Land: Schiavo’s death ‘sad day for America’
- Mar 31, 2005 - comment
Terri Schiavo, 41, died March 31 in a Florida hospice nearly two weeks after being disconnected from a feeding tube.
Her death marked the end of a life-and-death struggle that involved all three branches of government. On the day before Schiavo died, the U.S. 11^th^ Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected requests to intervene from her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. Those decisions ended what turned out to be the final hopes for reconnecting Schiavo’s feeding tube.
“This is a sad day for America,” said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “It’s a particularly sad day for anyone who is physically or mentally handicapped, or seriously and debilitatingly ill, and those who love them. The judiciary at the state and federal level condemned Terri Schiavo to death by dehydration and malnutrition on the hearsay evidence of a husband who is cohabiting with another woman whom he introduces as his fiancee and with whom he has produced two children. This was done in spite of the heart-wrenching pleas of Terri’s parents, who have loved and nurtured her throughout her life and have repeatedly volunteered to take over responsibility for her care. It’s really hard for millions of American parents to accept the fact that the judicial system in the United States of America has told a mom and a dad they cannot feed their child.
“I pray that this terrible tragedy will be a wakeup call for the American people to stand up and insist on the reassertion of the sanctity-of-life ethic upon which this nation was based in the Declaration of Independence, which holds that all human beings have the inalienable right to life because they are human beings—born, unborn, healthy, unhealthy, young, old, handicapped or incurably ill,” Land said. “When we reject the sanctity ethic for the so-called quality-of-life ethic, in which we begin to assert some human beings have what the Nazis called ‘lives unworthy of life,’ we have taken a giant step down a steep and slippery slope to a dark and dangerous place for anyone who is not born, wanted, young, powerful, productive and healthy. I urge everyone to pray for Terri’s family, particularly her heart-broken parents, and to pray that God will send a spiritual awakening to America, which is the only real antidote to the toxic poison of the culture of death.”
Schiavo, who had been severely brain damaged since 1990, received no food or water after her feeding tube was disconnected under state court order March 18. She had not been connected to a respirator or any other life-sustaining equipment.
Schiavo’s parents were in a legal battle for several years with her husband, Michael, over whether she should live. Michael Schiavo said his wife told him in advance she would not want to live in an incapacitated condition, but no written request existed.
Schiavo’s starvation and dehydration, backed by a string of state and federal court decisions, elicited protests from pro-life, disability rights and civil rights advocates. Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader were among the liberals who called for reinserting her feeding tube.
Congress passed and President Bush signed into law March 21 expedited legislation seeking to extend the life of Schiavo, but a state judge, a federal judge, the 11^th^ Circuit and the Supreme Court rejected efforts to have her tube reconnected.
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