« "Appointment Gratification" | Main | Fake Statistics »
March 22, 2005
Terri Schiavo
Like some other bloggers, I've held off commenting on Terri Schaivo, partially because it's not my type of subject, partially because others have covered it better, and partially due to the constraints of time. It is a compelling story, however, and has captivated the nation for good reasons. It is a story that deserves attention, because it may portent things to come.
Wizbang sums up the Democrats attitudes nicely
Unborn Child? Kill It.
Sick Woman? Kill it.
Convicted Murder on death row? Do every thing you can do to save it!
Just to show how convoluted this has become, the Democrats are claiming "states rights" and that the federal government is overstepping it's authority as reasons why Congress should not get involved. Since when did liberals ever care about either of those?And where, by the way, are all the disability advocates when we really need them?
As usual Tom Sowell has some penetrating observations:
The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic -- ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.
Ok, enough partisanship. It's always fun to go after liberals and Democrats but I'll hold the line here.
What worries me is the direction that we're headed. We're headed down a path towards a Brave New World, and it's not clear to me that we have a road map. They've already reached the point in The Netherlands where doctors can actively kill patients that they believe are in a terminal state. Sure, there are supposed to be "safeguards", but reports that I recall are that they are routinely ignored.
So let's see where we're at. First we decided to just kill babies in the womb. At the time of Roe v Wade, we were told that abortion was necessary because of rape and incest. Turns out that most abortions today occur because a baby would be an inconvenience to the parents. Then we have the stem-cell debate. We are told not to worry, because only "unviable" stem cells will be used, and "you do want to save lives, don't you?" Well, since we kill people at the start of their lives, why not also do it at the end? Then we can just work our way towards the middle.
One reason why I think the story has generated so much attention is that the husband, Michael Schiavo, is such a disgrace, while Terri's real family, the Schindlers, is so warm and caring.
Now let's stop and I'll lay a few cards on the table. I have a living will with a "do not resusitate" clause in it. And I do not think that people who have truely experienced brain death should be kept alive by artificial means. But that's not what's happening here. Terri Schiavo is not "brain dead." She is not being "allowed to die"; she is being killed. Every member of her family except her husband want to keep her alive. Something is wrong with that.
She may or may not come back to her old self, most but not all medical opinion says no. But it just seems to me, like it does to our president, that we should err on the side of life. Is that too much to ask?
Update
Mark Steyn nails it:
America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands."The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."
Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.
Posted by Tom at March 22, 2005 12:11 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.theredhunter.com/mt/refer.cgi/315
