Sanctity of Life

Marc Siegel, M.D. Marc Siegel is a clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University.

Terri Schiavo has lingered for 15 years in what many neurologists call a persistent vegetative state. Because the public has seen her plight largely through a political prism – right to life vs. right to die – core medical issues have been overlooked and distorted.

Regardless of where one stands on this issue, as a physician, I’m disturbed that the medicine of this case has become an afterthought. Doctors have become the medical marionettes as the courts and attorneys pull the strings.

Though most end-of-life specialists are willing to remove feeding tubes, many of the rest of us – physicians who treat severely disabled patients – are not. The only consensus in the medical community on this issue is that we should be consulted, not expected to blindly follow judicial decrees.
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SYOSSET, NY [OCA Communications] — In a statement dated March 24, 2005, Protopresbyter Robert Kondratick, chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America, addressed the case of Mrs. Terri Schaivo.

“As affirmed on numerous occasions in recent years, the Orthodox Church in America fully recognizes and proclaims the sanctity of all human life, created in the image and likeness of God,” Father Kondratick said. “Life is a gift from God, one which we are expected as Orthodox Christians to revere and steward in a wise manner, fully recognizing the image of the Creator in every human being.
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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.

[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.
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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.