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April 1, 2005
Terri Schiavo Roundup
John Leo has a disturbing column on the new field of "bioethics", something that most of us probably didn't even know existed until Terri Schaivo became news.
Instead of the traditional emphasis on the sanctity of life, bioethics began to stress the quality of life, meaning that many damaged humans, young and old, don't qualify for personhood because their lives have lost value. The nonpersons should be allowed to die and in some cases be killed. This explains why so few bioethicists have protested what the state and her husband planned for Terri Schiavo, who is severely damaged, but not in pain or dying, not brain dead, and in no position to protest her own execution on grounds that other people consider it best for her.
I'm going to write more about this in the future, and will try to find out how accurate Leo's description is. If he's even halfway right then we've got a lot of work ahead of us.
Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, is described as a "ghoul" by Michelle Malkin. From what I read about him, I'd have to agree. He claims close to telepathic powers in determining if someone is "telling" him that they want to die. From his book "Litigation as Spiritual Practice":
Such a deep, dark, silent blue. I stared as far into her eyes as I could, hoping to sense some glimmer of understanding, some hint of awareness. The deeper I dove, the darker became the blue, until the blue became the black of some bottomless lake. "Mrs. Browning, do you want to die ... do you want to die?" I nearly shouted as I continued to peer into her pools of strikingly beautiful but incognizant blue. It felt so eerie. Her eyes were wide open and crystal clear, but instead of the warmth of lucidity, they burned with the ice of expressionlessnessOookay
James Taranto wonders why so many liberals, who are always talking about how "the strong have a duty to protect the weak" are not as compassionate as they claim to be. Much of it, he says, has to do with abortion politics.
The Editors of National Review write about how the language of death was manipulated by those who, frankly, wanted to see her killed:
And for that to happen, the use of words like "starvation" and "dehydration" would have to be discouraged. Those words might, after all, have reminded us that what was done to Schiavo would be criminal if done to an animal and provoke cries of "torture" and "cruel and unusual punishment" if done to a convicted capital murderer. And "killed," of course, was totally verboten. Schiavo was being "removed from life support," not denied basic sustenance. The phrase "persistent vegetative state" had to be repeated constantly — never mind that basic tests were never performed to establish this diagnosis, and such diagnoses have a very high error rate — and treated as though it meant "brain death."
Like me, they also worry that we've stepped onto a slippery slope;
Next time it will be easier. It always is. The tolerance of early-term abortion made it possible to tolerate partial-birth abortion, and to give advanced thinkers a hearing when they advocate outright infanticide.
Wesley Pruden predicts that before all this is over Terri will seem a footnote.
Morton Kondacke has a balanced, sensitive view. He experienced a similar situation with his wife Millie only last summer.
Linda Chavez intites the medical profession
So, why did the court give so much more deference to Medellin's claims than to Mrs. Schiavo's parents? It's hard to escape the conclusion it is because many people, including the judges who have considered her case, believe Terry Schiavo's disabilities render her no longer fully human. And in this judgment the medical establishment is fully complicit.The issues raised by Terri's death aren't going to go away. In an earlier post I wondered if perhaps the pro-life side hadn't overplayed our hand. Perhaps some have. But at this point thoughts are that those who have tried to dehumanize us as we near our end have a lot to answer for, and we are beginnning to expose them.
The very term used to describe Mrs. Schiavo's condition -- persistent vegetative state -- conjures up images of a subhuman, subanimal life form.
Posted by Tom at April 1, 2005 9:00 AM
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