The Vaguest Ideas

Your "Right to Life"..... whether you want it or not.

Now Congress have passed a bill that is even more tasteless, arrogant, disturbing, and most likely un-lawful. And President Bush, presumably with a red phone to God that trumps the Pope's, has signed it into law. It forces Terry Schiavo's feed tube to remain in place until a US District Court (to whose jurisdiction this "case" has been transferred) can re-decide a case that has already been decided by several other courts. That any court would accept this legislative meddling (one court already struck down the executive meddling of Gov Jeb Bush), let alone decide the merits of the case any other way is in doubt.

Even the readers of the Christian Science Monitor are %86 percent against this legislation. OK, that's hardly surprising, assuming a large portion of the polled may be Christian Scientists (who believe in healing through prayer). It certainly goes to show there's more than one interpretation of God's will for the afflicted.

To be charitable, those who want to enforce feed tubes think they are doing God's work. They've decided what God's will is, and they want to make sure that the rest of us live by their interpretation, however inconsistent that may be. Medical science may be used to keep you alive, where nature, and ostensibly God's will, would have you die. Expelled too early from the womb to be viable, no problem, brain dead dependent on life support, we will define you as an individual with hopes and dreams, even if you have the capacity for neither. But strangely if you are a viable person living what is indisputably a life, and you happen to have a debilitating condition that could be resolved through medical science, the hands of research are tied by similarly arbitrary superstition.

On the other hand when the State is prolonging or granting life, it has the right to condemn others to death, often justified by their acts of murder, however, the State has no right to limit access to the instruments of death that helped many to book their room on death-row. Perhaps Bush is just trying to perversely right his Karma, having taken no time on the executions he signed off on as Gov. he wants to grant a life instead of taking it (not to mention he is supporting the unconstitutional decision of bro Jeb, perhaps the next candidate for the dynasty).

The first defeat of reason is when the terminology of these idiots is accepted, "Right to life", "Partial-birth". These people are "Partially Born-Again" they've accepted God as their saviour purely on their own terms, which includes knowing the mind of their deity. It's not insignificant that these so-called Christians broke their Sabbath to enact this legislation. We need to get liberty, and pursuit of happiness back on the table, concepts which surely contain rights of choice and dignity.

What next? The "right to vote" for the unborn or brain-dead, sorry, not the pc terms, ok, the womb-dependant and encephalogram diminished. This may not be such a bad thing, we should all go out and add the following to our living wills: "Whilst I am being kept alive by the heroic measures of medical science, I wish to proxy or absentee ballot my vote in all eligible elections opposing any candidate that refuses either to fund any effort of science to cure my condition or the conditions of others, or refuses me the right to choose my life or death with dignity." Votes from limbo, there's an electorate that won't be affected by attack ads, propaganda interviews, or one-sided news coverage.

Now if they can just get that Constitutional Amendment against witchcraft in.....

Labels: Vague-a-ries

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 12:17 pm