| The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 43 Issue: 8 - Friday, April 08, 2005 |
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"Time To Go Be With Jesus" A few weeks back I was taken to task for comments I made in a series of columns discussing Terri Schiavo. Among other things, I drew the historical parallels between the Nazi euthanasia program and America's new policy of exterminating the old and the infirm. That earned me all kinds of adjectives, from 'heartless' to 'despicable' and pretty much everything in between. Most of the flamers took exception to my contention that we are sliding down a slippery slope (Vol 42, Issue 20 "The End Thereof are the Ways of Death") I noted that, "This is how far we've 'slid down the slippery slope' since the Supreme Court took it upon itself to define 'life'. It determined thirty years ago that an unborn baby was not 'alive' until after it drew its first breath. That began the slide. A generation later, being labeled' pro-life' is a pejorative and a political liability. A nominee for the judiciary who is 'pro-life' cannot hope to pass the confirmation process." I pointed out that, in 1972, nobody expected Roe v. Wade to unleash a holocaust that would claim tens of millions of unborn human beings. And certainly, (one hopes) nobody envisioned the right of a woman to have a first trimester abortion to be extended until any baby whose feet had not yet fully exited the womb could be 'aborted' by plunging a pair of nine inch scissors into its skull and vacuuming out the baby's brain. In the forums, a debate broke out about whether or not Terri Schiavo was being 'allowed to die' or was being killed by forced starvation. One dissenter wrote; "God intended for her to die 15 years ago and man is keeping her alive for selfish reasons. It is time to let her go home to her Father. I'm only sorry they are starving her death after all of this time in prison. If I were her parent I would have fought less to keep her alive and more to allow her to be lethally injected with morphine. It is the only humane thing to do at this point." "Your comparison of this ordeal to Nazi Germany is despicable at best. You have certainly lost respect in this Christian's eyes. You are starting to sound more like the nuts over at PrisonPlanet.com than the Jack Kinsella I have been reading for the last several years." Assessment: I am not sure who the 'nuts' over at Prison Planet are, but I stand by my contention that Terri Schiavo's case opened the floodgates for 'mercy killings' in America AND my comparison to Nazi Germany. Hitler employed the use of 'gradualism' to progress from 'euthanizing' the disabled and mentally defective, gradually breaking down barriers and taboos until, at the end, the definitions of those 'eligible' for euthanasia included Jews, Christians, homosexuals, Gypsies, Slavs, Russian POWs and political dissidents. But it began with the extremely old, and the extremely disabled. Terri Schiavo hasn't been dead two weeks, and now comes a report from Georgia in which an 81-year-old widow who is neither terminally ill or even comatose who is being starved to death at the behest of her granddaughter and a local Georgia probate court judge. Worldnetdaily reports that Mae Magouirk was transferred to a hospice in La Grange, Georgia, after being admitted to an intensive care unit of her local hospital following a heart problem. At the time of her admission she was lucid and had never been diagnosed with dementia. Her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, evidently without prior legal authority, requested that her grandmother be starved to death. Remember, she was both lucid and conscious. She has been kept sedated with morphine and ativan, a powerful tranquillizer during her starvation and she is today clinging to life, having been denied food and water since March 28. The dehydration is being done in DEFIANCE of Magouirk's specific wishes, which she set down in a "LIVING WILL," and without agreement of her closest living next-of-kin. In her living will, Magouirk specifically set down that food and water were to be withheld only if she were in a persistent vegetative state or comatose. She is neither. She isn't even terminally ill, which is a basic requirement for admission into a hospice. Hospice care is not medical care in the traditional sense. Hospice care is designed to ease a terminal patient's suffering as life comes to a natural end. So much for the 'protection' afforded by a living will. When Magourirk's next of kin discovered that Gaddy had only financial power of attorney and not medical power of attorney, they instructed the hospice to reinsert her feeding tube. Gaddy obtained a court order from a local probate court judge granting her 'emergency guardianship.' Under the terms of his ruling, Gaddy was granted full and absolute authority over Magouirk, at least for the weekend. She took advantage of her judge-granted power by ordering her grandmother's feeding tube pulled out, just hours after it had been inserted. WND quoted Ron Panzer, who is president and founder of the Hospice Patients Alliance. "This is happening in hospices all over the country," he said. "Patients who are not dying – are not terminal – are admitted [to hospice] and the hospice will say they are terminally ill even if they're not. There are thousands of cases like this. Patients are given morphine and ativan to sedate them. If feeding is withheld, they die within 10 days to two weeks. It's really just a form of euthanasia." Three weeks ago, I registered my astonishment at the focus of the Schiavo debate. The focus was NOT about whether or not the government can order you put to death, but rather, it was about the circumstances under which the order can be issued. My detractors, most of whom evidently have more faith in government than I do, based their argument on the "nobody would want to live like that" defense. Others said it was time to 'let her go to be with God' -- and as I noted at the time, the proponents of that argument generally don't believe in God anyway. How far have we slid down the slippery slope? Consider the 'logic' offered by granddaughter Gaddy for putting her grandmother to death. "Grandmama is old and I think it is time she went home to Jesus," Gaddy told Magouirk's brother and nephew, McLeod and Ken Mullinax. "She has glaucoma and now this heart problem, and who would want to live with disabilities like these?" Let that sink in: "Grandmama is old, and I think it is time she went home to Jesus." That's all it really takes to qualify, for want of a better term, as a candidate for 'involuntary euthanasia' in America's new culture of death. Living will or not, all that is necessary is for somebody ELSE to decide: "She's old and its time for her to go home to be with
Jesus."
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