Sunday, April 05, 2015

Ten years ago Terri Schiavo was put to death

Remember Terri Schiavo? I heard Jeb Bush discussing her on the Hugh Hewitt show this week, as he was the Governor of Florida who tried to keep people from killing her ten years ago last week. Mark Steyn has much to say about the case. Here is just a brief excerpt:
When poor Terri Schiavo broke on to the front pages, several commentators said the case was another Elian Gonzalez — the Cuban boy whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in America. That's to say, it was one of those stories where all sorts of turbulent questions of law, morality and politics collide. Two weeks on, if it's Clintonian analogies we're after, it seems to me the public regard it as something closer to the whole Paula/Monica/Juanita production line culminating in impeachment: if you recall, a large number of people were outraged by the President, a smaller number of people were determined to defend him to the end, and a huge number of people just didn't want to hear about it; and the more Republicans went on about the DNA analysis of the dress stain and Mr Clinton lying about whether his enumerated parts had been in contact with her enumerated parts and the DNA analysis of the dress stain, the more they stuck their hands over their ears and said, 'La-la-la, can't hear you.'

...PVS means 'persistent vegetative state', and because it's a grand official-sounding term it's been accepted mostly without question by the mainstream media, even though the probate judge declared Mrs Schiavo in a persistent vegetative state without troubling to visit her and without requiring any of the routine tests, such as an MRI scan. Indeed, her husband hasn't permitted her to be tested for anything since 1993. Think about that: this woman is being put to death without any serious medical evaluation more recent than 12 years ago.

La-la-la, we don't want to hear how the vegetable's made....

Fortunately, if you want to execute someone who hasn't committed a crime, you don't need to worry with any of this 'beyond a reasonable doubt' stuff. If an al-Qa'eda guy got shot up resisting capture in Afghanistan and required a feeding tube and the guards at Guantanamo yanked it out, you'd never hear the end of it from the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International and all the rest. Even given the litigious nature of American society, it still strikes me as remarkable that someone can be literally sued to death, and at the hands of a probate judge. Unlike other condemned prisoners, there's no hope of a last-minute reprieve from the governor. That's to say, he did reprieve her, and so did the legislature, and the US Congress and President — and the Florida courts have declared them all irrelevant. So, unlike Death Row, there's no call from the governor, and no quick painless lethal injection or electrocution or swift clean broken neck from the hangman's noose, and certainly no last meal. On Tuesday, getting a little impatient with the longest slow-motion public execution in American history, CBS News accidentally posted Mrs Schiavo's obit on their website complete with vivid details that have yet to occur — the parents at her bedside in the final moments, etc. In this, they seem to be in tune with their viewers: sad business, personal tragedy, no easy answers, prayers are with her family, yada yada, is it over yet?

...One consequence of abortion is that, in designating new life as a matter of 'choice', it created a culture where it's now routine to make judgments about which lives are worth it and which aren't. Down's Syndrome? Abort. Cleft palate? Abort. Chinese girl? Abort. It's foolish to think you can raise entire populations — not to mention generations of doctors — to make self-interested judgments about who lives and who doesn't and expect them to remain confined to three trimesters. The 'right to choose' is now being extended beyond the womb: the step from convenience euthanasia to compulsory euthanasia is a short one.
Read more here.

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