Posted on 04/09/2005 3:48:54 PM PDT by FairOpinion
Sounds like an opponent of capital punishment. You can't use capital punishment, goes the argument of the objector, unless you can prove that the system can never make a mistake.
The answer for enforcing people's right to die is the same as that for capital punishment. Our system is careful enough that mistakes will very rarely occur and the good coming of enforcing the rights of so many to rightfully die with dignity outweighs the occasional (hypothetical) 'mistake'.
By the way, the system is more likely to make a mistake in forcing someone to wrongfully live who clearly wishes to die than in allowing someone who wishes to be maintained to die. Poor Terri is an example. In our effort to be "sure" she was forced to be debased and diapered for 7 years. That was a great wrong to her.
OK, two questions. (i) What is that 'hearsay/declarative' evidence? (BTW, stop playing lawyer and pretending that hearsay is some lesser type of evidence. Either it is properly admitted as evidence or it isn't.) (ii) Why didn't the parents' lawyers put this 'evidence' in at the 2000 trial? Some conspiratorial act on their part too?
Because that was what she wanted. As would I. And, if you are honest, as would you. She was displayed for years as a foolish debilitated creature, lower than a monkey or a dog or a cat. She never, ever wanted that. Nor would any of us. If you weren't so wrapped up in ideology, you would admit that for yourself. No one -- no one -- would want to live that way.
Why? They were even more anti-Terri than the Republicans.
In that case we can dispense with the charade of "finding the patient's wishes," either in some written document or testimonial evidence. Just schedule a dignified natural death by dehydration based on suitable professional evidence of substandard physical and mental condition.
Doesn't seem inconsistent to me. The death penalty does not deal with innocent human life; it's punishment for a crime or a way of preventing future crime. You may not agree with it or think it's right, but it's not the same thing as taking an innocent human life (abortion or euthanasia).
My presumption was that you knew the elements of the case which were significant, and the principles involved.
Is that like FR poker--pass?
Please, since you profess to mind read for Terri, tell me what ideology I am wrapped up in? Is it... I won't kill my patients? Or do you just want to turn all of Nursing and Medicine into Euthanasia teams.
No thanks, I'm glad I'm retired.
No, it wasn't. And not very Christian, either. I'm sorry. I'm just so disturbed over what they did to Terri!!
Thank you for repenting!
Luke 13:3 "I tell you no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish"!!!
What does your claimed "constitutional right to refuse extraordinary life-saving medical treatment" have to do with the Schiavo case?
"Sounds like an opponent of capital punishment. You can't use capital punishment, goes the argument of the objector, unless you can prove that the system can never make a mistake."
If capital punishment is the issue here. What was Terri convicted of?
Also, WHERE DO YOU FIND A RIGHT TO DIE IN LAW?
The democrats are proving the charges against their fanatical zealotry in stuffing the judiciary and aggressively funding their war chests for increasing their radical activist judges and stopping their political opponents from ever increasing the judiciary with their appointees.
My rights are given me by God, not man. Our laws presuppose the law of God, i.e. man made 'in the image of God.' That image is my intellect and my ability to make decisions reflecting my own wellbeing. I need not await some affirmative grant of a right from a king or government to have such a right. Thus, I have the right to end my physical life when I see fit. Seems kinda elemental, doesn't it?
I don't know what a 'euthanasia team' is, but I definitely want the medical establishment to do what I determine is appropriate for me, not what they might think is appropriate. Most physicians I know (though not all) are rather strange, truncated individuals not well suited to making important decisions for themselves, let alone others.
Two things. (a) The individual can still control their own destiny. If, for example, you seriously wish to your physical shell pumped and evacuated for 15 or 20 years after your mind is gone (and you are willing to use your estate to pay for it), you have a right to that.
(b) Terri, for the last 15 years, was much, much less than merely 'substandard physical and mental condition.' 'Substandard' is percentiles 1 to 49. Terri was off the scale.
I get a kick out of people like you who, like the Pharisees of old, like to parade their asserted 'compassion' about poor Terri, but facing the question of whether they themselves would want to live as they wished to impose on poor Terri or simply die, they dodge and weave and refuse to answer. Why? It's such a simple question.
If you were in the same condition Terri was at her miserable end, would you have preferred to have been maintained by slurry pumping and diapering for another indefinite period or be allowed to die as she was?
Surely, an erudite individual such as yourself can answer such a simple question, can't you?
Since you overtly reference a Christian world-view, and since we, as Christians, are enjoined by the Lord to "In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets," I take it that you would prefer for yourself, were you in the same condition as Terri at her end, that you be maintained by slurry pumping and diapering for another indefinite period rather than be allowed to die? Is that really your view?
This is not a 'trick' question, but admittedly a tough one. It is easy to pretend 'compassion' for those like Terri and then say in the very same breath that she should have been kept alive in the miserable condition in which she was. But Jesus, as usual, is much tougher. He asks "What would you want done to you?"
This is really the nub of the issue for me. For me, there is not the slightest question, not the slightest hesitation, I would definitely want to die. So, once having said that, Jesus doesn't leave me any room for posturing about 'compassion' for Terri and then saying she should be subjected to that which I would not want for myself.
Who do you think writes the orders that nurses follow when giving care?
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