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The state-enforced killing of Terri Schiavo by slow torture of dehydration and starvation is a brutal crime that goes far beyond euthanasia.
EUTHANASIA OR MURDER?
I grieve for this nation. The state-enforced killing of Terri Schiavo by slow torture of dehydration and starvation is a brutal crime that goes far beyond euthanasia. The latter requires: (1) a verifiable, current authorization from the patient, (2) a state of unbearable suffering by the person whose death is immanent, and (3) that the person’s life is ended quickly and humanely without additional physical, mental, or emotional suffering.
Terri’s killing satisfies none of these criteria.
I was born into a regime that considered the defenseless and the disabled disposable. It pains me to see my chosen country engaging in similar immoral and illegal acts of torture and murder in carefully guarded offshore concentration camps, and now in the slow inhumane killing of a brain-damaged, but otherwise fully viable and lovable human being. The fact that many others are being subjected to similar immoral assaults in our hospitals, hospices, and prisons does not justify this barbarism, contrary to claims by Terri’s estranged husband’s lawyers. It just makes it a thousand times worse.
Similar disregard for human life in Germany’s National-Socialist era harvested megadeath and total destruction, and permanently scarred a highly cultural and technological society. Don’t let this happen here.
Dietmar Rothe
Cardiff-by-the-Sea
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Book; In Search of Truth and Freedom
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| Reviewed by Robert Williams |
4/27/2005 |
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Unfortunately, it was Terri herself who wanted to be pulled off the life supports. The jurors and the judge both acquiesced to her wishes, which were that she not be kept alive through intervention if she ever became incapicitated and to be allowed to die a natural death. In that sense, the judicial outcome was a victory for Terri and her wish to die a natural death.
Personally, I would prefer to battle it out on the feeding tube until Father Time and Mother Nature made their decision despite anyone else's best intentions. But Terri had stated otherwise. And the jurors and judge acquiesced to her.
What made all this difficult to ascertain was that her parents denied that she made any such wish and accused her husband of creating the alleged fiction, who they painted as a greedy money-grubbing opportunist. I admit that I too was inclined to view the husband in this light.
But after careful deliberations, the jury found that Terri wanted to die a natural death and they let her do so. But her parents wanted her to keep on with her struggle to live, but they had to watch her die unable to intervene.
A tragedy.
But worse are the tens of thousands of innocent mothers, children, farmers etc being bombed and melted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and covertly Iran in the quiet names of oil and opium.
The U.S. and Britain are entering the third year of the war in Iraq and the fourth year in Afghanistan.
Increasingly, many Americans believe that the war is over. They think that relatively few civilians and soldiers have died. They think that U.S. interests and Iraqi interests are best served by the continued occupation of Iraq and support for the sham democracy.
This is not the reality. Veterans For Peace (www.veteransforpeace.org) know that over 100,000 Iraqi citizens have died since the beginning of the war. Over 1,500 U.S. soldiers have died. Countless others have been wounded and maimed. And, although the pictures are not shown on corporate TV, large numbers of Iraqi citizens and U.S. and/or British soldiers continue to die.
Let us tell the truth about the wars and continuing occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and coverlty Iran.
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| Reviewed by Judy Lloyd (Reader) |
3/27/2005 |
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| Thank you and God bless you for writing. |
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| Reviewed by D May (Reader) |
3/26/2005 |
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| Very well written and informative. |
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