Terri Schiavo Update

ROFL!!!

 

I don't want anyone to think that I am leaving this intense and thought provoking thread but I won't be online again until Monday evening. My husband and I are going to a charity mule show. He's doing the children's petting zoo and I'm announcing.

Don't have too much fun without me.

 

Re: Euthanasia....

Why do you mar the argument with personal attacks?

If you and I have a difference of opinion, fine. You think that allowing someone to die is cruel, regardless of the method -- would you feel the same way if she was on a breathing machine and would die instantly -- and I feel that allowing someone to live in such a state if they may not wish to is cruel. We disagree.

Calling me whiner, and comparing me to a "little girl" achieves nothing.

 

Calling me whiner, and comparing me to a "little girl" achieves nothing.

You're right. Unfortunately, well reasoned argument on both sides also acheives very little. The Schiavo situation is a perfect example, much discussion with no change in her situation. I do despair.

 

All these issues can seem black and white. It's just when when you get into the ugly details of real life that they become complicated.

The state shouldn't kill Terri!
(what if that really is her expressed desire and she really is brain dead)

No abortion!
(what about 13 year old raped by attacker, family member)

Death Penalty for murderers!
(what about the innocent people we have killed, later proven by DNA evidence. The system ain't perfect. )

 

All these issues can seem black and white. It's just when when you get into the ugly details of real life that they become complicated

Yes, but given this should we not error on the side of life? No abortion, no death penalty, no euthanasia (outside of a living will)? Are we really improving anything by killing prisoners, the unborn and the incapacitated? That is what I'd like to know, what do we gain by choosing to kill in all three of these situations?

 

Khan,
You are painting with a pretty broad brush. Not everyone who holds a position against Terri's cruel, State-imposed death, agrees on the other two points. But I do fit the framework you've provided, so I'll answer:

Those are two very big "Ifs" you've stated. Neither one of them is true. She has never expressed a desire to be killed, and she is not brain dead.

While any of us would be entirely sympathetic to this person's plight, the fact is that in all cases of abortion you end up with a murdered baby. Just because the method used to impregnate might be abhorrent, doesn't mean we have a right to end the pregnancy.

And the fact is that the number of abortions performed based on a victim of rape or incest is well less than 1% of all abortions performed. There have been 40 million plus abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade. How many of those do you think were "necessary"?

Obviously it is a sad and inexcusable waste of human life when that happens, no matter how few times it does. But it doesn't take away from the need to end the life of those who do kill others. It only points to the need to have a better system that can be 100% sure prior to the death penalty being issued. For instance, I am uncomfortable with the death penalty in cases where the evidence is completely circumstantial, which is usually the case in the type of DNA reversals you mentioned.

BLD

 

Robb,
In the third scenario, the death penalty, it is the only absolute deterrent from that person ever killing again. It is also the only scenario where we are not dealing with an innocent victim.

BLD

 

Good questions. I tend to agree with you.

 

Kahn,
I would like to add my answers to your questions.

If that was her expressed desire in a living will, then the feeding tube should be removed. The problem here is nobody knows for certain what her wishes are.

Though I personally think an abortion in this case is still wrong, I would be willing to deal with it. Would it be OK with you if abortions were limited to only minors pregnant by incest in first six weeks?

The death penalty should be banned, it is a barbaric practice.

 

I've stated elsewhere that I really try to stay out of the abortion debate. I'm against it now, but I'm a hypocrite. I got my girlfriend pregnant when I was 13 and I paid to have it aborted. I live with guilt over that.

I'll go ahead and answer the question though. Yes, I think it would be acceptable. I hate to think of a little incestual rape victim having nine months of a terrible reminder....followed by having the baby most likely taken away and raised elsewhere. It just seems to be more awfulness piled on top of what has already happened to her.

 

Active euthanasia is even more troubling than passive euthanasia because it is easier to forbid an act than to decree a duty.

Jewish law (as well as common law) draws sharp distinctions between the two.

In actual practice, of course, it isn't always so clear which is which.

Nevertheless, a final act of active euthanasia is unquestionably murder. Passively permitting another to die is not even a crime. Think, for example, of a DNR order.

 

Cont.

Now, which is removing a feeding tube? Active or passive?

Passive, I should think. Why? Because the ACT of feeding need not go on forever. Or, looked at in a different way, failure to put the nutritional material into the tube, which amounts to the same thing, is PASSIVE.

Lethal injection is a clear example of ACTIVE euthanasia.

Thus, if the Florida courts allow the feeding to stop, no lawyer will speak of murder but only in Oregon is physician assisted suicide not criminal.

 

So was God a barbarian when He commanded it?

BLD

 

God, blessed be He, did not write the United States Constitution.
He did, however, write the Eighth Commandment forbidding bearing false witness against one's neighbour. Presumably, this includes calling one's neighbour a Nazi or equating one's neighbour with Hitler (may his name and memory be blotted out), unless, of course, one lives down the hill in Berchtesgaden in the 1930's.

 

I didn't ask whether He wrote the Constitution. I asked if He was a barbarian when He commanded the death penalty.

 

To which denomination do you belong?

 

We are non-denominational. We choose not to add any manmade hierarchy to God's church.

Why do you ask?

BLD

 

Oh, yes, here we go again...

Tell me, BLD, do you have any IDEA what safeguards surround the Jewish death penalty?

1) The act had to be a death penalty offense, nowhere NEAR as easy as the basic text might indicate.

2) The actor have to be WARNED beforehand personally by TWO adult male Jews (in each others' presence), not only that the offense was a death penalty offense but exactly which of the four forms the execution would take AND they had to be CORRECT in every particular for the warning to be valid.

3) The actor had to then commit the act in the presence of two adult Jewish male witnesses. Could be the same two guys, but not necessarily.

A confession was NOT ADMISSIBLE.

They "never executed nobody" under the biblical law. Indeed, it is said that a Sanhedrin that executed two people in forty years was called ever after the "bloody Sanhedrin". Personally, I doubt that anyone was EVER executed under this law.

If you doubt all of this, go back and read the accounts of Jesus first trial before the Sanhedrin and ask yourself, if it was a corrupt body and simply out to get him, why did the Judges repeatedly fail to find sufficient evidence from their perjured witnesses? (Why, indeed? Ask Uncle Janko!)

Now, I seriously doubt that King Solomon of blessed memory hesitated very long before ordering the whacking of whomever annoyed him but my post is about the BIBLICAL death penalty.

 

Nosborne,
What does any of that have to do with my question? So, let's assume that God made it a difficult process. The fact is, He still commanded it. According to kansasbaptist, God must be a barbarian.

BLD