The Terri Schiavo case matters to me because it’s related to the sanctity of life. Who has the right to take life, and under what circumstances?
My concern is that Terri may be more alive than many patients who we would never think of killing. Consider this information I received in e-mail from the Family Research Council:
Terri Communicates . . .
Over the weekend there was significant movement in the effort to keep Terri Schiavo alive. Breaking news included an audiotape of Terri and her father communicating last Friday, which is posted on FRC’s website. Listening to the audio, you can plainly hear Terri respond to her father’s questions, definitely aware of her father’s presence and queries. As the case of Terri Schiavo grips the nation there is still a large amount of ignorance regarding her condition. Major news outlets report Terri as being in a coma, on life support, or worse – brain dead. None of these claims are true; she is awake and aware. Terri is not on life support, but merely a feeding tube. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, and his attorney, George Felos, have refused to allow Terri to have any therapy. In fact, they have even refused Terri an MRI, a non-invasive brain scan. Since Terri’s brain injury numerous medical professionals have testified that Terri is alive and aware, yet the judge in the case refuses to even allow relevant medical tests. Instead he issued an order to put Terri to death in one of the cruelest ways possible – by dehydration and starvation. While Mr. Schiavo and Attorney Felos would like people to believe Terri will die peacefully, the facts speak for themselves. The human body suffers from extreme lack of food. The mouth dries out while the tongue swells up and begins to crack. The eyes sink back into their sockets, giving the person a skeletal effect. When the stomach lining dries out, dry heaves can occur. The major organs fail, resulting in death. This death can take anywhere from two to three weeks.
I have little respect for the predominately atheist and ultra-liberal judges courts in this country. Some of them seem more interested in advancing their social agenda than in following the law. Is this what’s happening with Terri’s case? The Marxist agenda, so akin to the eugenics of Nazi Germany, is to have the State rule supreme on matters of life and death. The ideal State in their view must have the power to eliminate the unwanted, the inconvenient, the unproductive, and the uncooperative. That includes the unborn as well as the born.
Jeff — How much taxpayer money should be used to keep Terry alive?
Edited from a letter I wrote to my Senator…
I think we, as members of The Church, have a clear understanding of what happens when we pass from this mortal life. One of two possibilities exist for Mrs. Schiavo. Either, a) her spirit has passed beyond the veil and her physical body, now an empty shell, is simply hanging on because of the machines that keep her going. Or b) Her spirit, in fact, is still trapped inside her body and has been on this side of the veil for the last 13 years because of the machines keeping her going.
Either way, Terri literally and lawfully put her hands in the life of her husband. This is NOT a pro-life issue. This is NOT a right-to-die issue. I, myself, have given my wife specific instruction to let me go in just such a case so I can move on to the important work waiting for me after I die. She has given me the same approval. I’m mostly shoked that the very people who should have an understanding of an afterlife are the ones fighting to keep someone from going there. I’m also frustrated that anyone who professes to believe in the sanctity of marriage would think, much less insist, that this poor man DIVORCE his wife and relinquish his responsibility to others. Forget the fact that over 100 doctors have found her to be in a permenantly vegetative state and that NO doctor who has ever examined her has ever found differently. In fact, her cerebral cortex is literally in liquid form.
Why can we not trust God to take care Mrs. Schivo no matter where she is on her eternal journey? This has always been an issue for her and her husband, not the courts or the legislature.
But the precedent that most scares me here is the insinuation that if my wife were to make the same decision for me, that she would be committing murder. Or, if I gave my written consent to do so, that I would have then committed suicide. That, of course, is absurd.
We should just let her go. Let her go. If we believe in God, in the heavens that awate us, in the sanctity of life (this and to come), and the sanctity of marriage, we need to let her go.