Posted on 04/04/2005 9:12:57 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Terri Schiavo was not dying, so she could not be "allowed to die;" she had to be killed.
Why the desperate insistence that Terri Schiavo die?
The claim of honoring her wishes won't wash. She may have said -- as we've probably all said, at one time or another -- that she "didn't want to live like that." But if she was really in a persistent vegetative state, then it's not mere sophistry to point out that she wasn't "living like that," because she was incapable of suffering. And since suffering requires consciousness, if she was suffering she wasn't in a persistent vegetative state.
She wasn't a burden on Michael Schiavo, both because he had the malpractice award to provide for her, and because he had the options of divorcing her or turning her over to those who were eager to assume her care.
Since she required no more extraordinary support than a feeding tube -- and here let me interject that I've placed many such tubes myself, and once was guided on a flyfishing trip by a man in whom I'd placed just such a tube a few weeks before -- she was no more on life-support than you and I. And she was not dying, so she could not be "allowed to die;" she had to be killed.
Michael Schiavo, his lawyer, and the various judges were thus demanding the killing of someone who either was not suffering or who was actually conscious but severely disabled. Why was that so affirmatively necessary when he could have walked away a free man? Why the fierce pursuit of her death? Why the demonizing of those who wanted her to live, and stood ready to assume the burden?
By the 1850s, slavery had become the exquisitely tender American boil that could not be touched. For the slaveholders, it was not enough that slavery remain legal ; any proposal which could, however remotely, be construed to suggest that slavery was anything less than perfectly normal and moral had to be met with adamant opposition. And anyone who made such proposals was vilified in the nastiest terms. In the halls of Congress a Southern legislator brutally beat an antislavery colleague. New states or territories could simply not be allowed to join the union as slavery- free entities, because why else would slavery be prohibited in those places except that it was fundamentally wrong? Politicians tried desperately to avoid the subject altogether, and whenever cornered they produced some of the shabbiest and most convoluted legislation in our history.
By the 1930s it was obvious that Germany was rearming and that Hitler was preparing to embark on the conquest of Europe. Sick and tired of war, the members of the League of Nations, and most European politicians, were determined to pretend otherwise. Winston Churchill's reward for speaking bluntly about the Nazi menace was to be ostracized and insulted with an intensity much like that visited upon today's right-to-lifers.
When, in the 1940s and 1950s, Whittaker Chambers denounced the evils of Soviet communism he was similarly slandered and ostracized. An international community determined to ignore the famines, show trials, and persecution at the hands of Stalin simply could not tolerate the probing of Chambers and his allies, few though they were.
The advocates of abortion have always been similarly touchy. Abortion must be an absolute good; there cannot be any restriction such as a waiting period, pre-abortion counseling, parental notification, or paternal consent. Even the most hideous forms, such as partial-birth abortion, must not be restricted. And those who propose restrictions are heaped with snarling abuse, and condescendingly sneered at in the media.
So today with the Schiavo case.
When a society is determined to look the other way, it always responds with fury to those who draw attention to the crime of the day. The supporters of evil are forced to alternate between declaring it a positive good and pretending it's not there at all. It's a very delicate balancing act, poised on a thin rope above a deep chasm.
The tightrope walker cannot tolerate the lightest touch or the softest breeze. And Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer, and the American media could not abide the slightest hint that Terri Schiavo deserved anything but death.
I'm still praying for you. Does that scare you?
Depends. What are you praying for?
Can anyone verify?
I believe he is legally blind, not deaf ... but he does seem to have a very large deaf ear where new evidence and affidavits would call his prior rulings into question. But then, most judges have a similar ear.
Since when is hearsay, clear and convincing evidence?
You're mixing apples and oranges.
In Florida, oral wishes are admissible in a court of law ever since the 1990 decision of In Re Guardianship of Browning.
"Browning, in other words, was Florida's Cruzan. And it went further than Cruzan did, to recognize in so many words that the right to have life support disconnected was a (state) constitutional right."
"Significantly, in the Browning case, the Florida Supreme Court found that the right attaches, so long as "the patient has expressed his or her desires in a 'living will,' through oral declarations, or by the written designation of a proxy to make all health care decisions in these circumstances."
Florida law requires the judge to have "clear and convincing" evidence as to the wishes of the patient.
Biased yes, interested, not so sure.
I wouldn't rely on the St. Petersburg Times for much of anything. It's left of the New York Times and just as accurate.
No foolin'.
He's a disgrace to the cloth and, from the looks of things, guilty of premeditated murder in the first degree.
Michael either forgot, or he lied under oath when he said that he had promised Terri he'd take care of her for the rest of his life. He said he needed money to pay for his education to become a nurse, so that he could keep his vow to Terri that he would take care of her for the rest of his life. Which is it? Did he forget, or did he lie?
Slavery used to be up to each state too. If we no longer consider ownership of humans to be a state issue, why should extermination of humans be a state issue?
Terri's best friend testified in favor of Terri, not against her. Michael's brother's wife was not Terri's best friend. Michael claims she was, because that suits his purpose. The Saint Pete Times supports Michael. They reported many of his claims as if they were facts. Biased? Absolutely!
He's legally blind. He wasn't able to see the videos of Terri responding. The sound was never played in court, so he didn't hear the doctor telling her what a good job she was doing. Some of the most compelling evidence in Terri's favor was never seen or heard by any court. When President Bush signed into law the provisions that would allow Terri to finally have her day in court, advocates of involuntary euthanasia derided the law, claiming it deprived Terri of her right to be starved and dehydrated to death whether she wanted to be or not. They brag that hundreds of patients per week are exterminated under similar circumstances, with little or no fanfare. Yet they have the audacity to take issue with comparisons to the Nazi euthanasia program that they brag about emulating. Go figure.
He did take care of her. When the 1996 CAT scan showed that Terri was brain damaged with no hope of recovery, he set about fulfilling her wish not to live that way.
He took care of her all right. Just not the way the jury thought he would. They must have been misled by that "for the rest of my life" statement. I guess what he really meant was "I'll take care of that bitch if it takes me the rest of my life." He sure did.
One of life's mysteries.
The statement is 100% true either way.
So you're saying that, during the trial, Michael should have known (or did already know) that Terri was brain damaged beyond hope of anything resembling recovery. That he knew he wouldn't be needing any of that money for her care. That she wouldn't partially recover her brain functions, forcing him to spend thousands on her rehabilitation?
That is what you're saying?
But if that's true, why wait until 1997 to do something about it? He had the money in 1993. Why wait?
Hmmmm, it logically follows (as the Hemlock radicals maintain--more or less) that we ought to issue every depressed person a loaded revolver, since its a lot cheaper to society than meds or counseling. Besides some people are just a burden to everyone else in their life--family, friends and all.
After all, if they blow their head off, its their decision, and who am I (or the law) to stand in their way, eh?
NOT!!!!
Who's life is it anyway?
It has to be Who gave you life to begin with.
For to protect our own lives under possible future adverse circumstance -- or the lives of our children (the case of the Schindlers) -- the Judges, the medical workers and civil authorities who would allow Murder by Judicial Order to occur have become our mortal enemies.
Ah. So Living Wills and Durable Powers of Attorney are just scraps of paper to you, huh?
Wasn't Browning another victim of Greer's judicial homicide?
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