Terry Shiavo
We can't get far now in the car without the news radio telling us the latest on Terry Shiavo. And so it should be. This continues to be a tragedy, slowly unraveling. Today's Wall Street Journal has a great piece which summarizes the whole debate well, written by James Q. Wilson. Just a quote:
This is a tragedy. Congress has responded by rushing to pass a law that will allow her case, but only her case, to be heard in federal court. But there is no guarantee that, if it is heard there, a federal judge will do any better than the Florida one. What is lacking in this matter is not the correct set of jurisdictional rules but a decent set of moral imperatives.
That moral imperative should be that medical care cannot be withheld from a person who is not brain dead and who is not at risk for dying from an untreatable
disease in the near future. To do otherwise makes us recall Nazi Germany where retarded people and those with serious disabilities were "euthanized" (that is, killed). We hear around the country echoes of this view in the demands that
doctors be allowed to participate, as they do in Oregon, in physician-assisted
suicide, whereby doctors can end the life of patients who request death and have
less than six months to live. This policy endorses the right of a person to end
his or her life with medical help. It is justified by the alleged success of this policy in the Netherlands. But it has not been a success in the Netherlands. In that country there have been well over 1,000 doctor-induced deaths among patients who had not requested death, and in a large fraction of those cases the patients were sufficiently competent to have made the request had they wished.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 is clearly not the case with Terri Schiavo. Indeed, her death by starvation may take weeks. Meanwhile, her parents are pleading for her life.
Might we together, agree to plea for the life of Terri to The Only Resource Left?
3 comments:
I think there is too much judging and assuming going on on both sides, Steve. Perhaps it was God's will for her to die 15 years ago. We'll never know.
I just find it interesting that nothing is being made of this: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3087387. And your boy W passed this law. Makes one think, no?
How you, me, or (worse still) our goverment think they know better that her parents, husband, and friends is beyond me. They need to figure this out for themselves...
In response, that baby in Houston seems to be a largely different case, and again, complex, and likely a wrong decision. I may sound judgemental, but my judgement errs on the side of life, not a morality of death.
Terry Schiavo's parents and family (extant of her ex-husband) are willing to care for her as long as she needs - and so, this is a case of one man, Terry's ex-husband being allowed to decide her fate. In my mind, this is simply wrong, and a place where government can do some good.
I am perplexed by the culture of death of the left. Abortions and suicides on demand, it is all to sad to understand.
Appreciate your reply. I do. I think it is honroable and worthy to err on the side of life. But please know that those that disagree with you are not necessarily erring on the side of death. That would be an incorrect assumption and probably why we don't see people at gatherings rallying for her death. What I *do* see on the other side (both right and lefts, btw) is a desire for her suffering to end.
I think that where we (that's an all inclusive "we") tend to go wrong is when we assume that the "right" is all one way and the "left" is all the other way. I could easily argue that I'm perplexed by the right's "culture of death" with regards to the death penalty, for example. Similarly, I could say that this "culture of death" resulted in the death of my father's mother when a doctor refused to perferm a hysterectomy on his 75 year old mother because he felt it was morally wrong to perform that procedure. She soon later died of cancer of the womb. But I know that issues are far more complex that that.
In the case of Schiavo, I hate to see her suffer any more and would like to see her suffering end and be with the Father. Having had my other grandmother suffer for decades with Alzheimer's, it makes me cry (still to this day) knowing the suffering she went through (both physical and mental). I wished she had passed on to Heaven years earlier. But I also know it was not my place to decide one way or the other.
Believe me, it is VERY tempting given my experinces to say "keep the tube out". But I know one thing for sure: I have no idea what it must be like for everyone *directly* involved. And all I can really do is pray for her, her family, and friends. We can't pretend to know what God's plans are. All we can pray for is that His plans are fulfilled and that we give ourselves up to Him and be a tool for Him -- whatever that may mean.
Now is not the time for protestor's at family's doorsteps with slogans not even worth of a bumper sticker. I just can't imagine that God rejoices in that type of self righteousness. (Btw, I'm not saying you're doing that).
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