TownHall.com Pat Buchanan (archive)
Terri Schiavo is dead. She did not die a natural death, unless you believe a court order to cut off food and water to a disabled woman until she dies of starvation and thirst is natural.
No, Terri Schiavo was executed by the state of Florida. Her crime? She was so mentally disabled as to be unworthy of life in the judgment of Judge George Greer. The execution was carried out at Woodside Hospice. An autopsy will reveal that Terri’s vital organs shut down for lack of food and water. She did not die of the brain damage she suffered 15 years ago. She was put to death. We have crossed a watershed in America.
We would not put an animal through the kind of pain and agony that Terri went through in her final days. An animal would be put to sleep humanely. What is this country coming to that we would willingly do something so cold and heartless as to torture a helpless and defenseless woman. This should not have happened, especially in the United States. You hear of this happening in other third world countries but not here. This is scary for the future of our country if we could stoop to this level! Poor Terri! My heart goes out to her family, her true family. And another thing. Why is her husbnd having her body cremated? What is he trying to hide?
Jenn writes: “We would not put an animal through the kind of pain and agony that Terri went through in her final days.”
Except that she was unconscious. Her body could sense pain reflexively, but not consciously — one of the effects of being in a PVS.
Jenn: “An animal would be put to sleep humanely.”
Hold that thought for the next time physician-assisted suicide is discussed.
That is not what eyewitnesses whose testimony was rejected by the courts said.
We need a full investigation of this case, including a hard look at the ties between the Felos and Greer and the hospice were Terri Sciavo was killed, the relationship between Felos and Crandell, the ignored affidavits that would challenge Greer’s death bias, etc.
We need a competent and courageous investigative journalist to dig out the facts.
Excerpted from a New York Times editorial. A power piece:
One of the most astonishing things about the human experience is the realization that loved ones die. The first time it happens, we are invariably amazed that nearly everyone who has ever lived has weathered an experience so wrenching. We see other humans on the street and in the shops and marvel that they manage to simply go about their business – that there is no constant, universal primal scream in the face of such an awful fact.
That level of grief seldom brings out the noblest emotions. The sufferers can barely make their way through the day, let alone summon their best reserves of patience and compassion for the lucky people who continue to live. In the case of Terri Schiavo, the whole world witnessed what happens when that natural emotional frailty is taken captive by politics.
It was awful, and according to the polls, the American public shrank from the sight of it.”
That kind of ordeal – even if the victim was unaware she was enduring it – deserves to be honored with some meaning. On the most pragmatic level, she has been the instrument of thousands, and probably millions, of intimate conversations in which family members told one another what they would like to happen if their own bodies outlived their minds. In countless other cases, people recalled the days on which they had said goodbye to loved ones, and perhaps many came closer to peace in dealing with their own great losses.”
“Some people hold religious convictions so heartfelt that they could not bow to public opinion or the courts and accept the conclusion that Ms. Schiavo should be allowed to die. They deserve respect, just as her husband and her other relatives deserve sympathy.
Those relatives also deserve to be left alone, to be protected from a spotlight that turned a family tragedy into an international spectacle of sometimes shocking vulgarity and viciousness. The case attracted outsiders in search of little more than another opportunity to further their own self-aggrandizement. But worst of all were the powerful people who looked at the world we live in today, in which politics is about maximizing hysteria at the margins, and concluded that the Schiavo fight was a win-win – for everyone but the people who actually cared about the dying woman.
Today, finally, there is a moment of consensus. Rest in peace, Theresa Marie.”
End of editorial piece.
My parents – extremely conservative members of an Episcopalian church – called me this morning to remind me of the location of their living wills and other documents of import. I requested they send me copies, and told them I would honor their wishes. Whatever the wishes of any of you and your family members, of greatest import is that you (and they) communicate them while you’re able.
The editorial sentimentalizes the death of Terri Schiavo. It condescends to those who opposed her death (“those who could not bow to public opinion and the courts…deserve to be respected). It concludes that the greatest good and greatest meaning to come out of this is that people finally realize that they should get their living wills ready.
Really?
Frankly the editorial strikes me as immature. The death of Terri Schiavo was a win only for those who sought her death. Everyone else lost, especially Terri.