“The measure of a society is how they treat the least of us.
Life is sacred or meaningless, there is nothing in between.”
by Kate Adamson
http://www.katesjourney.com

See videos of Terri at www.terrisfight.org

Read a comprehensive review of Terri's saga as reported by World Net Daily

Rebuilding a culture of life: In memoriam
Ben Shapiro

April 6, 2005

"Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can ... come to recognize ... the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded … "

On Friday, March 18, at about 1:45 p.m., Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed. So began the state-sanctioned killing of a 41-year-old brain-damaged woman. At the insistence of her husband, Michael, Terri Schiavo was slowly starved to death. "She has verbally expressed her wishes to me and other people," Michael told ABC's "Nightline." Michael, who since Terri's heart attack has sired two children by another woman, insisted that the procedure would be painless. "Terri will not be starved to death. Her nutrition and hydration will be taken away … Death through removing somebody's nutrition is very painless." Terri's parents, believing Catholics, sat helpless beside Terri's bed as the tube was removed.

"Such attacks strike human life at the time of its greatest frailty, when it lacks any means of self-defense. Even more serious is the fact that, most often, those attacks are carried out in the very heart of and with the complicity of the family -- the family which by its nature is called to be the 'sanctuary of life' … "

"What they're doing is, they're making the decisions for us," Michael indignantly explained to ABC. "That's what this country is coming down to. They're going to make the decisions for us … Big Brother is going to do that." According to Michael, it was his right to make the decision for Terri, without any proof beyond his word that his wife would have wanted to die. "I still have a big commitment to Terri," Michael stated. "I made her a promise." Michael made another promise, before God, on the day of his wedding: "Until death do us part." The same God ordered: "Thou shalt not murder."

"[A] new cultural climate is developing and taking hold ... broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom ... "

"She may be in a vegetative state, but her dignity requires that we honor her rights and that's what this case is about now. Everyone's constitutional rights are at stake," insisted Michael's attorney, George Felos. "That's not what this country is about. That's not what individual liberty is about."

"[T]his reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable 'culture of death' … A person who, because of illness, handicap, or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of 'conspiracy against life' is unleashed."

Michael's fight to starve Terri continued, even though he admitted that he had "moved on with a portion" of his life -- the portion that pertained to marriage and children. As Thomas Sowell put it, "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."

"In giving life to man, God demands that he love, respect and promote life. The gift thus becomes a commandment, and the commandment is itself a gift."

"It felt like some peace was happening for Terri," Michael Schiavo told NBC's "Today" on March 19. "And I felt like she was finally going to get what she wants, and be at peace and be with the Lord." Meanwhile, caregivers were prohibited from giving Terri either ice chips or lip balm to ease the symptoms of dehydration.

"And yet all the conditioning and efforts to enforce silence fail to stifle the voice of the Lord echoing in the conscience of every individual: it is always from this intimate sanctuary of the conscience that a new journey of love, openness and service to human life can begin."

On Thursday, March 31, after nearly two weeks of starvation, Terri Schiavo died. Her parents, who had been barred from her deathbed by Michael, were finally allowed to pray with the body. President George W. Bush offered a ray of hope: "I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others."

"Man has been given a sublime dignity, based on the intimate bond which unites him to his Creator: in man there shines forth a reflection of God Himself." -- Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life

©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
 

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/dl20050329.shtml

Unwitting disciples of death
David Limbaugh

All too many have become unwitting disciples of a pagan death cult, which romanticizes death and the death process, and disturbingly discounts the universal human will to live. At the very least they are blind agents in the incremental, inexorable devaluation of sacred human life.

As long as we presume to place ourselves in the decision of playing God by sanctioning the killing of a physically healthy, sometimes-conscious woman today, who very well might want to live, there is no reason to believe that other vulnerable individuals will be spared down the road.

When that time comes, people will be even more sophisticated in characterizing their destruction of humanity as humane.
 

Terri Schiavo Can Still be Rehabilitated, Nobel Prize-Nominated Doctor Says
by Steven Ertelt

Terri’s ‘Exit Protocol’
http://www.cst-phl.com/050113/sixth.html

By Susan Brinkmann
 

A detailed description of the physiological symptoms of death by starvation.

“This is not a painless or dignified way to die,” Ford said. “It’s against the law to dehydrate and starve to death a prisoner on death row. Why should we allow it to be done to a disabled woman — or anybody?”
The cruelty Ford has seen Terri endure is “not even believable,” she said. “In this case, Dr. Kevorkian would be more humane than what they intend to do to Terri.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200503250823.asp

Andrew C. McCarthy

March 25, 2005, 8:23 a.m.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
Terri Schiavo has been denied due process of law.

In the United States, we require proof beyond a reasonable doubt on all facts necessary to the judgment before someone is killed by the machinery of the justice system. Nothing less will do.

What Kind of Society Are We Becoming?
Jeannie Ash - Belmont, Calif.

In the course of history we are less than an eye blink past Auschwitz and already it is happening to some extent in the Netherlands and in Oregon. Overnight I've discovered that the same mindset that allowed a whole society to accept Hitler's insane idea of 'life not worth living" and resultant extermination, is sharing this country with me.

Like so many there is heartbreak, there is anger, there are prayers, there is disbelief, there is frustration. Mostly though there is the feeling that we are living in a society that is prepping itself to devalue life and to push death in the interest of convenience.

I am living in a nation that is turning off its conscience and becoming numb to the horror that should exist at the thought of an innocent life that could and might very possibly be experiencing the draconian agony of death by starvation.

As others have pointed out, over 2,000 years ago another Mary was forced to watch helplessly as her son was lawfully killed.

What an insane coincidence. What an insane moment in history we are living, given all the history that was there to prevent this.
 

Whose Life Is Worth Living?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-3_26_05_OSC.html

By Orson Scott Card

But when we can preserve a life, how dare we not do our best to do so?

Not just for the sake of that particular life, but for the sake of all the others who will be murdered once we open the floodgates and allow selfish people to kill those helpless ones who inconvenience them.

Once we accept the premise that it’s permissible — or even noble — to kill the helpless, then where do we draw the line?

If a civilization ceases protecting the weak and innocent from the strong and selfish, then what, precisely, is civilization for?

http://www.nationalreview.com/skonig/konig200503251318.asp

Mary’s Child
Terri Schiavo, daughter.

FOCUS: Bigotry and the Murder of Terri Schiavo

http://www.thecrimson.com/writer.aspx?ID=1201755

By JOE FORD

Besides being disabled, Schiavo and I have something important in common, that is, someone attempted to terminate my life by removing my endotracheal tube during resuscitation in my first hour of life. This was a quality-of-life decision: I was simply taking too long to breathe on my own, and the person who pulled the tube believed I would be severely disabled if I lived, since lack of oxygen causes cerebral palsy. (I was saved by my family doctor inserting another tube as quickly as possible.) The point of this is not that I ended up at Harvard and Schiavo did not, as some people would undoubtedly conclude. The point is that society already believes to some degree that it is acceptable to murder disabled people.

As Schiavo starves to death, we are entering a world last encountered in Nazi Europe. Prior to the genocide of Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, the Nazis engaged in the mass murder of disabled children and adults, many of whom were taken from their families under the guise of receiving treatment for their disabling conditions. The Nazis believed that killing was the highest form of treatment for disability.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110006472

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006474
Killing Terri
There was no need to play God.

BY JAMES Q. WILSON

Keeping people alive is the goal of medicine. We can only modify that policy in the case of patients for whom death is imminent and where all competent family members believe that nothing can be gained by extending life for a few more days. This was clearly not the case with Terri Schiavo. Indeed, her death by starvation may take weeks. Meanwhile, her parents are pleading for her life.

These differences are of decisive importance. When death will occur soon and inevitably, the patient does not starve to death when life support ends. Since there was no chance of our mother living more than a few more days, what my sister and I did could not be called murder. When death will not occur soon, or perhaps for many years, and when there is a chance, even a very small one, that recovery is possible, people who authorize the withdrawal of life support are playing God.

And in Terri's case, they are playing God when they do not have to. Her parents begged to become her guardians. Her husband refused. We do not know for certain why the husband refused.
 

Schindler Family: Terri’s Judge ‘Afraid of the Truth’
(CNSNews.com) – The family of Terri Schindler Schiavo says the judge who ordered her starvation and dehydration – a process that will begin on March 18 unless a higher court intervenes -- is “afraid of the truth,” and is denying Terri’s due process rights under state and federal law. Terri's supporters say criminals get more protection than disabled and vulnerable citizens...

Terri Schiavo’s Parents Seek Divorce on Her Behalf
(CNSNews.com) – Terri Schindler Schiavo’s parents have asked Florida’s Second District Court of Appeals to grant their daughter a divorce from her husband, Michael Schiavo. They charge him with a conflict of interest based on alleged adultery ...

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary - For Immediate Release March 17, 2005

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
The case of Terri Schiavo raises complex issues. Yet in instances like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life. Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern. It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected and that culture of life must extend to individuals with disabilities.

One wonders if our young, so many of them cheated of a knowledge of history in schools they are forced to attend, are aware of how closely our elites approximate, in belief and argument, the elites of Weimar and Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

SCHIAVO SCANDAL INDICATES LOW STATE OF BIOETHICS

By John Leo

A key factor in the rise of bioethics, Callahan wrote, was the "emergence ideologically of a form of bioethics that dovetailed nicely with the reigning political liberalism of the educated classes in America." 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.

Killing Terri Schiavo, II

by Thomas Sowell

The lessons of this tragic episode are as momentous as they are painful, if only because we should never want to see such a miscarriage of justice again. The issue is not only whether Terri Schiavo should live or die, important as that is.

Another important issue is whether self-government in this country will live or die. Judges who ignore the laws passed by elected representatives are slowly but surely replacing democracy with judicial rule. Meanwhile, the media treat judges as sacrosanct and any criticism of them as almost blasphemy.

A turning point in the culture war
David Limbaugh

What this boils down to is that our courts (and far too many in society) are so acclimated to our Culture of Death that they are erring on the side of death. Despite enormous doubts about Terri's condition, her intentions, and even her initial injury, the courts are determining that in the end, none of this matters because anyone in Terri's diminished state (no matter what it specifically is) is better off dead. It's essentially a court-ordered murder based on the court's subjective assessment of the victim's quality of life -- an assessment tainted by its diminished reverence for human life.

The decision to kill Terri Schiavo is not in deference to Terri's intentions, about which there is way too much doubt, but to godlessness, humanism and death. It is to quench society's lust for death.

This case marks a turning point in the Culture War, where society is making a giant leap toward the dark side, embracing the lie over truth and death over life.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200503231015.asp
Another Loss, But a Glimmer of Hope

by Andrew C. McCarthy

http://codeblueblog.blogs.com/codeblueblog/2005/03/csi_medblogs_co.html
THIS BRAIN IS NOT THAT BAD

I HAVE SEEN MANY WALKING, TALKING, FAIRLY COHERENT PEOPLE WITH WORSE CEREBRAL/CORTICAL ATROPHY. THEREFORE, THIS IS IN NO WAY PRIMA FACIE EVIDENCE THAT TERRI SCHIAVO'S MENTAL ABILITIES OR/OR CAPABILITIES ARE COMPLETELY ERADICATED. I CANNOT BELIEVE SUCH TESTIMONY HAS BEEN GIVEN ON THE BASIS OF THIS SCAN.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006460
In Love With Death
The bizarre passion of the pull-the-tube people.
by Peggy Noonan

Not Dead at All
Why Congress was right to stick up for Terri Schiavo.
By Harriet McBryde Johnson

 http://www.slate.com/id/2115208/#ContinueArticle

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/george200503211140.asp
“Always to Care, Never to Kill”
Terri Schiavo and the right to life.

by Robert P. George
 

National Review Online recently had a chance to talk to Robert P. George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, about the Terri Schiavo case and the broader issue of assisted suicide. Professor George has published widely on law, ethics, and philosophy in books, scholarly journals, and, too rarely, in articles for NRO. He previously served as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

What we must avoid, always and everywhere, is yielding to the temptation to regard some human lives, or the lives of human beings in certain conditions, as lebensunwerten Lebens, lives unworthy of life. Since the life of every human being has inherent worth and dignity, there is no valid category of lebensunwerten Lebens. Any society that supposes that there is such a category has deeply morally compromised itself. As Leon Kass recently reminded us in a powerful address at the Holocaust Museum, it was supposedly enlightened and progressive German academics and medical people who put their nation on the road to shame more than a decade before the Nazis rose to power by promoting a doctrine of eugenics based precisely on the proposition that the lives of some human beings — such as the severely retarded — are unworthy of life.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/
'Culture of Life'
The Schiavo case shows that it's about more than abortion.

by Brendon Miniter

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9504/articles/harvey.html
Dying Like a Dog by Nancy Harvey

If we are serious about fighting the euthanasia movement, I believe we must fight the idea that our status as members of the human family depends on our health, that under certain circumstances we will no longer be nurtured, our basic needs will purposely be ignored, and we will be abandoned to suffer and die. If we establish the idea that people no longer have lifetime membership in the human family, the practice of abandonment could become widespread--strongly encouraged perhaps by insurance carriers to cut costs. Then we may find ourselves no longer able to choose to die a death befitting the dignity of a man living to the end of his natural life, surrounded by concern for his comfort, and given the basic care his body still needs. Instead, our death will resemble the death of an unwanted dog who is abandoned by his owners and left to die of starvation and dehydration. Every responsible pet owner knows that it is a cruel fate for an animal, no matter how old or sick. And those who see a worn-out horse or an old dog left without food and water can call the police.
But if we decide that it is acceptable to treat humans worse than we treat animals, it should not surprise us if many people at the grassroots level decide that as along as they have to die like a dog, they would rather not suffer the fate of an abandoned stray. We should not be surprised if they work long and hard for the legal right to be quickly and painlessly "put to sleep" by the family "vet." Once this is accomplished, the evil inherent in such a practice will become all too apparent.
 

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20050323.shtml
The MSM's life and death distortions

by Michelle Malkin

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 (captainsquartersblog.com) 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?"

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006455
Starting Anew?

by James Taranto

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
'Don't Kick It'

by Peggy Noonan

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200503221329.asp Ducking Tough Questions The federal court declines to reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. by Andrew C. McCarthy But most disturbing about Judge Whittemore’s opinion is its refusal to delve into the questions that impelled Congress to act in the first place: Whether Terri is really a PVS case and whether she really evinced an informed desire not to be sustained — let alone to submit to two weeks of starvation and dehydration, which is unquestionably torture for a person who is responsive to stimuli and aware of pain. Not only does Whittemore decline to get into the heart of the matter. In the one fleeting footnote in which he alludes to it, he blames Terri’s parents and their attorneys for this dereliction: “Plaintiffs have submitted affidavits of health care professionals regarding Theresa’s medical status, treatment techniques and therapies which are available and their opinions regarding how and whether these treatments might improve Theresa’s condition. Plaintiffs have not, however, discussed these affidavits in their papers and how they relate to the claimed constitutional deprivations.” (Italics mine.) Did Judge Whittemore really think the Schindlers submitted these affidavits simply to pad their submission with physical heft? Those submissions were obviously included because Terri’s parents contend the factual findings made in Florida are wrong, and could be proved wrong at a de novo hearing. When Congress provided for de novo review, uninhibited by what had already been determined in Florida, it seems clear that this is what they thought they were getting at. They were saying: Before we allow state action to deprive the constitutional right to life, let’s be certain we really are dealing with a PVS case and a woman who actually made an informed choice to refuse sustenance. Judge Whittemore, to the contrary, has decided to interpret Congress’s command as limited to an inquiry about whether Florida’s procedures are likely to produce good results. As for the results actually produced — a finding of PVS and informed choice to die — he doesn’t see the need to kick those tires because, he lamely notes, the Schindlers haven’t explained how they could possibly relevant. The judge, I believe, is wrong and needlessly stingy in construing what the just-passed law directs him to do. Terri Schiavo has had neither the standard medical tests (including an MRI and PET scan) nor the extensive clinical observation that should be mandatory for any finding of PVS on which an effective death sentence is to be predicated. If the proof supporting the PVS finding or the informed-choice finding — which Florida law require to be proved by clear and convincing evidence — is blatantly inadequate, then she has then not received the due process of law necessary to justify a taking of life under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. If she is not a PVS case and she is being tortured by starvation and dehydration, the Florida ruling removing the feeding tube is subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. That’s what we need a de novo review of: Why weren’t standard tests done, why shouldn’t they be done before a final PVS conclusion is made, and, in their absence, why should we be confident in the accuracy of the PVS diagnosis? There may be good answers to all these questions, but that is what evidentiary hearings are for.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp
RE: ABANDONED TO RHETORIC [Andy McCarthy]
John, I have resisted getting into this with you because I have enormous
respect for you, I don't think your position is unreasonable (I just don't
buy it), and I sense I have already burdened people enough with my views
about this case -- they can decide at this point for themselves. But I don't
believe I have abandoned myself to rhetoric. I have committed myself to
logic.

First of all, I do not doubt the propriety of the people of Florida
governing themselves, or that they may deny sustenance to a person who (a)
actually is in a PVS and (b) actually has asserted in a knowing and
intelligent way a rejection of life saving measures in certain dire
circumstances. What I object to here is the appallingly suspect evidentiary
record on these two crucial questions -- especially on PVS, where it seems
indisputable that fairly standard tests, which would be easy to do in
relatively short order and which could give us confidence in the PVS
finding, have not been done. If we can be confident that Terri is a PVS case
-- and particularly that her brain damage has left her largely insensitive
to pain -- I seal my lips and accept the outcome, however much I may
question its wisdom insofar as society's general regard for life is
concerned. Under such circumstances, the Supreme Court has said sustenance
may be withheld, and the absence of pain would destroy my contention that
she is being tortured.

I am not interested in attacking the motives of Michael Schiavo (something
that seems to be of importance to you) unless the evidence against him
becomes more reliable than it is now -- although I do believe his incentives
are highly relevant on the question whether Terri actually evinced a desire
not to have life sustaining measures because he is the primary witness on
that score. But I must say that on this score it has seemed to me, reading
your exchanges with others, that it is you who is abandoned to rhetoric.
Much as I instinctively agree with you that a spouse should be given great
deference in these matters (and as I would try to ensure that my own wife
had a free hand in making them for me), the law is that it is not the
spouse's decision. It is the individual's decision, and it cannot be removed
from the individual because you decide that in your own life you would not
want intrusion into what you regard as your affairs. My view is that the
proof that Terri actually made this election is highly suspect. (It is worth
noting that a court, for example, is not permitted to allow something so
comparatively inconsequential as a confession into evidence in a criminal
case without clear and convincing evidence that the defendant's waiver of
the Fifth Amendment privilege was knowing and intelligent.) I would like to
see the issue fully reviewed by an impartial federal court (as I believe
there is great reason to question the impartiality of the judicial
proceeding in Florida). Again, if after a full and fair hearing the federal
court determines that Michael is credible and Terri did make this assertion,
I have nothing to complain about. As the Supreme Court's Cruzan case
indicates, the proof in this regard need not be inarguable, but it does have
to be credible.

Finally, your argument that the difference between starving and dehydrating
someone versus shooting her is that "for crying out loud ... one thing is
morally acceptable to the US public (including me), and the other isn't,"
hardly seems to me like a model of logic over rhetoric.

We are talking about different methods to induce death for an arguably
non-PVS person. Your suggestion that lock-em-in-a-cell versus
shackle-and-flog-em is somehow an apt analogy is beneath someone of your
superior intellect. Locking someone in a cell is detention; shackling and
flogging someone is torture. They are different not only in degree but in
kind -- they are not even aimed at the same end. That is not a worthy
comparison. But if it's the other side's shooting analogy you think is
silly, fair enough. Let's leave that aside.

The argument is here is about analogous methods of denying sustenance, let's
say starving/dehydrating versus suffocating (instead of shooting), aimed
actually at achieving the same end: death by court order. My point is, if
the person is non-PVS and aware of pain, both are forms of cold-blooded
murder. The only meaningful difference is one is slow, less blatant, and
designed to be less offensive to the spectator (regardless that it may be
more painful to the victim), while the other is swifter, colder and more
offensive to the spectator. It is not more immoral -- just more obviously
immoral (even if it is actually more merciful to the victim). If your point
here is that the latter is unacceptable but the former is OK for no better
reason than that you and some polled majority of some cross-section of the
population thinks so, I don't think that's very principled.
 

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200503281208.asp

PVS and the End of Life

by Andrew McCarthy