|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
National NewsConservative News
A Life of Value
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: April 5, 2005
For the last few months the nation watched the battle that was fought in Florida over the life of a brain-damaged woman named Terri Schiavo. I try to avoid making overly grand statements about any issue…but, I do believe in this case that something profoundly important took place and that we may have may taken a major step toward making compassionate killing acceptable. Worse yet, we may have made it a right.
Most people know that Terri Schiavo had been on a feeding tube for 15 years because of brain damage resulting from a heart attack in February 1990, brought on by bulimia, an eating disorder. In 1998, Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, petitioned the Florida courts to allow the removal of Terri's feeding tube, claiming he knew that she would choose to have the tube removed. Bob and Mary Schindler, Terri's mom and dad, took the position that Terri would not choose to have the feeding tube removed and filed their own case to prevent Michael from ending their daughter's life.
Although there is no written or recorded evidence that Terri would have chosen to die, Judge George Greer ruled in February 2000 that clear and convincing evidence showed that Terri would have chosen not to receive life-prolonging medical care under her current circumstances and ordered the feeding tube removed. Terri's parents were able to get Judge Greer's order stayed and have been fighting court battles for her life ever since. They lost the court battle and were forced to stand by helplessly and watch the judge-ordered starvation of their daughter.
Many people have very mixed emotions about what happened to Terri. On the one hand, many personally would not want to be kept alive based on what they knew about Terri's condition. On the other hand, many believe that, in the absence of clear instructions from Terri that she wanted to die, the courts and society should have erred on the side of continuing her life. Frankly, whatever a person wishes regarding what life-sustaining measures should be taken for them, they could do their families and everyone else a big favor by having a living will drawn up that gives instructions to that effect.
Still, what is most alarming to me is that the ever-increasing usurpation by the judiciary of our constitutional rights may make our wishes irrelevant even if we have a living will.
Given the propensity of the federal judiciary to eradicate all aspects of religion from our civic life and to create rights and laws as they see fit, and given the preference of some United States Supreme Court justices to rely on the laws of other countries instead of the United States Constitution, it is only a matter of time until the Court issues a ruling based on the euthanasia laws of another country such as the Netherlands that will establish the "right to kill." There, in a country with a population approximately equal to the state of Florida, 2,500 people are put to death each year.
The court decisions that ensured Terri's death also show that the judiciary has thoroughly rejected the foundations of our law. There is no regard anymore for the Declaration of Independence's assertion that our rights, including the right to life, are inalienable rights from God, not from the government or a doctor or a surviving spouse, and certainly not from a judge.
It seems the primary focus of both court and public opinion on whether Terri Schiavo should have lived or died revolved around someone's opinion of what constitutes a quality life. Such a perspective is bereft of the profound reverence for the physical life of an individual as a gift from God that was at the core of our nation's founding principles. Such a spiritually bankrupt perspective does not acknowledge that there is great mystery about our being that goes beyond the utilitarian perspectives that so often only focus on the "quality" of an individual's life.
What constitutes a "quality life" or a "life of value" is highly subjective and subject to interpretations that could replace the interests of individuals with the interests of the masses. If we as a society only value life based on its quality as we, in our flawed perspectives, see it, then whole segments of our population could be prospects for killing for the good of society. Hitler's first steps toward genocide against the Jews began with the legalization of euthanasia for children born mentally retarded or handicapped which was supposedly humane and for the greater good.
If quality of life were to be the criteria for ending life, who is to say that people that are hopelessly addicted to drugs or alcohol or that are mentally retarded or severely handicapped should not be terminated because they are burden to themselves, their families and to society. If being a burden to society or to families is the criteria, then who could disagree with former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm who said the terminally ill elderly have an obligation to end their lives.
It is not a great leap from making it civic duty for the terminally ill elderly to end their lives to lowering the threshold to include the elderly that can no longer pay their way or no longer "contribute" to society. A recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out that for 20 years ethicists have been arguing that a lack of resources may oblige society to withhold extraordinary care from people over 85. And thus we start down the slippery slope whereby we assign our own judgments to assess the worth of a person's life.
There are many things I do not know. I do not know how to describe what value Terri Schiavo's life had in the eyes of God. But I believe it had value beyond anything we, or even Terri's parents, could have ascribed to it. And I know this… none of us know enough to substitute our own estimation of a person's life value for that of their Creator's.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
