Killing Terri Schiavo
Thomas Sowell (back to web version) |
SendPosted on 03/24/2005 3:26:10 PM PST by The Ghost of FReepers Past
townhall.com
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Killing Terri Schiavo
Thomas Sowell (back to web version) | Send
March 24, 2005
People who say that the government has no business interfering in a private decision like removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube somehow have no problem with a squad of policemen preventing her parents (or anyone else) from giving their daughter food or water.
Do those who want to keep the government out of private decisions think that the police are not the government? Do they think that the judges who authorized this are not the government?
Sadly, this is not the only Alice-in-Wonderland confusion of words and deeds in this tragic case.
We are being told that Terri Schiavo is being "allowed" to "die a natural death." Such an argument might make some sense if this were a terminally ill person. But Terri Schiavo is not dying from anything other than a lack of food and water, from which any of the rest of us would die.
She is not dying a natural death. She is being killed.
What is being kept alive artificially is the liberal media version of events. One side of this story is being repeated endlessly, as if it were gospel, but anyone saying something different -- including doctors and nurses who have actually seen or taken care of Terri Schiavo -- is unlikely to be reported.
The nature of death by starvation and dehydration is also being depicted as "gentle" in the words of the New York Times -- the same New York Times which in 2002 reported starving people in India dying "clutching pained stomachs."
This "gentle" death is the story line in the liberal media but a priest who has actually seen Terri Schiavo tells a wholly different story of her visibly deteriorating condition. If this is such an easy death, why not videotape it and show those of us who are less enlightened how mistaken we are? Instead, there is a ban on anyone's photographing Terri as she dies.
Despite the oft-repeated claim that Terri Schiavo is being "allowed" to die, supposedly in accordance with her own wishes, the only person who says that these were her wishes is the one person who wants her dead and who personally stands to benefit from her death -- her husband, Michael Schiavo.
When Sean Hannity said this on the Fox News channel's "Hannity & Colmes" program, he was assured by a lawyer who was defending the removal of the feeding tube that Michael Schiavo was not the only one to hear Terri say this. But, when Hannity demanded to know the name of just one other person, the lawyer followed an old lawyer's maxim: "When your case is weak, shout louder!" He shouted and waxed indignant -- but did not produce the name of any other person.
This case is one where many people speak with certainty about very uncertain things -- and the certainties of one side contradict the certainties of the other.
Many seem certain that Terri Schiavo is vegetative, does not understand what is going on around her and cannot respond. But Carla Sauer Iyer, a nurse who attended Mrs. Schiavo for more than a year, has contradicted all of this. Moreover, she has painted a very different picture of Michael Schiavo than the one he presents to the courts and to the media.
But you are not likely to find her eyewitness account of events in the mainstream media.
According to this nurse, Michael Schiavo complained that his wife wasn't dying fast enough -- only the word he used was not wife or woman but a word that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
The nurse's sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, is that she reported to the police that she had found Terri in both medical and emotional distress after a closed door visit by her husband -- and that she also found a vial of insulin, as well as needle marks on Terri, after Michael Schiavo's visit.
The same mainstream media that will scour the country to find individuals to quote in support of killing Terri Schiavo will not lift a finger to investigate the chilling charges this nurse filed with the police years ago. It might disturb the picture they are trying to paint.
Terri Schiavo is being killed because she is inconvenient to her husband and because she is inconvenient to those who do not want the idea of the sanctity of life to be strengthened and become an impediment to abortion. Nor do they want the supremacy of judges to be challenged, when judges are the liberals' last refuge.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell | Read Sowell's biography
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Please remember they are both politicians and as such not a lot should be expected of them in the way of strong moral leadership. (Yes, I know there are exceptions.)
I am none the less amazed at the venom and sarcasm, as well as out right falsehoods, that people (shall we mention names?)will peddle in order to support this atrocity.
But to get back to important matters, what can we do to get the politicians to act on this now? This refusal to let her take food and water naturally cannot be legal. I defy anyone to point to any legal authroity for a judge to order this. He is getting away with it because our politicians will not call him on it. On another thread a person mentioned that since she is swallowing her own saliva she might very well be able to take water and maybe even dilute food. A thread with an editorial in the weekly standard by a Harvard Psychiatrist said there is no legal, medical or ethical reason not to give her a chance to take food and water. No reason unless you are determined that she die even if she could sustain her own life, that is.
Please, are you listening Jeb or George Bush? Take her out of that facility and let someone give her water -- NOW!
I have been reading his articles and books for years, one of the smartest men of the last three generations if not the smartest, IMHO.
You should read his book "Liberty or Equality".
They would have to kill me, ever seem a mad Mama with a back up of a bunch of redneck relatives who don't beleive in gun control?
Anybody seen winston?
Not since he got spanked
I thought that myself until just yesterday. But I'm beginning to think they could have done more. One Bush is President, the other Bush is Governor. With the best team of lawyers, they couldn't come up with a solution for this, a rescue for Terri?
Something is very wrong when a President and a Governor can't outwit a swamp judge (as Savage calls him). I think they're more interested in giving the appearance of helping, rather than actually rescuing her. They could have called in the National Guard (or whatever) to get her out of there - career be damned!
I still don't understand the purpose of starving Terri? If they wanted to terminate her life, why didn't they do it humanely, with an injection? Even Kevorkian killed humanely. Why starve her to death? It's barbaric.
Perhaps. But we can strengthen it by taking out some of his arguments. He ought to make his case without arguing the facts as decided by the court. The argument fails when relying on contrary evidence. Too much argument has been wasted to trying to refute the facts as decided by the court. To win it, you have to argue the law.
The court already decided the facts. It's too late to change that.
IMHO, The Lord is using Terri to clearly illuminate the moral choices before this generation. Please see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1369009/posts
which is a prayer written by a friend. He says it better than I can.
Agree, totally........as a mother.
Feeding someone is an experimental procedure? For the love of God! Is there no end to the pretzel logic this clown will employ to kill Terri? I can't believe this is happening in America.
Santorum, DeLay et al tried to do that.
But if they had insisted on keeping that provision in the bill, the Death-o-crats were not going to let it pass. Who are the principal villains? Levin (Michigan), Boxer.
And how about "Lebensunwertes Leben" ?
The Death-o-crats use that phrase all the time now, except of course in translation. Their English version is "no quality of life."
Bump...thanks for the truth.
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