Sanctity of Life

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

I never believed that I would live in a country that would, in effect, execute a brain-damaged woman who never hurt anyone in her life. The story of Terry Schiavo should outrage every decent American. While our soldiers valiantly fight and die across the sea so that complete strangers can enjoy human rights, here at home an American woman who suffered severe brain damage fifteen years ago after a heart attack is about to be subjected to death by dehydration and starvation by order of a judge. Today, her feeding tube was removed.

The humanity of every society is determined first and foremost by how it treats its most helpless citizens, and a nation that is prepared to murder a feeble and vulnerable woman who can breathe, but not eat on her own, must take a deeper look at the source of its ethics.
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… to Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer: “What part of ‘Thou Shall Not Kill’ do you not understand?”

Mercer Island, WA – Toward Tradition and Rabbi Daniel Lapin urge the husband of neurology patient Terri Schindler-Schiavo, and Judge George Greer, who issued her death warrant, to recognize that starving an invalid is murder, not mercy.

Florida Circuit Court Judge Greer Thursday last week re-interpreted the law, calling food and water “medical treatment,” thus allowing Michael Schiavo to withdraw Mrs. Schindler-Schiavo’s feeding tube. This also ignores the rights of Terri’s primary caretakers and loyal defenders, her mother and father. The court has ordered all food and water withheld beginning this Friday, March 18th; it is expected to take her between 1- 2 weeks to starve or dehydrate to death. One wonders if they will attempt to withhold air as well.
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“A BABY survived at least three attempts to abort it from the womb and was born alive at 24 weeks old,” reports the Sunday Times.

Clint Eastwood’s ‘Million Dollar Baby’ criticized as thinly disguised propaganda, writes World Net Daily. I haven’t seen the movie yet but will be writing an aticle about the movie for next month’s Handmaiden at Conciliar Press.

World Net Daily has an article on Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade fame appealing to the Supreme Court to overturn the “raw exercize of judicial power.”

This is true: “In her concurring opinion, Judge Edith Jones lamented the case was moot, which prevented McCorvey’s evidence from being heard: “If courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe’s balancing scheme with present-day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman’s ‘choice’ is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child’s sentience far more advanced, than the Roe Court knew.”

Dutch Euthanasia Doctors May Now Kill Perfectly Healthy Adults writes LifeSitenews.com “The Royal Dutch Medical Association has concluded, after a three-year investigation, that Dutch doctors ought to be able to kill patients who are not ill but who are judged to be “suffering through living.”

A great piece.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/ma20040923.shtml

Unborn children feel pain during the abortion.
Steven Ertelt
September 2, 2004

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading pro-life organization says that the recent decision by a federal judge in New York calling the ban on partial-birth abortions unconstitutional points to the need for a bill to help women considering abortion understand the pain such abortions cause unborn children.

The National Right to Life Committee sent a letter to members of Congress on Wednesday urging them to support the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (H.R. 4420).

“[E]very day in the United States unborn children are subjected to trauma that causes them excruciating pain, and that would be illegal if inflicted on animals in commerce or research,” the letter says.

When a woman is considering an abortion “20 weeks after fertilization,” abortion practitioners are required to provide women with information about the pain an unborn child experiences during an abortion.

The woman can then request that the unborn child be given pain medication prior to the abortion, the letter explains.

Read the entire article on LifeNews.com.

A reader submitted:

In protecting human life we must begin with a commitment never to intentionally kill, or collude in the killing, of any innocent human life.

Some today are fond of saying that we have to consider “a wide range of issues” when we vote — which is true as far as it goes — but then go farther and say that all the issues are of equal weight — which is not only false, but offensive to common sense.

Take, for example, the “scorecard” that that is periodically put together by lawmakers, summarizing their voting record on a variety of issues and then giving each a score. There’s no problem, of course, in reviewing and summarizing how public officials vote. In fact, the public deserves more of that information. The big problem with the scorecard, however, is that all the issues are assigned equal weight, so that no distinction is made between the importance of banning partial-birth abortion and the regulation of mercury levels in thermometers.
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Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com
July 30, 2004

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Criticism from pro-life groups, women who have had abortions, and even from their own local affiliates hasn’t stopped the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from selling t-shirts with the slogan, “I Had an Abortion.”

In a statement responding to the national outrage, PPFA president Glora Feldt, says, “The shirt is not a cavalier statement, but a way to challenge the silence and shame around an experience many women have shared, however difficult that decision may have been.”

Feldt blames pro-life groups for making it necessary to sell the t-shirt.

“One in three American women will have an abortion before the age of 45, and anti-choice extremists are doing everything they can to turn that choice into a scarlet letter, and ultimately to criminalize this option,” Feldt explains.

“In that effort, some anti-choice activists have publicly disclosed that they had an abortion, only to cast this option in shame,” Feldt added.
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