More Thoughts on Terri Schiavo

From George Neumayr:

Under judge-made law, euthanasia has become America's most astonishing form of premeditated murder, a cold-blooded crime in which husbands can kill their wives and even turn them into accomplices to it through the telepathy of "their wishes." To wonder if we're on the slippery slope sounds like an obtuse moral compliment at this point. The truth is we're at the bottom of the slope and have been for quite some time, standing dumbly as the bodies of innocent humans pile up around us. As we sift through them -- puzzling over how they got so numerous -- we're reduced to mumbling sophistries about compassion and consent.

This is the "humane holocaust" of which Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, a culture that kills the weak, from deaf unborn children to mute disabled women, and calls it mercy. Those responsible for this humane holocaust look into the mirror and see Gandhi, but it is Hitler who glances back. If someone had taken the passages of Mein Kampf that speak of euthanizing "unfortunates" and inserted them into the columns from newspapers and magazines cheering Schiavo's death, would anyone have known the difference?

From Frank Salvato:

Greer’s tenure presiding over the Schiavo case offered a plethora of questionable decisions.
Why did he admit hearsay evidence as fact? Why did he assume the role of Terri’s guardian in the face of a conflict of interest and against Florida judicial canon? Why did he refuse to appoint a Guardian ad Litem for Terri in light of Michael Schiavo’s compromised moral and ethical positions? Why did he fail to enforce Florida law that would have provided Terri therapy until her demise? Why did he allow Michael Schiavo to spend money designated for Terri’s care on legal services designed to end her life? Why did he allow Terri to be admitted to a hospice under false pretenses? Why did he fail to order confirming MRI and PET scan evaluations? Why did he admit into evidence the testimony of a biased medical panel some of whom were right-to-die advocates? And why didn’t he recuse himself in the face of his flagrant bias against the Schindler family when petitioned to do so? These glaring transgressions against Florida law, US law and Florida judicial canon should have sounded an alarm; instead they were upheld in court after court after court.

An even more disturbing fact is that the federal judiciary – whether you agree or disagree with how they came to be included in this case – refused to even address the inequities of Greer’s court. Charged with reviewing the case de novo, the federal judiciary did nothing of the sort. Instead they engaged in a deadly game of indignance with the legislative and executive branches of our federal government. They refused to hear arguments and gave no cause. They played constitutional politics while a life hung in the balance. Terri’s life clock clicked onward toward her hour of reckoning and the tyranny of judicial activism donned the dark shroud of death.

From Mary Mostert:

Terri went 60 hours without food or water before a different judge issued an emergency stay because new evidence had come to light, and her feeding was resumed. She died almost exactly 5 years later with Felos leading the legal battle to withhold food and water from Terri. Two years ago, Felos had already been paid over $400,000 out of Terri’s $1 million malpractice award. Bobby and Suzanne had visitation rights reinstated only on condition that they would not try to spoon feed their sister. Greer was reported to have said: "I don't want anyone trying to feed that girl!" In 2003 Judge Greer rejected a request by Robert and Mary Schindler asking that their daughter be allowed an eight-week trial of speech, occupational and physical therapy to teach Terri to swallow food so she could be spoon-fed once the feeding tube is removed.” ...

In 1861 it took a Civil War to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, that declared people of African descent were not real people or citizens under the U.S. Constitution. How fitting it is that Jesse Jackson, a black man, in a last minute effort tried to rally black legislators in Florida to support a white woman’s right to food and water and life! Terri didn’t just die. Unelected judges in defiance of the US Constitution and the elected representatives of the people ordered her death.

Comments

[Erik]

OK. Also, what do you think is wrong with O'Reilly? I think there are definitely some things wrong with him too, but I wonder what you think.

[Tom McMahon]

I think of myself as a moderate's moderate. It's just that liberalism has moved so far to the left that I appear conservative to the untrained eye!

To be serious (but why start now?), let me think on that one a bit . . .

[Erik]

He's not uniformly conservative enough for you, or he just sucks, or both? He differs on a few issues from conservatives, but he's pretty conservative. I'm not sure how conservative you are, on the 1 being almost Stalin and the 100 being almost Mussolini scale that I just made up?
1-10 Wacky liberal (Hightower)
11-30 Liberal (Ted Kennedy)
31-70 Various shades of moderate (Chafee, Collins)
71-90 Conservative (W)
91-100 Wacky conservative (Falwell)

I'd put myself at a...40 I suppose. Where are you do you suppose, Tom?

[Tom McMahon]

Bill O'Reilly, by the way, has jumped the shark.

[Erik]

Heh, well perhaps your predictions will be closer this time, but I have my doubts. I see a lot of the "the more they know, the more they support us" talk. However, it seems to be "the more we tell them about the facts as we see them, the more they support us". If you tell people that the doctors badly misdiagnosed her, that the husband was definitely lying, that the court case was a sham, etc. of course more will jump on board. I don't think the handful out of the 200 or so judicial nominees being held up will change either. Democrats don't hold a lot of the cards right now, but Republicans seem to want Dems to hold absolutely none, and I don't think it's right. Complete dominance by either party is a bad idea. I also think judicial activism had nothing to do with this case, and that was brought up later because it was a rallying cry already for conservatives on other cases. I just don't think it fit that well in this case. Even Bill O'Reilly who is pretty conservative said that the law was followed as it was written. If you want a different result, change the law in Florida.

[Tom McMahon]

First, a caveat about my predictive prowess: On Election Day 2000 I predicted a Bush victory, and also predicted that "it wouldn't be as close as everybody thinks it will be". Kinda like Custer telling his men "not to take any prisoners".

The Schiavo case has the Right more energized since the 2000 election, and maybe even since Reagan. This will break the logjam in the Senate over the judicial nominees. Second, the more people know about the particulars in this one case, the likelier they are to support Terri Schiavo's now moot right to life. And already there's a Zogby poll out showing numbers much different than the first polls, which were horribly skewed.

Finally, maybe, just maybe, we have just seen the high water mark of judicial activism. "Those judges killed Terri Schiavo!" may lack elegance, but it's a powerful rallying cry for millions of voters.

On the other side, I only sense a reactive sort of passion -- Bush is for it, so I need to be against it, that sort of thing.

One more thing: I've been watching this case percolate along for the last 2 years, and I never thought it would get this big, ever.

[Erik]

More specifically, what will be the impetus, since the majority of people did not think that the decision was wrong?

[Erik]

Hm, what do you think will happen?

[Tom McMahon]

Actually, I think we may well have reached a "tipping point", and the tide will start to go the other way.

[Erik]

I'm burned out on the whole TS case. Check back with me in a year when all of the prognosticators have been proven wrong, and the world has not collapsed on itself because of this decision.

[firq krumpl]

3/29/2005 Killing Terri Schiavo — Jemima Pereira @ 11:49 pm

I’ve been interested in the Terri Schiavo case since the previous attempt to starve her to death but I’ve been remiss in commenting on the latest developments–mainly because my opinion hasn’t changed. Persons in a vegetative or near-vegetative state do not retain any abstract desire to die from their pre-vegetable days, so living wills are beside the point. You cannot make a suicide pact with your future self.

It’s all well and good to respect the desires of the dead when it comes to cremation or inheritance, all other things being equal (which they sometimes are not), but it’s a whole different matter to leave instructions to other people to kill you. Suicide is a natural right only the individual can exercise, and that right (such as it is) ends where your ability to follow through ends. If you can’t kill yourself, then you can’t kill yourself. Terri Schiavo may be able to roll her head but she can’t kill herself, so she has no right to die.

What happens to vegetables doesn’t matter to them; it only matters to us. The public’s squeamish kill-her-already attitude is the most surprising part of Terri’s case, and the least appropriate reaction of them all. Take my word for it–Terri doesn’t mind the publicity. She doesn’t care if you squabble about her autopsy by her deathbed. It doesn’t matter whether she would have minded, back when she had a mind. Terri is no longer her own problem–she’s ours, and Congress should be making a federal case out of it. At some point we do need to decide whether a husband has the right to starve his ailing wife to death. Our legal system is based on case law, and this is a case and a half.