Poll: No Role for Government in Schiavo Case

ABC News ^ | March 21, 2005 | GARY LANGER

[robertpaulsen]

You do realize that it was the judge that ordered the feeding tube removed after hearing testimony? This was not Michaels decision. He brought it to the judge to decide.

So, your scenario about the parents choosing to withhold food is wrong and is also inflammatory to the discussion.

[Dawgreg]

Right! This is not an ordinary cut and dried case. There are circumstances that the general public doesn't have a clue about unless they inform themselves and I think this poll just might have run across these particular people.

[olivia3boys]

My Democrat coworker, who BTW is Muslim, from Egypt, and agrees with EVERYTHING the Democrats say usually, is totally appalled that this woman is being starved when her family wants to take care of her.

It's as simple as that.

I really don't think this is a very complicated moral dilemma.

[goldstategop]

Its not a lame argument. We have only her husband's word for it and he doesn't exactly strike me as the suffering martyr type. I'm hard pressed to think of a spouse that wanted a loved one dead. That's why people think he's nuts. Of course we can't know what Terri said. She never told her husband or her family. But that's understandable. At 26, you think you'll live forever. Its a tragedy what's happened to this woman. All the same, its not a justification to take her life.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[goldstategop]

I expect the Democrats to be poll-driven. But you know what they say about popularity - its fleeting.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[Long Cut]

"I expect the Democrats to be poll-driven..."

Do you doubt for a minute that the Congressional Republicans AREN'T? If so, wait a week as more polls come out and they all drop this like a red-hot rivet. Prior to now, all they had were the emails, letters, and phone calls of a small but vocal minority to go on. Now they have polling data, with more to come.

It's not gonna be pretty.

[LanaTurnerOverdrive]

most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved.

It probably didn't help when the GOP leadership circulated a memo to congress advising them to get involved because it would be good politics and please their base.

[Long Cut]

"look out evolution time to end that government funded religion."

Since most of the same extremists supporting THAT outcome also are the ones who brought about this fiasco, don't hold your breath. Lawmakers don't listen well to fanatics, especially after polls come out.

[Diamond]

It's hard to imagine that even Rome amidst the worst of its bloodthirsty revelry and debauchery would have imagined killing a newborn by sucking it's brains out while in the process of delivery, or burning the skin off of unborn children with injected concentrated saline solutions. Yet it happens in this country all the time.

Well actually Roman fathers (Paterfamilias) had the power of life and death over every member of their family. If a Roman father didn't want to raise a newborn as a citizen for any reason, or for no reason at all, the baby could be abandoned, usually in the countryside to die of exposure.

Cordially,

[workerbee]

Most people who have even heard of Terri Schiavo in the first place assume that she is comatose and being kept alive artificially with a respirator, etc. Very few people realize that the court is ordering that a helpless woman be forcibly starved to death.

Unfortunately, there is a contingent right here on Free Republic that, though they understand the facts, still prefer her murder. Like the pro-aborts who will look you straight in the eye and say, "of course it's a baby, but it's the mother's choice".

[senorita]

Well, why "What I would want is relevant" is because that is what the poll was asking people, I was just simply answering the question.

Yes God is in control, and yes family members do love and care for their own. However, the court gave Michael Schiavo guardianship of his wife, even though her family stated that they would care for her.

So the courts made a bad decision years ago. Micheal Schiavo obviously lied when he said he would go to nursing school and care for his wife at home. These facts should have been enough to give guardianship to the parents. But that hasn't happened. Now she has been deteriorating for 15 years. Its very sad.

[NY-YANK]

What gets me is that it's likely the same group that wants to artificially keep her "alive" that is tying the hands of the scientific community when it comes to genetic advances to preserve life. Am I wrong?

[trisham]

We're seeing in the Schiavo case the logical endpoint of the culture of death. Killing innocents persons has become acceptable and sanctioned by society, with certain caveats (which themselves are being eroded away). Things like the court accepting the hearsay of another individual with obvious conflicts of interest, taking polls to gauge public approval of the killing, etc., all lend an aura of acceptability. Of course, the preference is that the killing be shielded by the masquerade of "privacy", done out of sight and out of mind, hidden away somewhere in a chamber of horrors abortion mill, or a hospice room to which visitation of family and friends is denied.

***************

Well said. Very well said.

[Just mythoughts]

"Since most of the same extremists supporting THAT outcome also are the ones who brought about this fiasco, don't hold your breath. Lawmakers don't listen well to fanatics, especially after polls come out."

Some on this forum practice the very thing they accuse others of doing. Some of us do not live our lives based upon polls. Some love to seek to incite others by slurring others into name calling, and then feign indignation when exposed.

Some think they and their precious legal system is government and are woefully ignorant about who government is by the Constitution. You just worship a different god, and your god must be taking a potty break.

[walden]

I support ALL research with adult stem cells as well as with umbilical cord and placental cells. I object to the creation of life for the purpose of destroying it.

And, in this case, I object to the destruction of life for the sake of the convenience of others.

I see nothing contradictory in these positions.

[robertpaulsen]

"We have only her husband's word for it..."

That's not true.

We have his sworn testimony along with his brother Scott's sworn testimony along with Terri's best friend, Joan's sworn testimony.

[Dog Gone]

It probably didn't help when the GOP leadership circulated a memo to congress advising them to get involved because it would be good politics and please their base.

I hadn't heard that before.

[wideawake]

Unfortunately, there is a contingent right here on Free Republic that, though they understand the facts, still prefer her murder.

Wheat and tares.

[Niteranger68]

Since they didn't ask me, I consider their poll to be BS.

[Just mythoughts]

"It probably didn't help when the GOP leadership circulated a memo to congress advising them to get involved because it would be good politics and please their base."


"I hadn't heard that before."


Somebody spreading a RUMOR, the GOP leadership has denied they sent this anonymous piece of paper.