Duffy's Journal

A few thoughts on the Schiavo situation.
The part of me that doesn't believe in coincidence sees meaning in the fact that the Holy Week news cycle has been dominated by a woman, unable to communicate or swallow, slowly starving to death.

I feel that we are making too much of Terry Schiavo's life, but perhaps America needs to take moral lessons where it finds them. This is a situation where the law seems to be (I can only assume, as the various judges seem to be unanimous) clear, but at odds with our (at least my) instinct for mercy. Terry's husband has been trying to rid himself of his wife for the last 15 years. His interpretation of his wife's will is based on the thinnest of pretexts. But the law is not written in such a way as to discriminate between a good husband and an evil one. Much as almost 2000 years ago the law did not discriminate between a thief and the Man whose death at the hands of the state we will celebrate tomorrow.

Whoever comes to Him will not hunger, whoever believes in Him will not thirst. Terry will soon be beyond our power to help. Perhaps we will now look as a nation at the morality of allowing anyone to be starved to death, to put them out of our misery. We have been moving slowly toward the acceptance of euthanasia, maybe this will help us move away from it.

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