Culture of Life or Death: Part Two
Superwoman
By: Alton Blair
I have a question for all of you "Eplerettes". If Christopher Reeves was unable to speak should he have been killed? Of course not, but that is exactly what is happening with Terri Schiavo. You see her condition was not brought on by a rambunctious horse, but instead an eating disorder. The difference between Terri and Mr. Reeves is he was able to speak. It is true she can't care for herself (nor could Reeves). It is true she can't wash herself (nor could Reeves). It is true she needs people to feed her (as did Reeves).The similarities go on and on. The only defining factor is Reeves could speak on his own behalf. As I write this at 3am I wonder what Terri would say about her weakening condition. Perhaps she regrets the choices she made in her life, or wishes for death to get her tortuous last days over. Unfortunately we will never know, because it looks like it all may come to an end very quickly. I would like to know what kind of country we live in where it is acceptable to starve somebody to death when they need our help. I know your thinking she doesn't want to live that way; well she never said that (to our knowledge). The so called husband has changed his position on what she said many times we will never know the truth. Perhaps we should have her work with a speech therapist and ask her, but unfortunately we do not have enough time for that. I'm very disappointed in our leaders and how they decided to brutally murder her...Brutally murder? Yes, I would rather have a gun put to my head and shot then die like that. If you did this to a sick dog it would be considered animal cruelty and rightfully so. Another thing that bothers me (if murder wasn't enough) was in the AP news story I read it mentioned the following:Outside the hospice, eight more people - including a10-year old boy and 13-year-old twin girls - were arrested Friday for trying to bring her water. "I don't want her to die," Joshua Heldreth, 10, from North Carolina, said before his arrest. "I'm not afraid because God is with me." On Thursday, a Rockford, Ill., man was arrested in Seminole after trying to steal a weapon from a gunshop. Michael W. Mitchell, 20, told deputies he wanted to "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo" after he visited the Pinellas Park hospice where she lives, an official said. Seminole is about 5 miles west of Pinellas Park. Where is our President? I understand he is going though the laws trying to find a way to keep her alive, but as the leader of this country he needs to step up and say "The judges who issued the tube removed will be charged with murder when she dies. All law enforcement that stops somebody from giving her water and food will be charged as an accessory to murder. Anybody who gets arrested for bring her food and water will be pardoned, because I'm the president of the United States and we must do what's right." I'm not hearing that and it truly makes me sad to be a citizen of a country who makes the distinction between life and death based on the following three words I WANT TO LIVE.
posted by SSG_E @ 11:41
6 comments
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6 Comments:
Peggy Noonan had some very good thoughts on this subject.
Euthanasia's enthusiasts
Peggy Noonan:
"Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value.
Once you "know" that--that human life is not so special after all--then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla."
So you want the president to circumvent the law?
I don't like guns. Guns kill thousands of people a year. I want W to erase the 2nd Amendment and outlaw guns. Think of all the lives that'll be saved by him taking that action.
We can't have our leaders obeying one law and disobeying anothers just to satisfy our own desires.
The polls show that most people disapprove of Congress and the Presidents efforts to intervene in this matter. But wait.... I know I do not trust polls and here is another reason why:
ABC Caught: Schiavo Poll Distorted
by Michelle Malkin
However you feel about the Terri Schiavo case, one fact is indisputable: The mainstream media (MSM) coverage of the matter has been abysmal.
On a fundamental matter of life and death, the MSM heavyweights have proven themselves utterly incapable of reporting fairly. Take a widely publicized ABC News poll released on Monday that supposedly showed strong public opposition to any Washington intervention in Terri's case. Here is how the spinmasters framed the main poll question:
"As you may know, a woman in Florida named Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible. Her parents and her husband disagree on whether or not she should be kept on life support. In cases like this who do you think should have final say, (the parents) or (the spouse)?"
A follow-up question asked:
"If you were in this condition, would you want to be kept alive, or not?"
The problem is that, contrary to what ABC News told those polled, Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" and has never been on "life support." The loaded phrase evokes images of a comatose patient being artificially sustained by myriad machines and pumps and wires. Terri was on a feeding tube. A feeding tube is not a ventilator. Terri can breathe just fine on her own.
And as many of her medical caretakers and parents have argued, if given proper rehabilitation, Terri could learn to chew and swallow on her own as well. She is disabled, not dead.
But ABC News did not see fit to inform either the poll takers or its viewers of the truth. Instead, it misled them -- and the result was a poll response that produced -- voila! -- "broad public disapproval" for any government intervention to spare Terri from slowly starving to death. Blogger Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters noted: "Either ABC is completely incompetent in conducting research, or they have attempted to fool their viewers and readership with false polling that essentially lies about the case in question. Since when does ABC conduct push polling for euthanasia?"
Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had made clear to participants that Terri is not terminally ill. Not in excruciating pain. Capable of saying "Mommy" and "Help me." And of "getting the feeling she's falling" or getting "excited," in her husband's own testimony, when her head is not held properly.
Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had informed participants that in a sworn affidavit, registered nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who worked at the Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center in Largo, Fla., while Terri Schiavo was a patient there, testified: "Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri's death. Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died yet?' and 'When is that b---h gonna die?'"
Now, if you were in this situation, would you want to be kept alive, or not?
Not to pick on ABC News, but, well, let's. In an attempt to embarrass Rep. Dave Weldon (R.-Fla.) who noted that withdrawing food and water from someone like Schiavo was extremely rare, ABC's Jake Tapper last week featured this counter-quote from Prof. Bill Allen, of the University of Florida College of Medicine:
"Feeding tubes have been removed in the United States for many years, and it's been a common practice. This has happened in many cases, probably a hundred thousand times in this country."
"A hundred thousand times"? There have been a hundred thousand cases of non-terminally ill, non-brain dead individuals slowly starved and forced to die in this country? Tapper demanded no proof from his professor. Instead, he dismissed lawmakers as ignoramuses contradicted by "experts," cited the biased ABC News poll cited above, and tossed it back to Jennings with this slam: "Terri Schiavo and her family deserved better than the way Congress worked this week."
Meanwhile, contradicting the experience of every starved child in Africa and abandoned street animal at your SPCA shelter, the New York Times informs us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death."
Is it any wonder the credibility of the MSM is withering on the vine?
Here are 2 different articles from the opposing viewpoints. They both make excellent points.
Killing Terri Schiavo
Thomas Sowell | 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.
Because she’s earned it
Neal Boortz
March 24, 2005
I signed off my talk show yesterday, stuffed unused newspaper articles in my briefcase, and headed home. As I pulled out of the studio parking garage I did what I usually do … I tuned in to see what Rush was talking about. On this particular day I had no doubt as to what the subject would be, but I wanted to hear his latest thoughts.
My studio getaway was so efficient, so swift that I was on the road in time to hear Rush come out of his hourly newsbreak. Now … before I go any further, let it be clear; I’m a Rush Limbaugh’s fan. Nobody does talk radio better, not even me. I love what he’s done for our radio format, what he’s done for America, and what he’s done to the left. Liberals hate him. I love him for that too. Rush has made me money by elevating the talk radio format to the top of the heap, and saved me even more through the tax cuts that came from his promotion of the Republican agenda.
As Rush opens the hour he has a question; a question for “you liberals.” He wants to know “Why do you want Terri Schiavo to die?”
I’m on the opposite side of this issue from Rush, Hannity, Liddy and most of my not-liberal talk radio colleagues. So the question intrigued me. Why, indeed, do I want Terri Schiavo to die?
Rush’s question deserved an answer. Not some glib response, but an honest, heartfelt answer. So, … here’s mine.
I want Terri Schiavo to die because I believe she’s earned it.
I don’t view death as the end of the journey of a human soul. I view it as a transition. The God I believe in would not waste the total life experiences of a man or woman made in his image on a total and complete death; a dead end, if you will, with nothing to follow. I cannot believe that it is God’s plan that the life experiences of a man; wisdom gained, lessons learned and love experienced, should, upon death, disappear as if they never were. I believe that there’s something to follow the life we know on this earth; and I believe that most of the people fighting to keep the body of Terri Schiavo alive feel the same way.
These feelings give rise to some questions of my own; questions for the devoutly religious people who are fighting to keep Terri Schiavo alive. Do you believe in God’s promise of everlasting life? Do you believe that the reward for a life well spent on this earth is a life with God in heaven after you die? If you do, then a few more questions if you will.
Do you believe that the human soul can make the transition to everlasting life while the human body that carried that soul through life clings to life on this earth? If you do, then you must surely believe that Terri Schiavo has earned and is already enjoying her reward in heaven. That being the case, why is it so important to you that the now-unneeded body of Terri Schiavo is kept alive?
But perhaps you believe, as I do, that the human soul is so connected to and integrated with its earthly body that any transition will not be made until that body ceases functioning -- until death occurs.. That being the case, why do you so ardently desire that the soul of Terri Schiavo spend five, ten, perhaps 30 years or more trapped in a useless and non-functioning body, unable to move on to whatever reward awaits her? Isn’t 15 years enough?
Where do your concerns truly lie, with the eternal soul of Terri Schiavo, or with her earthly body?
Most of us are aware of the stories related by people who have near-death experiences. The usual scenario is a surgical procedure or some other medical emergency. These people describe a sensation of leaving their body at the very time the heart stops beating and the brain ceases functioning. They tell of floating above their body while watching doctors below working hard to resuscitate, to bring them back to life. As the heart once again starts beating and as the brain resumes its functions, they tell of a sensation of falling back into their own bodies to resume life.
We don’t hear from the patients upon whom resuscitation efforts are not successful. We don’t hear from them because they’ve left us. They’re gone to experience whatever lies beyond. They died.
Is it possible that the soul of Terri Schiavo has been floating – held in some prolonged and excruciating limbo – waiting for doctors to stop interfering with the process of her death? I believe that this is so, and that is why I have supported her husband’s desires to have her feeding tube removed. Terri Schiavo isn’t being murdered. She’s being allowed to die. Death will not be an end for Terri Schiavo, it will be a beginning. She will finally be allowed to claim the reward that ultimately we all seek, a reward she’s earned and deserves.
Neal Boortz is a lawyer and nationally syndicated radio talk show host.
alton, if it's the will of the people then let's get the law changed. I don't want her to die. I want her to come back to her parents. But as the law stands right now, it's her husband's decision what happens to her. Not mine, yours, Williams, W's, Jeb's or her parents. Change the law, not break it.
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