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Death Be Not Proud
Government/Frank
Salvato, Managing Editor |
March 25, 2005
- Terri Schiavo is going to die. Not because she has a
terminal disease. Not because she was convicted of a crime punishable by
death, although she did received a death sentence. She is not going to die
because she has no one who loves her or because no one will care for her.
Terri Schiavo is going to die because a judge from Florida’s 6th Circuit
Court ordered that she not be fed. Any other contention is false.
There will be those who say that Judge George Greer’s ruling is simply a
realization of Terri’s wishes; that she didn’t want to be kept alive by
artificial means in the event of something catastrophic. I could respect
Judge Greer’s ruling – and Terri’s wishes if in fact that is what she wanted
for herself – if there weren’t so much doubt about the ruling’s validity.
Reasonable doubt is rampant in this case.
It is clear there are questions as to the legitimacy of Michael Schiavo’s
claim that Terri – then his wife, not some burden laying in a hospice
standing in the way of his "new life” and $1.2 million in inheritance –
expressed a desire not to be kept alive by alternative means. In fact,
everyone but for Michael and two people who overheard Terri at a funeral
expressing her sympathy for a person whose life had been augmented by the
use of a ventilator, emphatically contend that Terri expressed exactly the
opposite.
When an anecdote about the case of Karen Ann Quinlan was offered in Terri’s
presence it upset her so much that she took to lecturing about the value of
life and how life was precious. To be certain, her sentiments proved her to
be loving, caring and with a healthy respect for life. It is hard to
believe, then, that with such a statement being on the record Terri would
consider feeding a disabled person an act of artificially augmenting life.
After all, an enormous disparity exists between keeping someone alive by
means of a ventilator and helping someone to eat.
There is a very real difference between allowing the terminally ill to die a
dignified death and selectively choosing to terminate a sustainable life
because of an ideology or for convenience. What we are witnessing in the
case of Terri Schiavo – besides a murder – is most definitely the latter.
Tragically, it didn’t have to be. There is a family, blood relations who are
literally begging for the opportunity to take care of her. Yet, an order
emanating from a judicial system that is charged with protecting the
citizenry of the United States is forcing a death by starvation upon this
disabled woman, stopping her own flesh and blood from caring for the
daughter they created and nurtured.
There is a danger of tyranny in absolute power. The shallow and contemptible
miscreants of the elected left, in Washington and elsewhere, are trying to
deceive the American public into believing that an elected majority equates
to absolute power. They do so because they embrace ideology that exists
outside the boundaries of common sense and decency. They do so for political
gain. They cry of wolf in the face of reality.
In the case of Terri Schiavo we are bearing witness to the machinations of
absolute power and the resultant tyranny. Questions remain as to the
validity of evidence accepted as fact and why other very real pieces of
evidence submitted to the court were rejected by Judge Greer. Yet our
judicial system chooses instead to envelop itself in semantics, refusing to
hear appeals that could spare the life of an American, sentenced to death
yet charged with no crime, based on the probabilities of the case’s success.
Instead of being motivated to be curious as to the facts surrounding Terri
Schiavo’s circumstances and how life ending decisions were come to be made
they hide like cowards behind precedent and procedure, afraid to do what is
correct and just, afraid to seek answers to the questions outstanding. In
Terri Schiavo’s death sentence it slowly became all about the process while
the facts of the matter slipped into darkness.
Michael Schiavo will cremate his "wife,” Terri, immediately after her death,
not even allowing her blood-family – her real family – the opportunity of
ritual to pay tribute to her life and mourn her. He doesn’t even have the
decency to show that small bit of compassion for the people who gave to her
and shared her life. He will collect his $1.2 million and continue on with
his "new life.” The "widower” will then be able to marry the woman with whom
he has fathered two children, God help them.
Personally, I hope that when the villain Schiavo looks at himself in the
mirror each day he’ll know he fooled no one. His mask of "morality” is the
guise of a hypocrisy exposed by the breaking of his own wedding vow, "’Til
death do us part.” Justice demands that he be haunted by the memory of Terri
all the remaining days of his life.
In the end, when a judiciary, drunk with absolute power, hands an estranged
husband the right to terminate his "spouse's" life over the adamant
objections of the two people who created the woman, and especially when so
many unanswered and disturbing questions remain, well, there is a wrong
being done that will last the ages, the blood drying on the hands of our
legal system.
A precedent has been set and we should not be proud. Unless we empower
ourselves to rein in the tyranny of our judicial system we shall bear
witness to our own slow, agonizing death. We will end up with the figurative
guardian Schiavo as we thirst for freedom. Unlike Terri, if we find
ourselves in this position we will only have ourselves to blame, God help
us.
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