[oceanperch]

Why is Teri in a facility?
She could be home with her folks if they had guardianship.

I am not going to speculate on the unknown of how my life will end.

I live each day the best I can in accordance to my Catholic faith.

Suffering to me may not have the same meaning as it does to you.

If Teri was at home being cared for by her parents she could go to a rodeo too.

[MHGinTN]

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN AMERICA

This past week, two very prominent issues briefly set Internet news discussion sites ablaze: 1) Terri Schiavo's impending court ordered starvation unto death; 2) the conflict between federal and state rights regarding a Ten Commandments monument set up in an Alabama Court building. The outrage factor from conservative Christians appears to be about equal in magnitude on both issues. And that perplexes me because I see a huge difference in the issues at the heart of both controversies.

First, let me be clear that I’m not accusing conservative Christians of treating these two issues as either/or, in duplicity; many upset at the planned execution of Terri Schiavo by court ordered starvation probably have little or no knowledge of the Ten Commandments story, and vice versa. Second, both issues have liberals in the opposition to the conservative Christian perspective. But which issue is more illustrative of the terrible degradation our nation has reached? Asked that way, I would hope that Christians could point immediately to the plight of Terri Schiavo, but when I’ve asked that on various discussion threads, responses tend to be delayed, like the responders are having to think it over! THAT’s what perplexes me, that Christians have become so easily manipulated by the ‘agree to disagree’ treachery through which so many liberal societal standards have chipped away at our nation’s moral fiber.

Here’s an excerpt from a FreeRepublic.com thread where Terri Schiavo’s peril was being discussed (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/964817); two or three posters were defending the courts ordered execution of Terri based on the use of a feeding tube and the assertion that she’s in a persistent vegetative state, which she’s not based on my medical familiarity with that condition … and we’ll return to that in a moment (even that state would not allow organ harvesting because the person is considered to still be a living being not to be killed for their organs):

“It's not that she CAN'T swallow. Swallow Studies have been prohibited because (get this) she might choke to death. I worked with people like her for 16 years, and such a decision is not just irrational (the alternative is to use the excuse that she can't swallow on her own to starve her to death) it is not supported by standard practice. Frankly, tube-feeding or swallowing isn't a substantive distinction anyway. The point is, her "husband" and a few liberal judges have gone out of their way to destroy the legal firewall between difficult life-conditions and actual brain-death.
This country must not allow a legal system which has been complicit in denying this woman any chance at recovery to murder her in the most painful and prolonged way.
Life is either sacred or elitists can decide who can live and who must die. ...

138 posted on 08/16/2003 9:58 PM EDT by Burr5

I’m addressing this essay to fellow conservative Christians (not the Hildys or other abortion supporters lurking about), but the poster just cited said he’s/she's an Atheist, yet she/he knows where the line of inhumane should be drawn without hesitation! Icons and minarets are not sacred, but human life should be to a conservative Christian, and he/she shouldn’t have to stop and contemplate the gravity of icons as compared to living human beings.

So you may be asking yourself, ‘Why is this guy getting so agitated about this; is this guy somehow related to Terri Schiavo or her family?’ The answer to the latter is no, and the answer to the former is all about defending the sanctity of individual human life. See, the same mindset that can defend the euthanizing of Terri Schiavo (rather than allowing her parents to care for her since her husband is no longer in the mood) is the mindset that will defend the exploitation of human embryos for their body parts, their stem cells, claiming the individual human embryo is not a full human being thus it is to be cannibalized for body parts to treat older individual humans.

Not even the phrase ‘slippery slope’ conveys sufficient gravity for the slide this nation has taken over the past thirty plus years regarding the sanctity of individual dependent human life. We’ve reached the stage in our devolution where those calling themselves conservative Christians are not sure whether human life is sacred based on the case by case contemplation … the sanctity of human life has been replaced with utilitarianism based upon a situational ethic that confounds and nullifies the Christian ethic.

For decades now, courts have been making rulings regarding the harvesting of human organs for transplantation to aid other human beings. My own brother’s body was harvested for tissues and organs that aided many people, after he had slipped into an irreversible comatose state where there was not even the glimmer of brain activity and his body functions were being maintained via machinery and medications. To take him for harvesting, a death protocol form had to be checked off. If he had not met the protocol, his body would not have been released for harvesting. The protocol establishes whether a functioning integrated whole human organism is still in evidence (and Terri fits that category more than adequately for she does breath on her own and does respond to stimuli both visual and painful).

But the question with Terri Schiavo is, ‘What level of life support is deemed too much?’ Yes, that is really what this issue comes to, how much life support is a liberal society with liberal courts and judges willing to provide before deciding to ‘pull the plug’ … no, that’s not right! What level of life support is a liberal society willing to provide before changing its mind and killing the burden? Now, that’s more accurate.

A Christian conservative should never have to stop and weigh the situational ethic when it comes to approving life support for an individual human being, in a womb or in a hospital or hospice facility. That some do now have this dilemma when confronted with life issues is why abortion on demand has become more favored with un-planned pregnancies than adoption of the conceived individual human beings.

Soon, very soon in fact, our nation will face the issue of cannibalizing alive, very young individual human beings for their ‘useful’ body parts. Oh to be sure, the first cases will not be more than days-old embryos, likely even embryos conceived outside a human body. But with the technological advances now being tested, it will be quite likely that embryos conceived in petri dishes will be life supported on into the fetal age of the alive individual, then served up for harvesting. It is, after all, only a matter of conservative Christians adjusting to the degrees of situational ethic. And folks, that really perplexes me!

While many peoples’ attention is fixed upon a monument in an Alabama courthouse, a woman is being court-order euthanized, to remove the inconvenience of her life support and avoid spending money to give her rehabilitation opportunities which have already been paid for by an insurance settlement. And that makes me very angry … at US for tolerating such evil.

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[The above can be found on my blogpage (http://MHGinTN.blogspot.com), and there an addy is posted, to rail at me if one chooses ... but don't expect a reply, especially if from a liberal death cultists. I collect the novel ones for use in future publications.]

[flaglady47]

You know, Oceanperch, I wasn't going to post a reply on this thread because I find the whole thread so irritating, but your comments have forced me to do so. You speak as if you are the brother, father, mother of this woman. You're not. You don't know what motivates her husband, but you assume he a) probably murdered her, based on no facts at all, b) that he is "doing this for the money", claiming that you know this because you met him once, and therefore know all, and c) that Teri would be just fine if only she was home with her parents, and getting therapy, even though she has been in a vegetative state for the past, what is it, 13 years? And that somehow her lingering on is "her choice". Her choice? She's not capable of making one. And then to claim that her husband is "living in sin" with a woman, when the reason he can't remarry is because his wife has been in a vegetative state for all these years and he therefore can't get a divorce. Geez, what a catch 22 for this poor guy. My dad was in such a vegetative state from a stroke, and my mom was asked to make a decision as to whether to take him off life support or not (he had a strong heart that kept beating, even though his brain was dead). If he hadn't have been taken off life support, he would have died from the tube they had to put down his throat, and the eventual pneumonia it would produce. Now, this woman isn't in a coma, she just, brainwise, as was my dad, isn't there. Her physical shell is being kept alive, but she is gone. I know this isn't a valid comparison, except for in it's bizarreness, but it's like Ted Williams being kept on ice so his DNA could be cloned further down the road to produce more great baseball players. A concept not based in reality. I think it equally incredibly bizarre that this woman's parents want to cling on for year after year nursing a brain dead body. There's something real unhealthy about this, and equally not based in reality. Each to their own opinion, but I think these parents need some therapeutic help. They should have let go of this long, long ago. Life can be cruel, as it was to their daughter, but I think it is equally cruel to prolong her physical agony low these many years to satisfy their own psychological needs, unhealthy ones at best.