Offing people easily
She is being called ‘the Italian Terri Schiavo’, and her fate is just about the same at this point.
An Italian court yesterday issued a landmark ruling allowing a father to turn off the life support machine that has kept his comatosed daughter alive for 16 years…
Miss Englaro, 35, has been in a vegetative state ever since she was involved in a road accident aged 19. The ruling marked the end of a lengthy legal battle led by her parents.
Eluana’s father Beppino based his appeal on the fact that she had been in good health and of sound mind before the accident and would not have wanted to be kept alive in a vegetative state. He has been campaigning since 1999 through the courts to have the treatment to his daughter suspended and he had been turned down six times until yesterday’s ruling in Milan.
I’m not a lawyer, but that doesn’t follow, just on the face of it. The man based his appeal to end his daughter’s life on “the fact” that due to her good health and sound mind before the accident, she “would not have wanted to be kept alive in a vegetative state.” That’s sheer speculation, not fact. And it’s based on what he wants.
“I feel that I can now free the most splendid creature I have ever known. She was in an irreversible coma, now we can free her, it’s not euthanasia its freedom.
How convenient. Just call something what you want, and believe it. Never mind what it really is.
“Eluana knew the situation she was in, she just wanted to die and she wanted nature to take its course.
First, he did not know that his daughter “wanted to die”. And even if she did, we do not have the right to kill ourselves, or anyone else.
And furthermore, starving and dehydrating someone to death is not nature taking its course. Not for the impaired and disabled, and not for adult caretakers in any health who were refused anything to eat and drink until they suffer an anguishing death.
Monsignor Rino Fisichella, of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican, said: “This is an act of euthanasia. The decision can be taken to a superior court and there it can be argued with less emotion and more serenity.
“I have dual sentiments in this case on one hand one of sadness and on the other surprise because Eluana is a girl who is still alive, a coma is a form of life and no-one can be allowed to put an end to life.”
They are though, more and more and more. That’s why Terri Schiavo’s family foundation is working so hard for life.