“Let her go”

That’s what Terri Schiavo’s family used to hear while they were fighting to save her life. But she wasn’t going anywhere, because she wasn’t in the process of dying any more than we all are, though she was cognitively impaired and needed to take her food and water another way than most of us do.

There’s a large population of cognitively and/or physically impaired people who take food and water that way. It’s as basic as that. But it’s not basic when the press uses wording like ‘why don’t they let her go?’ or ‘the loving (family member) has finally decided to let her go’.

Or, even in the good Catholic press always found at Zenit, this language about Eluana Englaro’s case should be noted.

She was moved at 1:30 a.m. last Tuesday from the hospital where she was being cared for, to a geriatric residence in Udine, which had agreed to fulfill the wish of Englaro’s father: that she be disconnected from her feeding tubes and allowed to die. The process of decreasing the Italian woman’s supply of food and water began Friday.

The phrase “allowed to die” is one to pause on. In the process of decreasing her supply of food and water, she will be brought to her death. Killed, in other words. 

With no judgment of Mr. Englaro, who has to be very embattled with confusion and emotion, this is a terrible mistake. Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, said yesterday on ‘America’s Lifeline’ that he feels for Mr. Englaro because if this results in his daughter’s death, he will live to regret it.