To be sure, the Schiavo case was – and remains – a complicated situation with lots of unanswered questions. Was it wrong to let her live in that condition? Did Terri really say she wouldn’t want to be sustained if it came to such a situation? And even if she did, is it possible she no longer felt that way and we were not aware of it? Might there not one day be a cure for such a condition?
Another question that cries out for an answer: Does our judicial system have too much power? Something is amiss when parents, close friends, governors, and even the president (who tried to save Terri) are silenced into submission.
Furthermore, what group of citizens – even judges – has the right to play God here and determine that a certain individual, due to his or disabilities, should no longer stay alive? History begs us to take a close look at how Rome put to death the mentally retarded and the physically disabled. And how, in not so ancient history, the Nazis bought into the notion of the superior race, cruelly slaughtering millions deemed “inferior.”
Once the holy courts made their decision to let “Terri die in peace,” the show had only just begun. In a disgusting display of force, her bed was surrounded with armed police to enforce her death penalty. Once the decision was made, and it became final after the courts could no longer be bothered to re-hear the case, then at the very least Terri should have been given a quick injection. But here, too, the grownups refused to grow up. No, they would just stand around and not “intervene,” pretending they had done their sacred duty.
It is always better to err on the side of life than on death. If it was a mistake to let her live under such circumstances, it was a bigger mistake to allow her to die under worse circumstances.
Our nation has some serious soul searching to do. The point is that our society let this unfortunate young woman, who was unable to communicate with others or feed herself, slowly starve to death. And this is something I will never be able to explain to my campers.
