Friday, March 18, 2005
Why is it...
...that Timothy McVeigh was allowed to fall asleep and find an easy death through lethal injection, and Terri Schindler Schiavo, who is conspicuous for NOT blowing up buildings and human beings, will have her feeding tubes removed today at 11:00 a.m. Mountain Time...and slowly starve to death for as long as two weeks? If people in Terri's condition must die, why are they not the ones given lethal injections? Why do our convicted terrorists get the relatively easy way out? Shouldn't McVeigh have been the one allowed to starve to death for two weeks, and Terri the one to be allowed the peace of drug-induced sleep leading to death? Doesn't make much sense to me today. Just doesn't...
The death penalty itself must be abolished--it's a horrific practice that makes little sense when viewed against the backdrop of a modern world. Barbarism holds no place in human society, or shouldn't. My point here is simple--given that the death penalty exists, and given that there has been a drive to make the death penalty as humane and painless as possible, why, then, are we still a society that would allow an innocent woman to starve to death over a period of weeks? You cannot simultaneously be against the death penalty--which I am--and support the kind of death that will be dealt to Terri Schiavo. If we would end her life in a truly merciful and humane way, why, then, can we not use methods doled out liberally to convicted murderers? Why must Terri Schiavo linger for days on end, while Timothy McVeigh fell asleep and died within hours? Does she not deserve the same consideration that was given to a home-grown terrorist? Again, I cannot stress enough that I am against the death penalty. But I am also against adding to someone's suffering while claiming to be doing humane work. She will be given pain-killers--that in itself is an admission that Terri Schindler Schiavo will be in pain...
