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The Raving Atheist: Good Bye, Terri
According to the religious left and its death cult allies, the effort to save Terri Schiavo is some kind of nefarious plot by right-wing theocratic whack-jobs. Indeed, media-conformists accept this is as fundamental dogma, like the evils of McCarthyism or the wrong-headedness of the Vietnam War. There is another side, always has been, and New Media are giving it a platform:The religious right, it is said, is conspiring to trample Terri's rights, to defeat Terri's wishes. But whatever the cynicism and hypocrisy of its leaders (and I agree there is plenty), I think the attitude held among those clamoring for her death is at least as religious. If Ms. Schindler-Schiavo is what their premises insist -- a faux-human husk -- she is not a thing capable of having wishes or rights. She is not in a position to hate her predicament or desire a way out of it. To say it is humane it kill her is to assume she is capable of appreciating humanity. To say she should be allowed to die with dignity is to assume that she is somehow more capable of demanding dignity than a corpse. Indeed, the very reason that starvation has been allowed as the method for her demise is that she is well beyond suffering. If there was courage behind that conviction the expedient of a lethal injection or a bullet to the brain would be employed. Or, better yet, she'd be buried still breathing. As I said here, I think she should be given the benefit of the doubt. There is no great harm in preserving her life. Nor is some great principle, some grand universal moral imperative, served by killing her. Keep in mind that it is nothing more than a wish of her husband. If he wished otherwise no one would have heard of her and certainly no one would be extolling the virtues of her death. Keeping her alive is expensive, perhaps; a tube must be filled and her body cleaned. But the argument has little force in a nation awash in iPods and plagued by obesity. We can listen to one less song and eat one less hamburger. We can build more hospitals and still spend the money to save that little girl trapped in a well, or that woman trapped in her own body. And we are all safer in a nation populated by people like my friend Ashli, who (whatever their delusions about the afterlife), so madly embrace life in all its forms and at all its stages rather than give the presumption to death. Terri will die on Easter and much will be made of that timing by people you detest. However tempted, I will not be mocking them here. Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-03-27 |
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