Today we are ALL Terri Shiavo

Written on 1:07 AM by Jack B.

Other have explained it for better than I ever could. Others have made the case to keep her alive. Others have made the better arguments in her defense. Others have more information and more facts.

“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked.
They all answered, “Crucify him!” Matthew 27:22

I can only go by what I feel. What I see right in front of me. I cannot forget the allegations of abuse and infidelity against Michael Shiavo - after all he is the one making the decision about whether to kill her. I cannot forget that Michael Shiavo now has a "fianceé" AKA concubine with whom he has been living for years and has two children with - hardly the despairing, pain-wracked faithful husband. I cannot forget that Michael Shiavo got hundreds of thousands of dollars (the balance of which he still stands to receive on Terri's death) in malpractice money on the condition that Terri received therapy - something she has never gotten. I cannot forget that Michael Shiavo left Terri to rot in a hospice for years without even getting daylight, without letting her get a PET scan or MRI and not paying attention to her medical care all the while the same hospice (in a direct conflict of interest) is connected with his lawyer George Felos, the man who has gone to court to have Terri killed and the man to whom most of her settlement money has gone to (in lawyer fees) instead of her therapy, and who is also a vocal supporter of legalized euthanasia. I cannot forget that Michael Shiavo only remembered that Terri (in her 20s when she got ill) had apparently told him he didn't want to be kept alive if something happened only years later after her accident and AFTER he got the settlement money for her rehab (rehab that never happened) and that is apparently on his word and his word alone that she is being killed. Many others dispute her saying that or that she would ever say that. I for one cannot forget any of that even if all the people crying for Terri to be killed have conveniently ignored it. Just as they have ignored the fact that that Judge Greer who oversaw the case for years NEVER even saw the woman he sentenced to death and blatantly ignored a Congressional subpoena in order to carry HIS wishes out. Or the fact that this Judge Greer will not even let people come in and give her water MANUALLY and feed her by hand, not even let her mother slip a chip if ice on her tongue - why not if he is sure she can't swallow? Why put her through such a hideous death? Especially where there are so many people (thousands by now) who would be willing to feed and comfort her all the days of her life. But no one seems to ask these questions. Michael Shiavo says she has to die, Judge Greer concurs and America cheers them on.

When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything - G. K. Chesterton

But the worst people in all of this are not those who have actively sought Terri's death but those not connected with the case - the majority of Americans according to all the TV polls - who are not only standing by and doing nothing but urging the machinery of death on. The media with their misinformation and outright falsehoods, the politicians using this as another game of ideological "gotcha", the talking head lawyers who have become like the judges who condemned St. Joan of Arc - twisting the law to suit a desired outcome. And the great mass of humanity who say "well I wouldn't be want to kept alive like that" or "I wouldn't want my loved one to be kept alive like that", not even taking note of the fact that this case isn't about them or even any of their family. It's about a distinct individual, Terri Schindler-Shiavo, a fellow human being. An innocent woman whose only crime was picking a louse for a husband and then getting ill. She is not terminal. She does not have any disease. She was not on a respirator that kept her body going. The feeding tube has been off for days and she didn't stop breathing. She is just brain damaged (not "brain dead" or in a "coma" or any of the other lies the media has been spewing). She just cannot swallow food and so it must be fed to by artificial means. She is not going to die of any illness. She is starving to death. I repeat - she is starving to death! Think about how hungry you or I get when we go without drink or food for just a few hours, think how our stomachs rumble and start to hurt. Then multiply that pain by a week - a week without food. Our bodies dehydrating, our stomachs turning in on itself. Think about the pain and the agony. Then think about not being able to cry out or get relief and knowing the people around you in a hospice, the government and even your "husband" are the ones doing this to you. Think of the pain - and Terri does indeed feel pain. If you pricketh her, like Shylock, she bleeds ... and feels it. And even when people come to try to feed you by hand, to get a sip of water on your tongue - is that allowed? No. These people are arrested. We would not due to an animal or a condemned criminal what Americans of all stripes are saying should be done to Terri Shiavo. We would shoot a horse rather than let it go on in pain, we would put a dog or cat to sleep rather than let it suffer. The Scott Petersons of the world, the murderers of women and children, will live for YEARS on Death Row on the government dole while they get appeal after appeal. If they don't end up dying of natural causes in prison (as many "condemned" people end up doing) they too will get a painless death by the prick of a needle - a far cry to what they did to others. But an innocent person like Terri whose only crime was being weak and helpless? She gets the most inhumane, most painful death possible - something along the lines of what we charged the Nazis with at Nuremberg - FORCED STARVATION.

"When they came for the Jews, I did not speak up, because I was not Jewish. When they came for the Catholics, I did not speak up because I was not Catholic. And, when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up." - Martin Niemoller

What has happened to my country? What have we become? Why are we so callous? All I hear of how "it's a terrible situation" and "I'm sorry she had to die like this" but people are not sorry at all. It seems there's a real hunger for Terri to die among the media talking heads or the lawyers and pols who talk so clinically as if she's not a real human being. I've heard words like "vegetable" being tossed over and over again. As if she's not even human, not even alive. Not deserving of life. "If she's not going to get well, what's the point" they say or "there's no hope for recovery" so kill her, let her die, she'll be better off. Who are they to say these things? When do we judge people by how useful they are, how healthy they are - are these the requirements to be worthy to live? An infant cannot feed themselves, they cannot speak, they must be taken care of - Terri is like a infant now. Should we start killing babies? Maybe in the Netherlands they do that, maybe in Europe they do, but in America? The dehumanization of a person is the first step to their destruction. After all, if a person is not a human being if they are an inanimate "vegetable" with no brain, what difference would it make? It would just be like killing a roach or a rat. This is the thinking that got us slavery, this is the thinking that got us the Armenian Genocide, this is the thinking that got us the Holocaust. Once we have dehumanized a whole class of people - they are ripe for the kill and subjugation. Terri has been dehumanized. She has been found by the powers that be to be less than perfect and thus than worthy of life. And no one cares. In fact they support the FORCED STARVATION (it can never be said enough) of a helpless woman. I am afraid. Afraid for Terri, afraid for me if I should ever be helpless or weak or disabled. Afraid for us all. If they can do this to one person based all on a single statement of hearsay by someone whose motives aren't suspect (AKA Michael Shiavo), what's to prevent the forced starvation and painful death (imposed by the state) on someone else. Maybe one day you or me?

The MORAL TEST of any society is how is treats its weakest: children, elderly, sick, needy and handicapped. - Senator Hubert Humphrey

Today we are all Terri. If she dies, a little piece of us will die as well. We will become no better than the Dutch who today shamelessly kill "damaged" newborns. We will become like the ancient Spartans who would often leave "damaged" children out to die because they were not perfectly formed. We will have become like the parents of Blessed Margaret of Castello who was born blind, hunchbacked and dwarfed. She was walled up within the family castle in one room for much of her early life unable to see anyone other than a priest, later when her parents took her to a shrine in Castello for a cure that didn't happen they just left her there. She was still a child at the time. It was the poor and downtrodden, the homeless and abused like Margaret herself who took her in - otherwise her name and fate would have been lost to history.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said "I thirst." John 19:28

This is the Passion Week of Terri's God, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ who was tortured, scourged and crucified for the sins of the world and then resurrected on the third day, defying death itself. Terri's Passion mirrors his and is an even more startling re-enactment of what Jesus went through than any Mel Gibson movie or local Passion Play. Barring a miracle Terri is going through her agony now, her own crucifixion by the state that can have only one final outcome. I hope and pray that HE is with Terri on her Calvary, whatever happens.

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