God have mercy on his soul.
For one thing, dying this way is horrible, regardless of the fact that it is murder (killing of another after thinking it through without a mitigating circumstance like the person forfeited his/her life by killing someone else.)
How can the husband do this, and how can the courts let him do this. I don't care about this "her life isn't worth living" crap he keeps saying and others keep saying. Do they know? Do that have intimate knowledge of what her feelings are? Who are they to decide?
My grandparents live with my parents in the same house I do. My grandmother is in the same condition as Terri. She can't really do anything for herself, she lies in bed all day, can't talk (or at least won't). She is a vegetable. But we would NEVER do something like this. You look in her eyes and you can see that she is still a living person. I don't know why she is in the condition she is in. I do know that I have learned alot about compassion from her situation. The same is true of my grandfather, who has slowly descended into dementia over the last few months. He can barely walk, even with assistance, and he can't really do much for himself. He can barely feed himself, he can talk, although unitelligably for the most part. He doesn't remember his name. But we would never do this to him either. This isn't the same as not resusitating someone, this is flat out causing them to die when they would normally still live.
The value of a life isn't in how comfortable or useful you are. It isn't in the things you can do, or the condition of your mind. The value of a life is intrinsic to that life. We are made in the image of God, taking a life is deciding that we know better than God when that person should die. In some cases, He has told us to take the life, as punishment for a crime. This situation has nothing to do with that. We are commanded to do what we can for people in need, and that goes for this situation. You can argue that they shouldn't have kept her alive in the past when they had the chance to decide, that modern medicine keeps people alive who should be dead. That is true, but the decision was MADE. She is now ALIVE.
Gandalf, in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring says to Frodo, "Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them...? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."
God give peace and comfort to Terri, her family and those who feel the pain of this action.
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It occurs to me that if we can withhold basic nutrition and hydration from Terri, then we should also be able to do the same for anyone who is alive and especially those who are not assisted by machines. Like infants.
OK, they have potential for improvement from their helpless state, but who really knows what is possible? Medical turnarounds happen every day that astound doctors. (This is for the sake of those who do not believe that EVERY life is of worth.)
It just seems a short step from withholding food and hydration from Terri to the diminished elderly, then to the severely handicapped, then to newborns with severe handicaps, then.... Who knows where it might lead.
And don't tell me the slippery slope does not happen. I remember when Roe vs. Wade was passed. Abortion was going to be only for the "hard cases" and only in the first trimester - maybe the second for extreme cases. Now anyone can have an abortion for any reason up until the moment of full birth. and the "hard cases" account for a very small percentage of abortions. Most are "elective", for convenience. Even those who are married happily and have good incomes abort because another child would be inconvenient. (This happened in my own dear family, to someone I love very much.)
Shadowmom1
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