" of which way to die is "natural" (via starvation, as opposed to injection or choking on food). They then project this personal feeling onto the debate. From a rational perspective, the method of death is irrelevant, especially if Terri was really PVS. But the "feelings" they have about it matters.
That's why they don't want to discussion the legal implications of this case. Legal operations are rational, not emotional, and gives them no room to wiggle in their emotions. For example, legally speaking, all of the "facts" cited about this case were determined by one man, Judge Greer. I even had a lawyer come on here a few days ago and (after arguing it for a while) admit that it was true. Once Greer decided the "facts" no other court EVER looked at them. Appeals courts look at the way the law was applied, not at whether or not the trial judge decided the facts correctly. So long as the process the judge used to determine the "facts" follows the law, the actual accuracy of the facts doesn't really matter (there was a big stink about this when VA [I think] changed it's death penalty law a while back. The law was changed to limit the time after which someone could challenge certain facts in a death penalty case. What it meant was that, even if you had incontrovertable evidence of innocence, after a certain period of time the court could NOT rehear certain facts. The justification was that it sped up the application of the death penalty, and if the new evidence was that compelling, the governor would pardon the person). So the argument that 19 judges other than Greer looked at the case is sheer sophistry, as not a single other judge ascertained the accuracy of Greer's "facts." Several FR lawyers (including, if I remember correctly, Congressman Billybob) said that the Schindlers really lost their case within the first years of the case, because their attorney didn't prevent the finding of the "facts," thereby making the rest of the case a foregone conclusion (since appeals courts would not revisit the facts).
Add to this my point in previous posts on this thread, and you have a very scary scenario. A single judge, based on the facts that only he determines, can decide to withhold all food and water from a person, in any form. It's no wonder they refuse to discuss this part of it...
Such unfortunate timing for the "let Terri die" side. 100,000 people in St. Peters Square to mourn the passing of and celebrate the life of Pope John Paul II. A man whose message about caring for the weak and unfortunate among us being remembered by all. Terri was remembered in the mass said at the Vatican. And at the mass in DC which President Bush and Laura attended. The message could not have been clearer. Terris life had value. She was a child of God.
READ THE CONSTITUTION - you might learn something.
Where were any of them when Manar Maged's twin sister was killed in Egypt? She could smile and blink...
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