Thursday, March 31, 2005

Rest in Peace Terri Shiavo

I have refrained from commenting thus far on the Terri Schiavo situation. Emotions about this womans plight are running pretty high in our house. My dear wife is just horrified about what happened to this woman. Chaos is sick and tired of everyone on TV talking about it. Noise and Destruction don't seem to understand anything except that whenever the talking head on the TV mentions it - Mommy gets angry. I am torn between shock and frustration that we could have sitting judges in our court system that could repeatedly order such an inhumane end for another human being. I am also stunned that no one in the court system in Florida can recognize Michael Schiavo for the lying cheating bastard that he is.

Michael Schiavo has spent thousands of dollars in court to maintain his control over his wife just so he could have her murdered. The hypocracy of Michael Schaivo claiming that this is what Terri wanted is ludacris. Did Terri also want her husband to start living with another woman and father two children by her while still married to her? This walking scrap of pond scum doesn't care what Terri wanted, he is only interested in what he wanted. He wanted to kill his wife. If Michael Schiavo had even one scrap of human decency in his worm ridden soul he would have just divorced his wife, signed custody of her over to her parents and walked away. But this slithering waste of carbon and oxygen wouldn't do that. Instead he parades through the courts demanding the right to kill her. Then he has the nerve to stand up in front of the TV cameras and complain about all the people who are trying to stop him from committing murder.

A brief note to all you right to die nuts out there - I agree with you. A human being should have the right to choose to allow their life to end with dignity. My godfather passed away a couple years ago. He had cancer and elected not to treat it. With the help of his children, grandchildren and Hospice Care he died on his own terms. Near the end the cancer shut down his ability to eat and drink. But his loved ones never stopped trying to give him what little sustenance he could consume. I was with him a couple days before he passed and while I can't understand his decision not to fight his cancer I can respect it. I don't know if it was the cancer or dehydration that killed my Godfather. But I know that even had he been able to continue eating and drinking the cancer was going to kill him. That's the end he had accepted. But even at the end when he was incapable of providing sustenance for himself his family would hold his head and slowly dribble water into his mouth. Then they would hold him while most of it came back up. As long as he could talk he would thank them for that. Here was a man who was resigned to death. He refused all medical treatments for his condition yet he was thankful for each ounce of water they gave him. Near the end he was given morphine for the pain so his end was at least pain free, for him. For the rest of us, it hurt like hell.

Some may consider the placement of a feeding tube in a person’s stomach to be a heroic effort to maintain their life. I consider it a means of providing the basic essentials for life - air, water and sustenance. It would have been far more humane for the courts to order Terri's air supply removed than her food and water. Just tape off her mouth and nose. She only suffers a few minutes instead of weeks. I'm sorry but removing the feeding tube may have been allowing a natural course of events to occur. But when the court ruled that no one was allowed to feed Terri by hand. They were ordering her to be put to death. A slow drawn out agonizing death. Now for all those quacks in the media that say dying of starvation and dehydration is painless - it that is true, why was Terri given a morphine drip. If she needed the morphine drip for pain, then all the arguements that she can't feel pain were false.

Charles Lehardy over at AnotherThink.com blogs about what he call the Schiavo Protocol:

"...the Schiavo Protocol will arrogantly permit the killing of vulnerable men, women and children. Passive euthanasia—the denial of food and water—will lead inevitably to active euthanasia: assisted suicide and "mercy killing." Those who cannot walk the plank will be pushed off the boat."

Unfortunately I see a great potential in my fellow human beings to live down to Charles' prediction. Through our history mankind has demonstrated an unboundless capacity for cruelty and evil. While we like to think that we are becoming an enlightened society. We still have a long way to go, and it is going to be a rough trip.

I hope that Michael Schiavo and the Florida Courts are a wake up call for the American People to pay attention to how we are dealing with situations like Terri's. Terri Schiavo was the victim here. John Hawkins at Right Wing News has a pretty good recap of the history of Terri Schiavo's situation. John has tried to be fair and unbiased in his information collection. But like the rest of us mere mortals, it's hard to not let your own personal bias to creep into anything you write. Me I don't care about trying to be fair. I'm just writing what I think.

Final thoughts:
  • Terri was the victim of a cheating husband's desire to end her life once she stood in the way of his collecting malpractice money.
  • She was also the victim of a court system that was willing to believe that a man who has been openly inconsistent in the treatment of his wife and who has blatently violated his wedding vows is a better person to care for Terri than her parents are.
  • I think Congress and the President should not have gotten involved to the degree they did.
  • I think the court system needs to be overhauled. I'm not a legal expert, but I see something very wrong with a system that will repeatedly order an American Citizen to be starved to death without fully reviewing all the facts. They only looked at what some other myopic judge had to say.
  • Enjoy the rest of your life Michael Schiavo, your afterlife is going to be hell.
  • Rest in peace Terri Schiavo.


One final note to anyone who may complain that I may be overly critical of Michael Schiavo, especially since I don't know him and don't know all the particulars of his situation - You can't base a judgement of a human being on what they say while standing in front of a bunch of media cameras. Look at the documented history of his actions and behavior. Then if you still think that I'm being unfair, then ask yourself would you trust Michael Schiavo to speak for you if you were unable to speak for yourself?

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