There are so many perspectives on the tragedy of the death of Terri Schiavo. Surely it can be argued that an arrogant judiciary has run amuck. Deliberately ignoring the constitutional authority of Congress to determine the jurisdiction of the judiciary.

At the same time one can argue that Congress has no business involving itself in the personal matters of one family. Yet, if the purpose of our government not to protect her citizens, what is it?

Our Declaration of Independence declares, “…all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…”

This founding document of our nation established the fact that the purpose of government is to protect and ensure those “inalienable rights” given to each of us. If Terri Schiavo was in the condition described by her husband, if she suffered from such great damage to her brain that there was no hope, it was still the responsibility of her government to ensure her right to live until such time that her creator took her to be with Him.

Sadly, her government and finally her husband failed in their sacred vows to protect her.

Many in the disabled community watched the drama of the past few weeks and years with alarm. If one man, and a government sworn to protect this woman, would turn on her and not only fail to protect her but actively seek her death, what will protect them, the disabled, when someone decides their lives have no more value. When they are no longer “convenient” to have around?

This was inadvertently brought home to me a few days ago when listening to a news roundtable on Fox News, one of those in the discussion made a comment that went something this.

“But she had a feeding tube. What kind of life is that?”

I wish I could remember who the speaker was. I would want to ask him, “Who are we to decide what determines quality of life for someone? What gives us as individuals, as a nation, as judges and politicians, even as medical professionals the right to determine when someone’s life no longer has value?”

If living with a feeding tube begs the question, “what kind of life is that?” what of a life tied to a dialysis machine? What of life tied to an oxygen tank because of emphysema? What value is there in a life tied to a wheelchair or bedridden? What of the blind? The deaf? Those who live in pain from carpel tunnel or arthritis? “What kind of life it that?”

Where do we draw the line? Who do you want to draw the line? An overburdened medical profession who feel compelled to pour their efforts on those they think have a better chance at a normal life? Who find their professional lives assaulted daily by those in the worst dire straits medically?

Do you want a legal system, seeming bent on extracting the last bit of blood and coin from the doctors, determining when you no longer have value? If a doctor has value to these circling vultures only as a source of income, what value will your life have for them when they’ve extracted every last trial and appeal from you?

Do you want a judiciary to sit in distanced, unmoved judgment of your life’s value without so much as a single visit? Who hide from your humanity behind a shield of withdrawal and aloofness?

What will happen next, once we decide those with chronic medical problems no longer have value in our society? Who will be the next target for easing our discomfort? Will it be the immigrants, the blacks, and homosexuals, those whose ideas don’t line up with those in power? What of the Jews, the Catholics, the Christians and Muslims. What if they will not surrender their values to a secularism that devalues life and determines it worthy only if it is acceptable and convenient?

You say, “No, not in America, that will never happen here!” I dare say those living in Germany in the 1920’s and ‘30’s too thought such a notion was unimaginable. Yet history now tells us they were wrong.

Hitler instituted sterilization and euthanasia measures to enforce his idea of racial purity among German people and caused the slaughter of millions of Jews, Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), Slavic peoples, and many others, all of whom he considered inferior. Among those thought to be inferior were the physically and mentally disabled. They soiled the purity of his idealized Aryan race.

Has our nation started her decline down the path made clear by the Nazi purge? Are we, in the name of “mercy” heading where only tyrants and despots dare?
The demagogues for euthanasia declare and emphatic NO! Certainly Hitler avowed his honor and purity of purpose as well, and history declares his shallowness thereof. Have men really changed all that much since?

Those in the Christian faith who opposed Hitler either did so weakly or out of self-interest. The one Christian leader who took a firm stand, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was put to death by the Nazi regime just days prior to the end of the war. Even in today’s debate in the Schiavo drama we see reflections of the Churches influence, or lack thereof, in Nazi Germany. The church is either weak in it’s response, or marginalized by the liberal media.

Those who sued for the “right” to legally abort the unborn argued it was a medical necessity. Women should not be required to carry diseased or deformed children to term. They should not be required to place their lives in danger, even lose their lives, to birth a child.

We now know that “medical necessity” has become a “choice” of convenience where 96% of those who “choose” abortion do so for purposes of “social” convenience. How long will it take for the “necessity of mercy” to become the “convenience of society?” It took abortion less than 20 years, in today’s fast paced, self worshipping society I surmise it will be much sooner.


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