Posted on 08/01/2009 4:58:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
Recently in a Washington Times radio interview, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was expressing his concerns regarding health care reform. He commented that the GOP’s handling of my sister Terri Schiavo is an example of what he fears, stating, “It is inserting itself into the very fabric of the decisions that you make, have to make every single day. It’ll make the Terri Schiavo case look like a walk in the park.”
I understand the point that Michael Steele was trying to make. He was using Terri as an example of what it would mean if the government was to get involved in the decisions of healthcare. However, not only was it a badly chosen comparison, but as a proclaimed pro-lifer, Mr. Steele should be ardently supportive of the actions taken by Congress—Democrats and Republicans—in their attempt to save Terri’s Life.
Perhaps Mr. Steele has fallen victim, along with so many others, to the same media spin that implies Congress was intruding on a “private” matter, rather than applauding them for stepping in to protect a disabled woman who was in the very process of being dehydrated to death.
The act by Congress granted Terri a federal and civil rights claim to be heard in federal court. In fact, these are the same rights we give to those on death row—who die far less brutal and painful deaths. If Ted Bundy or Scott Peterson had a guaranteed federal court review after their cases have been gone through the state courts, then why shouldn’t an innocent disabled woman like Terri be given that same chance?
That is what I find so ironic about Mr. Steele’s remarks and his concern regarding a government-controlled health care system. What happened to Terri is a perfect example of what he and Republicans are now trying to prevent from happening and what so many health care experts are warning us will happen if President Obama gets his way and establishes a system of health care rationing that would inevitable lead to countless premature deaths.
Much has been written warning us about the dangers of Obamacare, but mostly in terms of what it would mean for the elderly and perhaps the chronically ill. Unfortunately, I have not seen any reports of what will happen to those like Terri—the cognitively disabled. However, from what I am reading and what is being proposed for health care reform, I think it is safe to say that those like Terri don’t stand a chance. Especially, if the proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) is formed that will put bioethicists in charge of who can and cannot receive treatment.
We are in grave danger any time health care decisions are taken out of the hands of individual patients and their families and placed into the hands of government bureaucrats whose decisions are based on cutting costs rather than valuing the dignity and equal worth of every human life.
In fact, many people are entirely unaware of what we have learned through Terri’s Foundation (the foundation my family formed in Terri’s honor to help protect the cognitively injured). We are regularly contacted by families who are in situations pleading with those in authority for treatment for their family members. And much too often they are forced to sit by and watch helplessly as their loved ones dies.
So yes, I do agree with Mr. Steele’s assessment that, “It’ll make the Terri Schiavo case look like a walk in the park.” My fear is that it will make the killing of the cognitively disabled as ordinary and commonplace as purchasing a loaf of bread.
Surely that is not what “hope and change” should be all about.
I think this will interest you
Poorly written article. So the guy was disagreeing with Steele’s reasoning at the beginning and then goes on to agree with Steele’s reasoning at the end.
However won’t matter to the usual cast of characters on FR that think if Steele said the sky is blue, that he is full of sh** and argue that it is really purple.
Well if you think the article is poorly written why don’t you show what you would have written and let others judge
The Terry Schiavo Act was an abomination. I am so tired of pols thinking they have to “do something”, even if that something is clearly detrimental to the very fabric of our system of law. Legislation for particular individuals — in this case “any parent of Terry Schiavo” — along with the clear interference by the federal government in what was clearly a state matter was one of the major issues that showed that the pubs had lost their legitimacy to govern.
My personal opinion is that Michael Schiavo is a world class slime, that there is at least some evidence that he caused Terry’s injuries, and that he was attempting to rush her death so he could cash in on her estate and then marry his girlfriend. But so clearly not a federal matter.
LLS
Not a bash on you so don't take it personal, but I think the guy should have “recalibrated” his premise given to the conclusion he comes to in the end.
why? it was poorly written but made a good point in spite of it. Why do you take personal umbrage at the criticism of an awkward read?
are you secretly Teri Shivo’s brother?
Huh?
The issue many have with Steele is the sound of crickets that follow him....
Where is he? We want him out front constantly....hammer, punch, protest, yell, be there....just get some facetime before the American people.... Take advantage of the insanity of the left... RESPOND for goodness sakes!
And he is also for gun control.
“that showed that the pubs had lost their legitimacy to govern.”
It’s been my experience that mostly liberals call Republicans the slang term “pubs”. Are you from the Huffpo?
You forget that thousands of Americans were concerned and cared about Terri, not just her nuclear family. They flooded the switchboards in DC with petitions to save her life from an evil husband who wanted to kill her while he had a shack up honey and two children with another woman. When legislators are contacted like that they have to listen to the people and act. That’s what they are there for.
The situation could easily have been solved if Michael Schiavo had given over Terri to her father and mother and brother who were dedicated to caring for her. Michael was not. He had dubious motivations all along and liberals across this country ignored that and actually exulted when the Republicans lost their spine and pulled away from saving Terri’s life for political expediency.
Terri was not dying, she was simply disabled. Remember: Hitler started killing the disabled (he gassed them) before he even started on the Jews. National Socialism always targets the weakest citizens first. It’s government’s RESPONSIBILITY to protect these citizens.
As a spiritual person I have always sensed that the Terri Schiavo case turned the hand of God against the Bush brothers George and Jeb, for failing to act to save a helpless non-dying woman’s life. It was no coincidence to me that Bush’s presidency took a nosedive after Terri was killed. And no surprise to me that Jeb lost any chance he had at the White House for failing to act to save Terri. God does not look on kindly when the powerful abuse the weak.
He is not enough of a Conservative to be speaking for what Conservative Republicans want.
Right, and flood waters pouring into your basement is no reason to climb on the roof. Later on, that turns out to be the only place you have left.
The Schindlers didn't set out to make it a federal matter, that was a last resort after a long series of legal battles.
You are right. Steele is confused... and so is the writer of this article.
Personally, I think the whole issue of Terry should be argued in some other context. It was a legal issue — her rights as a human — not an issue of how to “fix” the American medical establishment.
I’d like to keep those two issues separate.
Let’s concentrated on this solid fact:
The rats will destroy medicare to build obamacare which will rival UK-care for inefficiency and waste and uselessness and which THEY (congress and all federal workers) will be exempt from since they’ll get premium platinum care provide by we-the-slaves (the taxpayers) who will get shit on our deathbeds in return.
THAT’S the issue here. Not Terry S.
Why don't you take a look at my Freep start date and my posts before you engage in idiotic ad hominems. Disgusted conservatives also call them "pubs". For that matter, so do republicans.
Thousands of Americans caring about Terri Schiavo is irrelevant to the question of whether the federal government of the United States should have passed a piece of legislation designed to affect only a single case. They changed the law not because it was a good idea, but because they caved to political pressure.
There are many things I want the federal government to do. I want them to mandate by law that I can carry a concealed gun in NY. I want them to outlaw abortion everywhere. I want them to do away with stupid state regulations that burden real taxpayers and businesses everywhere. But that's not the federal government's job.
Legitimate state matters must be preserved for the states if federalism is to mean anything. Otherwise, you're as bad as the democrats and their invasion of every right you hold dear. Limits on government mean something, or at least should mean something. If you're willing to throw them away the first time you find an issue that's more important to you than federalism and limited government, don't come crying to me when the other side does the same thing.
And if you had bothered to read the concluding paragraph of my post, you'd see that I was enormously sympathetic to Terri's plight. The only people who had a legal right to do anything about it were the people of Florida.
And that somehow makes it a federal matter? That deserves the federal government legislating on behalf of particular individuals in a discrete and singular legal case? Heartstrings and desperation, at least in my book, are not a good justification for eroding what little remained of federalist principles and the rule of law.
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Your obvious ignorance of the events surrounding Terri's murder are glaring.
When a state government is unwilling to provide a person the protections that are provided under the state's constitution, the federal government clearly has the option of intervening, and this was clearly the case with Terri.
When a person's constitutional rights are blatantly ignored, the federal government clearly has the option of intervening, and this was clearly the case with Terri.
The United States Congress has the right to subpoena a person to appear before the full Congress or a committee to testify, if that person fails to appear they have the right to enforce the subpoena. They SHOULD have done this with Terri, but failed.
Terri Schindler Schiavo is the ONLY person in American history who was sentenced to death and executed without an indictment or a trial by jury both of which are ABSOLUTE constitutional rights.
LLS
When a state government is unwilling to provide a person the protections that are provided under the state's constitution, the federal government clearly has the option of intervening, and this was clearly the case with Terri.
When a state government is unwilling to provide a person the protections provided under the state constitution, there is a constitutional remedy -- habeus corpus. You, and thousands like you, however, were totally willing to throw the constitution and the proper relation between the federal government and the states to the wind just to satisfy your urge for justice. The urge was good, but your means was yet another bomb thrown at the foundations of limited government.
The vitriol in your post is similar to that shown by leftist sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome. You hate the fact that Michael Schiavo murdered Terri so much that you were willing to use every tool in your arsenal even if it meant undermining our cultural notions of limited government and the rule of law. It also conclusively demonstrated to independents that the so-called conservative / republican commitment to limited government was a complete farce and that the dems might be right when they shill that the republicans want to turn this into a theocracy to control every aspect of our lives.
Moreover, as your post shows, you are quite happy to transfer irrationally that hate onto anyone who dares to suggest that using the federal government to craft special legislation to benefit only a single person was detrimental to the republic. Federalism and limited government are great concepts until you want the federal government to impose your personal ideals on the states.
This mindset is indistinguishable from that employed by the leftists. Law (and by extension the constitution) is just a tool for you to achieve your personal ends. When the history of the Decline and Fall of the American Republic is written, that positivist attitude will be worth an entire chapter or even an entire volume in itself as one of the chief causes of the slide into fascism.
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