Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Terry and Jewish Law
Long ago Jewish law made a distinction between withholding medication and special treatments from a patient as opposed to withholding food and water. Whereas there comes a time when we are no longer required to proactively employ "heroic" medicines and treatments to keep a non-functioning body operating, it is always necessary to continue feeding a patient.
. . .
Those who speak of upholding the law are not believable given that there is no free-standing existing law that requires in these situations starving patients to death. We all know that this decision rests on the will of a husband who has a girlfriend he wishes to marry and who is eagerly anticipating insurance money. If understanding constitutes 9/10 of the law, everyone understands that a cruel circumstance has given guardianship over the life of a woman to a man who wants her out of his life. But secularists are willing to abjure compassion and intellectual honesty so as not to allow a victory for Christian/religious beliefs. Thus their outrage.
The procedure of death-inducing starvation is, as Rep. Delay says, "barbaric," and what appears to be the use of the system by an unloving husband to finish-off his wife a travesty and an upending of justice. It is an outcome most Americans can not stomach.
. . .
Those who speak of upholding the law are not believable given that there is no free-standing existing law that requires in these situations starving patients to death. We all know that this decision rests on the will of a husband who has a girlfriend he wishes to marry and who is eagerly anticipating insurance money. If understanding constitutes 9/10 of the law, everyone understands that a cruel circumstance has given guardianship over the life of a woman to a man who wants her out of his life. But secularists are willing to abjure compassion and intellectual honesty so as not to allow a victory for Christian/religious beliefs. Thus their outrage.
The procedure of death-inducing starvation is, as Rep. Delay says, "barbaric," and what appears to be the use of the system by an unloving husband to finish-off his wife a travesty and an upending of justice. It is an outcome most Americans can not stomach.
