Terri Schiavo - A Roundup of News & Commentary

• Background info on Michael Schiavo and Terri's "condition". -- "The following documents have been collected from case evidence, testimony and other sources in the public record. These items give significant illustration that the circumstances surrounding Terri's collapse may be suspect and that the following actions by the guardian should be investigated."

  (Via Victor Lams @ Et Cetera).

• Thomas More Law Center: Governor Bush Has Authority Under State Criminal Laws to Prevent Death of Terri Schiavo
  Former prosecutor of Jack Kevorkian, Richard Thompson, reaffirmed Thursday morning the authority of Florida Governor Jeb Bush to utilize state criminal laws to prevent the death of Terri Schiavo. Pointing to two legal memos prepared by the Thomas More Law Center which were delivered to Governor Bush in October of 2003, Thompson again urged Bush to launch a formal criminal investigation into the facts surrounding the disability of Schiavo. . . .

• Last year around this time, Pope John Paul II affirmed obligation to feed patients in the “vegetative” state. (Via Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam).

• Day-by-day commentary from Earl E. Appleby and company at LifeMatters, the blog of Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia.

• Neurologists Say: Recording of Terri Shows She's Not PVS - Fr. Rob Johansen @ Thrown Back asked several neurologists to review the audiotape of Terri responding to her father. The verdict? "Three of the four neurologists reported that they believed that Terri was responding to her father, and was attempting to form words. The fourth, Dr. Peter Morin, demurred, saying that he did not want to venture an opinion based on an audio recording without accompanying video. The remaining neurologists all expressed confident opinions regarding what they heard in Terri's recording."

• Theophilus @ Vivificat believes our "justice system" is courting illegitimacy.

• William Luse (Apologia) says "Goodbye, Terri", Apologia, March 24, 2005.

• Dr. Oswald Sobrino (Catholic Analysis/ Catholics in the Public Square) describes Terri as a "a new kind of martyr", and in "Martyrdom and Legal Positivism", has strong words for those who would make an idol of the law:
  . . . many in our society insist on bending the knee to law even though it is the obviously imperfect creation of imperfect and yes, even corrupt, legislators. The fancy term for all of this is "legal positivism," the view that the dictates of the law must be followed at all costs regardless of morality. Legal positivism made the Nazi project of Hitler possible in a highly cultured country like Germany. Legal positivism--the mania for legalities as ends in themselves--is now making America the scene of a Nazi-like execution by starvation of a life deemed unworthy of life.

• Can you spare a dime? -- The Old Oligarch reports that BlogsForTerri.com could use some help paying for its server fees. They've been a big help in organizing bloggers across the net, not to mention hosting videos of Terri to prove to the misinformed public that, contrary the reporting of the MainstreamMedia, she's neither "brain-dead" nor a "vegetable."

• Of course, we have a dissenting opinion from Fr. John Paris, SJ, professor of bioethics at Boston College, says "This has nothing to do with the sanctity of life" and that Michael Schiavo is a "a caring, loving spouse whose actions were in Terri's best interests." (Salon.com January 24, 2005. Via Bettnet). Wouldn't you just figure it'd be a Jesuit?

On the secular front . . .

• The whole Terri Schiavo story, World Net Daily has "the 15-year saga of brain-injured woman no clear-cut, right-to-die case," which it has been covering since the very beginning. The Michael Schiavo, who appears so utterly convinced that Terri wanted to die, is a far cry from the one who, when asked about treatment in 2001, responded: "How the hell should I know? We never spoke about this. My God, I was only 25 years old. How the hell should I know? We were young. We never spoke of this."

  Likewise, the husband who is now living with his mistress with the intent on remarrying just as soon as Terri is "put away" is a far cry from the one who once proclaimed in 1992: "I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that."

• A Doctor with Religious Beliefs? Must Be "Bogus, a Pro-Life Fanatic" - documenting and exposing the liberal bias of the New York Times, TimesWatch reveals how Thursday's story on Terri Schiavo by John Schwartz and Denise Grady ("A Diagnosis With a Dose Of Religion") suggests a doctor's religious beliefs make him an unreliable person to diagnose Schiavo.

• Not Dead at All, Slate March 25, 2004. Disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson explains why "Congress was right to stick up for Terri Schiavo."

• Ann Coulter muses:
  "Given the country's fetishism about court rulings, this may be a rash assumption, but I presume if Greer had ordered that Terri Schiavo be shot at her husband's request -- a more humane death, by the way -- the whole country would not sit idly by, claiming to be bound by the court's ruling because of the "rule of law" and "federalism." President Bush would order the FBI to protect her and Gov. Bush would send in the state police.

• "Slanting the News Against Terri Schiavo" - The Media Research Center finds that "[ABC, CBS and NBC] newscasts have tilted their recent coverage of the Terri Schiavo case in ways that bolster her husband Michael's arguments that the severely disabled woman is in an irreversible vegetative state and had clearly expressed a desire to die."

• "So: Where Did It Come From?" Powerline has more about that curious "GOP talking points" memo produced by ABC News. Michelle Malkin has a roundup of blogs on the issue and asks "Did the MSM learn nothing from RatherGate?".