Andrew Cohen wrote a good editorial about the hoopla surrounding the Terri Schiavo case in the Denver Post April 3, 04. It was a tragic situation made worse by the family disagreements. The fantasy that a woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years might recover was sad but understandable, but the rhetoric thrown out by the various politicians, religious leaders and journalists who got involved to use that situation for their own selfish purposes was really disgusting.
Cohen’s following statement jumped out at me.
Terri Schiavo was not murdered by judges or anyone else. She was not the victim of "judicial homicide," as one particularly odious religious leader suggested last week. She was allowed to die pursuant to valid state and federal law, interpreted fairly and consistently by state and federal judges. If this was "murder," then every execution in this country is murder; every life sentence without parole is murder; every judicial decision approving a request for the denial of medical treatment theoretically would be murder; every homeless person who dies as a result of a lack of welfare would be "murdered."
The charge is a blood libel against judges. And the politicians and spiritual leaders who leveled it, in unglued moments of passion and cynicism, or even those who merely have allowed it to stand unchallenged, ought to be ashamed.
At last! Someone countering the excessive rhetoric of the worst of the idiots and greed-heads out there.
Someone needs to get Tom DeLay to read this.
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