Don't Say Goodbye - Yet

Is it just me, or is there something in her eyes resembling awareness, gratitude, even affection?

But she is going to be murdered by permission of the State on Wednesday, unless something's happened I don't know about. An article I read said that Governor Jeb Bush has the power to grant a stay of execution. But another in the Orlando Sentinel says that he does not. Meanwhile, a grand total of ten, I repeat 10, "sign-toting" protesters stand vigil on the sidewalk outside Terri's deathhouse hospice.

I like to have fun on this site now and then, and will again. But right now we're on a death watch. Where's Sister Prejean when we need her? Terri Schiavo, being innocent of any crime save possession of a "life not worth living," lacks star power. She doesn't draw the crowds. She has no bad-girl swagger. There's no glamour here. Just a dead woman waking.

That's the world we live in now. We agonize over punishing the guilty, while throwing the innocent into Astarte's fire. And it's all legal.

Addendum: J.S. Kern informs us that a talk radio host has suggested that Terri's father would be "applauded if he rescued his daughter by 'grabbing a rifle...'." Says Mr. Kern, "I think he's right. I would cheer. I think the parents would be perfectly justified in taking up arms to defend their daughter from a wildly overreaching judiciary." And further: "Am I the only one reminded by this case of last month's discussion here about when it is right to use force to save the unborn?" No, Mr. Kern, you are not.

And lastly he says, "...your noticing the contrast between how many of us are conflicted over capital punishment with how few of us are stirred to action about this was perceptive."

Well, here's the reason I brought it up. Something escapes me. If a man is convicted of murder, he can then be sentenced to death by a judge. The governor of the state, for whatever reason he deems sufficient, can later commute that sentence or even grant clemency, and no judge may second-guess him. Like the murderer, Terri Schiavo went on trial for her life, but not before a jury of her peers and having committed no crime. She is the defendant in a murder trial, but can neither take the stand on her own behalf nor confront her accusers. She was found guilty as charged of...what, exactly? I'll leave to readers the unearthing of the mot juste that would describe her offense. And now she has been sentenced to death. What I don't get is why Governor Bush lacks the authority to grant clemency in the former case but not the latter. It must be some subtlety of the law we servants of the servile state can't grasp. What kind of society, some of us would like to know (but not many, apparently) allows clemency for the guilty but not the innocent? What kind of society brings an innocent person to trial in the first place? What diabolical kingdom compels a woman to be tried, not for crimes against her fellows or against the crown, but for her very humanity?

As in the case of abortion, Terri's murder will be perpetrated beyond public view, and there might seem to be a defining difference between them, which is that, unlike the baby in the womb whose dependence and invisibility incur, for many, a fatal anonymity, our black-robed tyrants are in this case permitting the execution of a fellow being who is fully in the open and utterly independent of the person who will do the killing. But I don't think it's really a difference at all. We've simply moved outside the womb where, like Justice Blackmun in Roe v. Wade, judges sometimes have trouble telling who is human and who is not, and, faithful to the logic of previous ruminations, end up erring on the side of not. If you don't know what it is, you can kill it. We pretend not to see what is before our eyes. We live in an age when the denial of the obvious has become a virtue. We've finally found an area where even men can exercise their freedom of "choice," men like Michael Schiavo.

Here's another thing I don't get. It's an irony, I suppose, for those who are into appreciating such things. If a murderer on death row were found to be suffering his execution by means of starvation - by our withholding from him food and drink - the ensuing uproar would occupy the national headlines, and the shouted outrage of the television news, until the injustice had been repaired and the warden and his foot soldiers brought to bar and thrown in prison. What would be cruel and unusual punishment for the murderer will be good enough for Terri.

Here's an excerpt from an article by Jane Chastain at World Net Daily describing the effects of death by starvation and dehydration:

"Death by dehydration is a painful, agonizing and arduous process that takes 10 to 14 days. In addition to feeling the pangs of hunger and thirst, the skin, lips and tongue crack. The nose bleeds because of the drying of the mucus membranes. Heaving and vomiting may ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. The victim may experience seizures. As the fluid level in the body goes down, the blood pressure goes down and the heart rate goes up. Respiration often increases as blood is shunted from the periphery to the central part of the body in a desperate attempt to sustain the primary organs. The hands and feet become extremely cold."

I suppose, when she begins to vomit, she'll be left to drown in it. Michael should be compelled to remove that tube himself, and both he and Judge Greer made prisoners in that hospice room-from-hell, made to watch for however long her dying demands.
I think I will help the reader a little bit. I think they're going to kill her because she doesn't look like this anymore:




As with the humanity of the unborn, it must be hard for many to believe that the soul, the entire person, of that young woman is hiding out in the "vegetating" shell now before us. Of course, if you don't believe in the soul, you can't believe it. We may be a Christian nation, but we act like a people who can't believe without seeing. What's to be done?