To begin with, I know, that’s a terrible way to start a serious piece of writing, I am writing this to help sort out my own feelings now that Terri Shiavo murder has been completed. I cannot express all of the emptiness that I feel, some anger, some disappointment, and some things I have yet been able to identify. Maybe somewhere a little further down the page I will understand more and be able to express the reasons. In any case I am intentionally avoiding the talk radio shows, the major news media broadcasts and especially the internet blog sites that I normally check on a daily basis.
I will compare the murder of a fellow citizen, Terri Shiavo, by her own country’s system of “justice” with what Nazi Germany did to eradicate their own “less than desirables”. I am aware of the rule of statistical data wherein if a topic is talked about long enough the odds of a reference being made to Nazi Germany increases eventually so that it reaches “1”. Some post graduate law student must have had nothing to do that afternoon and his friends must have thought him to be a genius for having come up with that one. Nazi elitists also murdered the vulnerable and did it in the name of “helping” those poor wretches along to a better place, a place where they would no longer be in pain, retarded, hindered by a body that functioned poorly or from a mind that was incapable of reason or advanced thought. Come to think of it, why was it such a bad thing, at least by our own standards they should all be given “hero’s” salutations, laud and honor.
When we can say in casual conversation that it was a blessing for Terri to die from starvation and dehydration because it will improve the quality of her life, as if she had been tortured and whipped in one of Saddam Hessian’s brothel prisons, instead of being nourished and cared for on a daily basis with her father and mother reading to her; then something is terribly wrong with our society.
I listened to the attorney for Michael Shiavo as he tried to “sell” this euphoric transition, twelve days into the forced starvation; “the soft music playing all around her as she holds her Teddy Bear under her arm, surrounded by all the people who really love her and only want the natural process to be a beautiful experience”. (paraphrased) It made me want to vomit as the smoke and mirrors floated out across the airwaves. Death is a beautiful and natural event; why can’t you conservative hypocrites see what a wonderful thing it is we are doing here for this poor wretched person? Terri’s brain has been totally inactive for years, she feels no pain and can only be thought of as in a PVS? The doctors have done exhaustive examinations and they know what is best. PVS, isn’t that the stuff my yard man used to put in a sprinkler system? If she was brain dead and felt no pain then why did they have to give her morphine to ease that non-existent pain caused from starvation and dehydration?
All I could think of was the scene in the movie, Soylent Green. The character played by Edward G. Robinson knew his time was about up so he choose the assisted suicide option. He checked into the place where you get to die; making it easier for his fellow citizens who are all starving because there isn’t enough food to go around. He pays in advance so that he can die with his favorite music being played, watch a pretty sunset that gets plastered on the wall as they “help you along” to death. (As a matter of interest, even in this macabre setting they didn’t starve him to death, it was much the same as when our dog had to be put to sleep after he got hit by a car.) After that the Charlton Heston character watched as they rolled his friend’s body in a linen sheet and tossed it, along with all the other “dearly departed”, into a garbage truck to haul them away to the “food making facility” that made Soylent Green food bars for everyone else to survive on.
It would have been touching had Terri Shiavo’s actual wishes and desires been written down; watching as her “care givers” were prohibited from even moistening her cracked lips with a damp cloth or letting her suck on chips of crushed ice, such a beautiful and natural State assisted final farewell to all her friends and loved ones, all except her parents who had been told to leave. We have only a judge’s decision based on hearsay testimony to go on; hardly enough evidence to provide rock solid decisions when condemning a human being to death. “But we’re not killing her, we are letting her die of natural causes.” Try letting your pet dog or cat die of natural caused starvation and you would end up behind bars for cruel and unusual treatment; PETA would be on the prosecutor’s table handing them court case documentation to nail the door shut.
I heard the question asked on whether or not it would be murder had someone gotten past the heavily armed guards, gotten into Terri’s room, pulled a pistol out and shot her to death; thereby speeding up the mandated decree of death? Would such a charge have been applied to the person who could not stand to watch as Terri died from starvation and dehydration? Yes, the courts would have been cheated out of their power and so it would have been murder and charges would be filed. I have news for you, it was murder in either case.
I’m not so sure that any form of assisted suicide is appropriate; so I am damn sure that murder is way off the scale of appropriate conduct, acting as an individual or under the auspices and direction of the State. For argument’s sake, let’s say I did go along with the notion that in some rare circumstances that assisted suicide might be the humane and decent approach to ending a tormented life that was known to be in its final and terminally un-repairable stage.
The owner of that life, interesting how that came out, would have to have their faculties about them, mind you, not someone else speaking up for them as a proxy. They would have to state clearly and distinctly that they were aware of the situation and provide more than hearsay to proceed. In any event, starvation and dehydration would still be considered dereliction of duty, neglect and murder; even under the circumstances associated with a stated desire to die with dignity.
I had a close friend of mine who was going to die because her body had truly been used up and only had weeks to live in terrible pain. She already had to have kidney dialysis regularly and the rest of her organs were failing too. She consulted with her doctors, her friends and even her clergy for guidance on how to approach the end of her life. She decided that she would discontinue eating and allow death to take her. She continued to drink water as a means of abating the terrible thirst and as a means of keeping her mouth moist. She was able to speak to us and converse until the last day of her life. Her mind was severely hindered due to being deprived of nourishment during her last few days; rambling on about things without any ability to put thoughts into a meaningful pattern.
If I had been the one who had made such a decision to end her life, acting without her expressed desire, I would have felt guilty for having shortened her life, even if by only one day. I would have to carry that with me into the eternities. I still wonder if she, yes I wonder if even she had the right to quit trying to live. Life is a gift from God and so my doubts about having the right to end it prematurely, even so much as by one day, is valid; that is unless you are one of those who have taken the side that there is no God, there are no such laws as God given laws and therefore there are no consequences for having broached such a non existent law.
I refer to a favorite scriptural case of logic regarding the concepts of God's law and consequences as found in the Book of Mormon. http://scriptures.lds.org/2_ne/2
Second Nephi, Chapter 2 verse 13:
"And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say this is no sin, ye shall say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.”
The entire chapter is worth the effort as it covers quite a bit of ground. There is more; however, it will suffice that in one simple explanation the scriptures make it clear that the choice is always left up to each individual, verse 27:
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might miserable like unto himself.”
What will it be like here in our United States of America a few years down that road? Will we be going through the mental wards “assisting the insane” out of those anguished bodies? If we are involved in a traffic accident and our legs are mangled beyond repair will the doctor’s put us out of our misery rather than prescribe artificial limbs and the needed therapy necessary to imitate the function of those lost limbs? Will we have our doctors simply “snuff out” those babies born with birth defects? I forgot, they are already doing that; killing these miniature people as they come forth and depriving them of the right to take even their first breath, “live birth abortions” is what they call it. Most people could not watch; hell, they start puking their guts out after seeing still pictures of the process. The “doctors”, forgive my disdain for the use of that word by such evil ones, upon seeing the child’s head take a set of piercing forceps and plunges the sharp ends through the head so as to destroy the brain. It’s not murder because the fetus, not a baby, never took a breath and so had no rights to life to begin with. I forget the ratio of abortions to pregnancies but its enough to make me gag; something like 1 in 3, correct me if I am wrong. I’m not talking about the extreme case of pregnancy as a result of rape or a life threatening situation to the mother, these are matters of inconvenience; what we used to call murder is now abortion.
The cultural stigma associated with sex out of wedlock has been erased primarily due to our constant bombardment in our entertainment sources. Not only is sex not a problem, pregnancy is not a problem, it can be inconvenient for sure; but it’s not a problem. You might have to explain a few things but it’s not like you’re going to lose your job, your friends will understand and who cares what happens to the fetus, after all, it’s not like you were murdering a “real person”. If you really want to make a baby; one that you plan on keeping, then just do it all over, no big deal.
Is it just me or does this sound a little too surreal? This is America, land of the free. Free to choose our life styles, free from the burden of religion because we have that wonderful separation of Church and State. We are free to travel down what used to be “forbidden roads” because there are no consequences when there are no sins. Sins are something that the religious right hangs onto so that they can preach and point fingers. This is America, we have made a choice and there is nothing in the Constitution that you can prove that says anything about God. God is just another way of saying you need a crutch because you haven’t the intelligence to debate subjects on their own merit. Right or wrong are ancient concepts made up to keep everyone from having a good time.
I read where a mother had an ultra sound test which showed that her baby was “severely deformed”, according to her doctor. Rather than have the abortion which the doctor prescribed as a means of avoiding such an unpleasant child rearing situation, the mother opted to continue through the pregnancy. The baby’s severe deformity was a cleft palate. I have a good friend of mine who had surgery to repair his cleft palate. Oher than a slight scar on his lip I can’t imagine depriving him of the right to life; well maybe, his sense of humor is a little bold at times. Who are these doctors that they have taken upon themselves such authoritative smugness to determine which gifts from God are of value and which aught not be accepted? Are we any better than those Nazi butchers if we permit these actions to be carried out in the name of humanity? We have taken a step in that very same direction today.
Our medical “professionals” made it a point to provide at least some of the ammunition that was used to commit the murder of Terri Shiavo. I heard it over and over that Terri was in a “permanent vegetative state” with no chance of improving. How did our medical professionals ever learn to talk in such a way? They had to be taught this prevarication somewhere. Human beings are not vegetables, not now, never were. So somewhere it became popular to compare non functioning brains with something common; failing to recognize the dangerous path being taken once the remarkable gift of human thought contained within the human body and closely associated with what the medical practice calls a brain. Once that activity is “as useless” as a head of lettuce what’s to keep us from discarding it? The answer, nothing.
To arrive at where we are today has taken years of indoctrination, to have doctors violate their oaths to heal into some perversion of that oath, a mentality that permits one human to diagnose another human beings value and then recommend that death is better than life. Who is that has been teaching the medical profession such “progressive” ideas?
I would have to say that there is a good percentage of our populace that has ignored the concept of God, the concept that life is a gift from God, that man is incapable of creating life without the miracle provided by God. Life is not a spontaneous outcome based on infinite possibilities of chance all coming together to form a living breathing master being that we call the human race. To believe such is more asinine than the fellow who is about to lose his house and car because he hasn’t got enough money in the bank so he goes an purchases a lottery ticket. If only the numbers all fall into place and I win the jackpot I can pay for a new house, a new car and everything will be wonderful. There is a much better chance for him to watch as his car disappears down the street on the back of a repo wrecker and he starts living under the bridge when the bank forecloses on his overdue mortgage payments.
“There has to be a separation of Church and State!”, we hear it all the time. There is no place in our schools, our government houses, our courts for God. Those fools from the past may have been so blind as to inscribe our money, our national monuments with such poppycock; but we are not so foolish as to blindly follow down such a path. I know that Franklin D. Roosevelt said some really important things when he voiced his, “Day of Infamy” speech; but there is no need to ruin it for the sake of accurately recording the entire speech word for word. “So Help us God”, was thrown in because it was a popular talking point at that point in our history. Never mind that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a major reason why this country has so many socialist programs. That because of those social programs there was a temporary immediate relief from the ravages of a Great Depression. Instead of thanking God for restoring prosperity many have the mistaken and misguided “belief” that it was Government that provided for their needs; it starts with the letter “G”, what’s the big deal who gets the credit? Since Government took the place of God then there was not such a big change when the courts stepped in and removed God entirely from our schools, our community or anything that the common citizen might use. We have no need for God today, at least not as a nation, so there is no need to place “So help us God” on the WWII memorial. It is part of the great lie so that we as a people lose sight of our origin, our God. Who is it that is the author of such lies?
Then there was the mockery of a custody hearing to see who had more of a right to speak for Terri; her “husband” or her parents. The mockery had to have started quite a while back when Terri was placed in a Hospice rather than housed in a clinical environment for the purpose of maintaining and improving her functions. It sounds like a decision had already been made at that point. The mockery continued when it became clear that the courts, the representatives of our social consciousness, provided that this was a “right to die” issue rather than a “right to life” issue.
Had it been a right to life situation it might have been covered as one of those Inalienable Rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence; in which case the United States of America, that being the Supreme Court, would have or could have stepped in and declared that Terri Shiavo’s rights had been trampled on by the courts in Florida. They could have and should have declared that Terri was a Ward of the State and then determined who best would serve to protect that unalienable right to life; they turned their backs on her instead. They could have made it a matter of taking up for one who is silenced and could not speak for herself; but that never happened because of our nation’s new fascination with a so called right to die, die with dignity.
When it became an issue as to whether or not Terri had “claimed” the desire to die, something which in my opinion was not properly addressed, why was it not important to have that in writing or at the very least corroborated by way of other witnesses to that specific request? Why did it take several years for Michael Shiavo to “recall” those “wishes”? Why did he place Terri in a Hospice rather than a place designed to rehabilitate? Was it a matter of convenience to have her out of the way? He has made no secret that he had been living with another woman and has two children by her. In a time not too far back these children would have shamed both adults by being called “bastard children”, in other words, born out of wedlock. The stigma being assigned to the parents, not the children. In our politically correct society we must not hurt anyones feelings and so, again, where there is no sin there are no sinners.
One of the most troubling thoughts regarding this whole mess is that We The People have evolved, if that is the proper word, to the point where it is now the law of the land that unless we specifically demand the right to live, that we have decided on a right to die.
I have no way to express this other than to say that the world has been turned upside down, left is right and right is left.
My sister worked as a nurse employed to take care of people in a hospice setting. While she did take great efforts to treat them with every human care possible; there was no thought to exceed “natural” bodily function to prolong their lives through artificial means. These people knew they were going to die soon and had entered into a conscious decision to follow a path which had a certain known conclusion, death. Terri may never have been a part of that decision making process; we have only her “loving husband’s” testimony on that. We do know that he had selected a good place to abandon his wife. He did take up his own life again, so to speak, living with another woman and having children by her; but, he loved his lawfully wedded wife enough to keep her safely maintained. At what point did we as a people find that such extra marital situations became something less than an abomination, which then became “something we just didn’t talk about” in civilized society and then into something so common and ordinary that many of our neighbors might accept?
“White” does not change into “Black” in the blink of an eye; no, it takes great care to soil it a little at a time. Every situation can eventually be taken apart to find the source of truth or fiction, right or wrong if you will. It’s a little like how a computer works, everything is either a “1” or a “0” to a computer. We humans have to complicate things with rationalization for when we wish to stray from right and wrong, truth or fiction.
It has always been that way; just look to the answers given in the Garden of Eden. When they were discovered to be naked, they were asked. “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, if so thou shouldst surely die?” This is the first recorded case of sin, something for which they both knew a specific penalty had been assigned. Adam’s reply was, “The woman thou gavest me, and commandest that she should remain with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree and I did eat”. The woman Eve was asked why she had partaken of the forbidden fruit, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”.
Both of them attempted to pass off their inappropriate actions by blaming it on another in order to make the violation appear less damning. “Henry down the street cheated on his wife and so it can’t be that terrible; after all, he still is President of the local Rotary Club and he does keep his lawn trimmed so neat.”, gives acceptance of terrible actions as if they were common place. “Ed Kennedy may have a problem with drinking, driving across bridges, leaving out of wedlock dates to die; but he writes one heck of a good piece of legislation that will help the local UAW; after all, you can’t expect him to be perfect, now can we?” We all attempt to mitigate circumstances in order to appear less guilty.
Guilt begins to lose its stigma when the “sin” for which that guilt is assigned gets redefined, each time the edges worn down in order to make it so that eventually the original “sin” no longer exists and therefore there must not be any penalty. (Without going down a path which is not part of this thought process, I might add that my reference to “original sin” in no way implies that Adam and Eve did anything other than disobey a specific command, eating of the fruit led them to be subjected to death; their perfect bodies were now corrupted and therefore would deteriorate and eventually they would die. We as mortals are all subject to that mortal death. In no way does that imply that their being naked or that any sexual contact that eventually brought about the human race was anything other than proper.) I ask again, who is it that has the ability to sway good people so far into wickedness, all the while telling them that it is the only way to learn for themselves good from evil, pain from pleasure and become as the gods having a knowledge of all things?
I fear for our country because so many of us have made a choice to ignore most of what I have placed within the text of this meandering attempt to sort out my feelings. I am of the opinion that when we as a people no longer wish to obey God and follow the simple laws that he has issued, for our benefit I might add, that we no longer can expect or count on His blessings. When that happens we will have nobody to blame but ourselves.
“Forgive us for we know not what we do”, I think not, that only applies to ignorance. I hardly think that what happened to Terri was done in ignorance; more an act of arrogance to the law of God and men than ignorance of it. May Terri find the peace she deserves and may God find a way to work in such a way as to save us from our own poor choices. May we learn to appreciate the gift of life and to “preserve us a nation”, under God with liberty and justice for all. In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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