Posted on 04/04/2005 5:51:26 AM PDT by Theodore R.
The execution of Terri Schiavo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 4, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Terri Schiavo is dead. She did not die a natural death, unless you believe a court order to cut off food and water to a disabled woman until she dies of starvation and thirst is natural.
No, Terri Schiavo was executed by the state of Florida. Her crime? She was so mentally disabled as to be unworthy of life in the judgment of Judge George Greer. The execution was carried out at Woodside Hospice. An autopsy will reveal that Terri's vital organs shut down for lack of food and water. She did not die of the brain damage she suffered 15 years ago. She was put to death. We have crossed a watershed in America.
Michael Schiavo's argument that Greer found compelling was that this is what Terri wanted and she had told him so, though Michael never mentioned this until eight years after she was disabled.
Did Terri, at 26, really tell the man to whom she swore lifelong fidelity to find a way to kill her if she became handicapped? Is that what she had in mind when they pledged to stand by each other "in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part"?
Was Terri that different from her mom, dad, brother and sister, who fought with all they had to keep her alive so they could take care of her for all the years she had left? Why, one wonders, did this severely handicapped woman fight for two weeks against the dying of the light?
America is a great country because she is good country, and if ever she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great, Alexis de Toqueville is quoted as saying. Are we that America today? Are we the same kind of people? Would the country we grew up in have done this to a disabled woman?
Hubert Humphrey, a passionate liberal, once said, "The moral test of government is how [it] treats those who are in the dawn of life ... those who are in the twilight of life ... and those who are in the shadows of life."
In America, three in 10 in the dawn of life never see the light of day. They are destroyed in the womb because their very existence embarrasses or would encumber their parents. In the twilight of life, we have begun to provide our elderly ill with the means of assisted suicide. In Europe, euthanasia has become involuntary in some nursing homes. In the shadows of life – the sick, the needy, the handicapped – there is now in this land we once called "God's country" a chance the state will put you to death.
The motivations of the good folks praying for Terri outside the hospice one can understand. The motives of her parents one can understand. Even the motives of Michael Schiavo one can understand. He wants to be rid of Terri to start a new life with his new family.
What is inexplicable is why he did not get a divorce and let her go. What is inexplicable is the behavior of the media talking heads, who seemed so desperately anxious that the judge's ruling not be reversed and that Terri die. Why were they so pro-death?
One must not interfere in a family decision, they say. But these are the same folks who always demand interference if a father takes a belt to discipline his 14-year-old delinquent son.
This is what Terri would have wanted, they say. We have no right to interfere. But what Terri would have wanted is unclear and in dispute. And if there is disagreement, why not come down on the side of life? Why come down on the side of death, which is final and forever? Why were so many progressives on the side of death for Terri Schiavo?
Conservatives are hypocrites, they charge. The Right opposes judicial activism and preaches states' rights. But in Terri's case, the Right clamored for judicial activism and rejected states' rights.
But this is absurd. The judicial activist in Terri's case is Greer, who sentenced a brain-damaged woman to death by starvation and dehydration. If this is not judicial activism, in violation of a citizen's right to life, due process of law, and not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, what is?
And what is there left to say about that angel of death, the American Civil Liberties Union? As Nat Hentoff writes, the ACLU, "which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die."
But whose rights were in mortal peril here? Why was the ACLU not at the door of that hospice, denouncing Greer the way it would be at the door of a penitentiary denouncing Jeb Bush, if the ACLU even suspected an innocent man was being put to death?
We have turned a sad page in the history of America's decline.
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> Then you have the judges. They have been fully infected with the disease of liberalism, which at its heart says, "We know what's best for you." That turns justice on its head and each case is no longer decided on law and facts, but by the need of each individual judge to feel powerful and important and to impress his peers.
Pretty well described -- and simply a recognition that we're no longer governed by consistent rules of law, but capricious and biased decisions from black-robed men.
> A daring man, a man driven by the Holy Spirit, would have found some quasi-legal pretext,
Yeah, like any governor's power of pardon, which wouldn't have presented any real political risk for Jeb. That option wouldn't have broken any laws.
Jeb took an oath to uphold Florida's consitution, but by not pardoning and protecting Terri, Jeb actually violated his oath, Florida's constitution, and a number of Florida statutes as well.
In the realm of the bizarre -- where all this is -- Michael denying the parents a lock of Terri's hair is just beyond my imagination.
The only reasonable explanation I have heard is that perhaps he was afraid they might use it for some kind of testing.
If it wasn't that, then it was simply cruel. One more assertion of his control over Terri's death. While he drives his new Mercedes and cohabitates with his GF.
I agree completely.
"This isn't happening on my watch" would have done nicely. That and a few hundred state troopers.
He could have done it.
What would have been really nice would be if he had Greer arrested at the same time. Led away in handcuffs.
He could have done that too. Greer acted illegally. If Greer had ordered that a dog be denied food and water, he could have been jailed.
> Terri's family wanted a lock of Terri's hair and some of > Terri's ashes, but Michael said "No."
>
> That SOB Greer probably was the judge who ruled this.
I just can't get over this.
Why do that?
What I have to say about this would surely get my posting priledges suspended again. They already have been once on this.
Damn right.
Not many people realize that.
Thank you for posting this. Escellent article.
I hope the Schindlers, or someone, sues Michael Schiavo.
They can't. MRS and George W. Greer are protected against suits by FL law in connection with Terri's extermination.
> They can't. MRS and George W. Greer are protected against suits by FL law in connection with Terri's extermination.
At present they can't. But there are so many elements of a massive corrupt conspiracy swirling around at least the evil triumvir who culminated this tragic event. theempirejournal.com obtained Florida documents demonstrating legitimate reason to question JINO Greer's de jure judicial status. On 3/18/05, the very evening Terri's feeding tube was removed, HINO rambled on the Larry King Live program and made two statements which completely contradicted his court position that he knew what Terri's wishes were about "artificial" means to sustain lives. HINO's inadvertent admission proves that the many affidavits from independent sources attesting to HINO's lack of knowledge [of Terri's wishes] were truthful. If drawn together and assembled for a compelling legally coherent action, it might still be possible to reverse Greer's judgment and civil execution order. IMHO, Terri was murdered and there's no statute of limitations for murder. And if, in a court of law, it cannot be denied that Greer has been illegally occupying the circuit judgeship position, he would lose judicial immunity.
My personal conviction is what I've stated here can be achieved. At a minimum, research and being able to pore through at least a good portion of legal documentation is necessary, starting with all documentation from HINO's original filing back in 1998. Kind of difficult since I'm in California, but not impossible. At lot of the documentation, but unfortunately not all, is available somewhere on the internet. I'd very much welcome anyone's assistance locating documentation -- particularly from the very beginning to at least 2002.
More than vindication for Terri is at stake here. Unless Greer's rulings can, at whatever point in time, be shown to be foundationless and overturned, every American is at potential risk for the same sad ending as was forced on innocent, disabled and legally-helpless Terri.
Tell the Media to report the REAL Schiavo polls!
http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=7351686&type=ME
My account, etc. of Terri Schindler's Funeral Mass:
http://tekgnosis.typepad.com
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