The War on Terri Part XVII

The vigil continues.

As does the controversy.

Larry Kudlow puts Terri Schiavo's suffering into an Easter context.

Andrew Cline wonders where NOW is in all this:

Amazingly, NOW has completely ignored Terri Schiavo, who would appear to be the ideal poster woman for left-wing feminists. There is evidence that the heart attack that brought on her brain damage may have been triggered by an eating disorder. Schiavo, who was overweight as an adolescent, had become obsessed with her weight. Her feeding tube was ordered removed by her husband, who has been living with another woman, with whom he has two children, for years. Yet the plight of this utterly defenseless woman dying on her husband's command has elicited not a word from top officials of the nation's top feminist organizations.

The last time NOW kept quiet this long was when Paula Jones was going after Bill Clinton. Wonder why?

Alberto Gonzalez was nearly defeated in his confirmation bid for Attorney General allegedly because of concerns he favored state-directed torture. Why didn't he come to Terri Schiavo's aid when he could so obviously have proven his Democrat opponents wrong?

Even Slate.com can tell what the right thing to do was in this case:

I hope against hope that I will never be one of those people in the shadows, that I will always, one way or another, be able to make my wishes known. I hope that I will not outlive my usefulness or my capacity (at least occasionally) to amuse the people around me. But if it happens otherwise, I hope whoever is appointed to speak for me will be subject to legal constraints. Even if my guardian thinks I'd be better off dead—even if I think so myself—I hope to live and die in a world that recognizes that killing, even of people with the most severe disabilities, is a matter of more than private concern.

John Hinderaker of Powerline exposes the Silence of the Media Lambs, this time on the subject of the "Republican" memo on Schiavo.

Andrew McCarthy, so excellent throughout this sad affair, reflects on the epic tragedy:

It has been wrenching to watch as door after door was slammed on them. It has been breathtaking to witness capital-punishment opponents — who, in the name of making certain the wrong person is not executed, would move heaven and earth to impose DNA testing for the benefit of death-row murderers long exhausted of their multiple state and federal reviews — sit on their hands as an innocent woman was effectively executed on the basis of appallingly thin factual findings made on a civil standard of proof without independent counsel or a jury trial.

And now the final, excruciating indignity awaits. Once Terri dies — whether it is today, tomorrow, or within the next few days — the system that betrayed her in life will again abandon her in death. On current plan, there will be no autopsy or inquest. Terri’s parents will not be permitted religious rites and an interment — the catharsis that might give them some peace for the daughter to whom they have been singularly faithful. Instead, they will be forced to watch yet again as Terri’s nominal husband Michael Schiavo — engaged to another woman for years while Terri withered, with whom he has children — is permitted to whisk the corpse away for a quick cremation in Pennsylvania, leaving doubts forever to linger.

Michael Schiavo's fans can explain why he's in so much of a hurry to cremate his dead wife, I'm sure. Terri probably told him that if he ever succeeded in starving her to death before an aghast public during Holy Week, he should not allow an autopsy to be performed or her parents to claim her body for a funeral.

Ben Stein says it all:

Here is what makes me furious about the Terry Schiavo case, short and sweet.

The courts of the United States can find a right for the abortion industry to take a fully formed, totally healthy baby at nine months' term, out of his mother's womb and murder it by putting scissors through his brain and grinding them about.

They do this without one single word of support from any Congressional act of any kind ever.

They can find a right of savage murderers of innocent women who drown them for a lark to avoid the death penalty because they are old enough to drive and to kill but supposedly too young to be executed. Again, there is not one syllable in any Congressional act that sanctions this protection of the guilty.

But with the Congress and the President of the United States pleading for the life of a woman who is not brain dead, who responds to words and to touch, who is not on life support, whose parents beg for her to be kept alive, whose nurses give affidavits that she can be rehabilitated, with a specific law commanding the courts to review the case to keep this poor soul alive, the courts instead find no rights for her.

This is a court system totally out of control, obviously committed to death, obviously bound by nothing beyond its morbid obsession with its own omnipotence and its fascination with the letting the innocent die. This is simply terrifying. The Falange followers of Francisco Franco had an evil cry: Long live death. Obviously, Justice Kennedy was listening.

And so the cult of Death grows, even in America.


Update:

The husband of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo has ordered an autopsy after she dies to silence allegations his plan to cremate her body is aimed at hiding something, his lawyer said on Monday.

As supporters of Schiavo's parents took their fight to prolong her life to Washington 10 days after her feeding was stopped, Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, said her pulse had become "thready" and she had not passed urine for a while -- a possible sign of approaching death.

He said Michael Schiavo, who has been pitted against the parents in a seven-year legal conflict over whether to allow Schiavo to die, requested an official autopsy to show the "massive" extent of the brain damage she suffered in 1990.

"We didn't think it was appropriate to talk about an autopsy prior to Mrs. Schiavo's death," Felos told reporters outside his law office in Dunedin, Florida.

"But because claims have been made by, I guess, opponents of carrying out her wishes that there was some motive behind the cremation of Mrs. Schiavo we felt it was necessary to make that announcement today."

Update II:

Upon reading Steel Turman's comment below, I looked up the relevant Florida statute, 406.11:

406.11 Examinations, investigations, and autopsies.--

(1) In any of the following circumstances involving the death of a human being, the medical examiner of the district in which the death occurred or the body was found shall determine the cause of death and shall, for that purpose, make or have performed such examinations, investigations, and autopsies as he or she shall deem necessary or as shall be requested by the state attorney:

(a) When any person dies in the state:

1. Of criminal violence.

2. By accident.

3. By suicide.

4. Suddenly, when in apparent good health.

5. Unattended by a practicing physician or other recognized practitioner.

6. In any prison or penal institution.

7. In police custody.

8. In any suspicious or unusual circumstance.

9. By criminal abortion.

10. By poison.

11. By disease constituting a threat to public health.

12. By disease, injury, or toxic agent resulting from employment.

(b) When a dead body is brought into the state without proper medical certification.

(c) When a body is to be cremated, dissected, or buried at sea.

(2)(a) The district medical examiner shall have the authority in any case coming under subsection (1) to perform, or have performed, whatever autopsies or laboratory examinations he or she deems necessary and in the public interest to determine the identification of or cause or manner of death of the deceased or to obtain evidence necessary for forensic examination.

The commenter is quite correct---this reads very much like some investigation will be required, although it seems as though the state medical examiner could have elected to stop short of autopsy if they so chose.