0504 Schiavo
Terri Schiavo’s homicide should haunt the American conscience forever as one of the darkest moments of our “enlightened” time. In terms of judicially sanctioned crime, it shares its infamy with other guiding events inAmerica’s descent into moral decay, cultural confusion, and judicial despotism. Only the legalization of infanticide (Roe v. Wade), the disembowelment of constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom in education (Engel v. Vitale), and the legalization of any perversion done privately (Lawrencev.Texas), share the same burden of shame as Terri’s killing.
Terri was not simply “allowed to pass on”; she was forced to expire by being denied what all living creatures share for survival – nutrition and water. She was never in any danger of dying, except by starvation and dehydration at the hand of Michael Schiavo, her husband. While languishing, she slowly dried out, resulting in kidney failure and subsequent poisoning from her own body’s toxins. Other than Michael’s hearsay, no anecdotal or medical evidence for an eating disorder has ever been verified. The records covering the period of time from her admission into emergency (the day after an argument over a possible divorce) until her discharge have never been seen by her family, let alone any of the appellate judges that reviewed the case. For the first two years after her mysterious collapse, she was receiving rehabilitation and was noted in medical records as improving. Sworn affidavits claim that she was able to take liquefied food and water by mouth, in spite of efforts to keep her on a feeding tube alone. In early 2005 Judge George Greer actually forbade any more feeding by mouth.
There is much more that the courts refused to consider in their supposed administration of justice. During Terri’s “trial”, neurological evaluations came solely from pro-euthanasia physicians. In 1991 a bone scan revealed multiple areas of unexplained trauma. In early 1993, shortly after Terri and Michael won their last law suit, a total of all three suites netting 2.3 Million dollars, Michael began denying rehabilitation for Terri. From 1995 on she received no dental care and eventually had five teeth pulled. From 1993 through part of 2002, all medical tests were prohibited by Mr. Schiavo through the courts. When tests were finally forced, twelve out of the fifteen requested were blocked, including a definitive PET scan that could have offered a true assessment of Terri’s brain functions. Without rehabilitation, she was confined to bed which resulted in severe contractures. During most of this time, her loving husband was living in adultery and fathering children by his mistress. He also managed to rack up at least twelve violations of hisFloridastate guardianship obligations. Three nurses have come forward with corroborating evidence of abuse and neglect, including allegations of attempts by Michael to give Terri insulin overdoses.
Over the last ten years of Terri Schiavo’s struggle, liberalism’s burning drive for unconditional love, social justice and equality for the oppressed has not whimpered. An opportunity is upon any who champion the well-being of creatures they consider our evolution-endowed life partners to stand for a defenseless higher life. Howls of horror should be shattering the glaring silence of such sages of women’s rights asNOW, NARAL, Emily’s List and others of their persuasion. If any of those who so strenuously champion the rights of everything from lobsters to abortionists, can now stand in stony silence after a fellow human being has been exterminated, it will be a testament to the gross callousness, immoral apathy, or myopic hypocrisy of their value systems.
The truly frightening prospect is that a judicially imposed migration into a culture of death is being allowed to gain ground. Americans of all stripes are slowly becoming anesthetized to the marginalization of our most fundament right, life itself. The Schiavo case was an opportunity for the judicial branch to re-affirm that right, irrespective of an individual’s abilities. The same opportunity was afforded both the legislative and executive branches of government as well and they failed miserably. By allowing the case to be managed with minimal medical direction, government abdicated its role as administrator of justice and righteousness, especially for the weak and the defenseless. The judiciary has now been allowed to dictate a person’s worth according to their functionality – to impose a tyranny of utility.