Sanctity of Life

Has anyone noticed the parallels here to the crucifixion of Christ? The suspect witness, the court of elders, Pontius Pilate, the clammering crowds approving the injustice, the grieving mother at the cross? The fact that this unfolded during (Western) Holy Week — Terri might even die on Good Friday — is a warning to us I think. In October, 2003 I wrote a piece about Terri Schiavo expressing the idea that she suffers as a martyr. The timing of her death may prove this true.

This is just horrible. May God have mercy on us.

Peggy Noonan: The bizarre passion of the pull-the-tube people.

God made the world or he didn’t. God made you or he didn’t.

I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people. What is driving their engagement? Is it because they are compassionate, and their hearts bleed at the thought that Mrs. Schiavo suffers? But throughout this case no one has testified that she is in persistent pain, as those with terminal cancer are.
If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo’s death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans “brain dead.” Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay “a slithering snake.”

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo’s right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having “kicked the sh– out of the fascists.”

Why are they so committed to this woman’s death? They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

This is where we are heading.

Wesley J. Smith writes on National Review Online: Bureaucracy has trumped morality in the Netherlands. How else can one explain a country where, when doctors admit publicly that they commit eugenic infanticide, the leaders’ response is not to prosecute them for murder, but instead to urge that guidelines be created under which future baby killings can openly take place?

[U.S. News]: By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religious Affairs Editor WASHINGTON, March 21 : A curious coincidence seems to link two handicapped people during this Holy Week: In Rome, Pope John Paul II, crippled with disease, can barely bless pilgrims but is unable to speak to them; in Florida, Terri Schiavo, living in a persistent vegetative state, has become the center of a spirited international debate over the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.”

Today’s Wall Street Opinion Journal argues federal intervention to stop the killing of Terri Schiavo is necessary and appropriate.

This needs to be investigated. If true it is very powerful.
by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, March 18, 2005

Pinellas Park, FL (LifeNews.com) — Just before representatives of her estranged husband Michael removed her feeding tube Friday afternoon, Terri Schiavo reportedly told an attorney for her parents that she wanted to live.

Barbara Weller, one of the attorneys for Terri’s parents Bob and Mary Schindler, told reporters about her visit with Terri on Friday.

“Terri, if you would just say, ‘I want to live,’ all of this will be over,” she told the disabled woman.

Weller said Terri desperately tried to repeat Weller’s words.
[Read more…]

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.
[Read more…]

… 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.
[Read more…]

“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.