Observations

Opening a Can of Worms

by The Windjammer

The rulings of the various courts involved in the Teri Schiavo case in Pinellas Park, FL have already opened a can of worms. We as a society may soon find ourselves in a situation similar to the position of the smart-mouthed detainee who was told by the southern sheriff, "You’re in a heap o’ trouble, Son."

The decision by a judge and upheld by various courts to remove the feeding tube was, to put it quite bluntly, sheer murder. Not murder which would result in immediate death, but murder by starvation. Given the record of many of the courts in the last few decades, that should not be surprising to anyone.

We aren’t headed toward oligarchy. We are already there and becoming more deeply embedded.

I don’t know about you, but I would prefer to leave this life on my own terms. One of my early names, given to me by the son of a Greek restaurateur who was kind enough to help me through school by feeding me and slipping me a little pocket money every now and again in exchange for washing a few dishes, was "Wolf." That name wasn’t given because I was shaggy-haired. It was given to me because when my mouth was open (about half the time, the other half was when I closed it to chomp), I was always stuffing food of some kind into it. I was the only person there who could eat anything he wanted, including T-bones and ice cream. I am now 83 and I haven’t recovered from that bad habit. I would never voluntarily choose starvation as the means to my end. I want to go with my belly full.

There have been serious questions raised about the husband’s motivation in wanting her out of the way. The first question the judges should have asked themselves and the husband was, "Who says?" In this state, and I suspect in many others, the simple statement that you don’t want to be kept on life support when all hope for recovery is gone is simply not acceptable. Even if you put it in writing. Such a statement requires that two people witness it. And those CAN NOT be family members.

My own question is not about his philandering and fathering. I wrote a while back that the gendarmes should cherchez l’ argent, seek the money, rather than spend so much effort on the other woman. Human nature is difficult to combat. So is human greed. Both have become powerful motivation for crime.

Regardless of the circumstances resulting in those decisions, my serious question is, "If the justices can justify murder by starvation to terminate the life of a defenseless person who doesn’t really want to go (no one has proven conclusively that she did or didn’t), then how can they justify the conviction of Dr. Jack Kevorkian who assisted people who were apparently terminally ill and suffering in taking the easy way out?" What Dr. Jack did was reported to be fast and painless and solicited by his clients.

Euthanasia has been called a "slippery slope." It is somewhat more than that. It is a bottomless abyss.

Euthanasia is not a way of life, it is a way of death, even in those societies which accept and condone it. Given the character which seems prevalent in government circles, including the judiciary, I certainly do not want my demise left up to strangers.

I would like it to be between me and GOD.

With a little help from my wife and kids.