'Judicial murder' and Terri Schiavo
By Nat Hentoff
July 11, 2005

While editorials across the nation agreed in chorus that at last, Terri Schiavo will rest in peace, the autopsy report declined such certainty:"It is the policy of this office that no case is ever closed and that all determinations are to be reconsidered upon receipt of credible, new information." Even if no new information surfaces, how Terri Schiavo was put to death is causing many Americans to confront their own death.

Pat Anderson, for a long time the attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents, said the day Terri died of dehydration as ordered by the courts and her husband: "Euthanasia in America now has a name and a face." Dr. Jon Thogmartin's autopsy report made clear that Terri Schiavo was not dying, let alone terminal. As Dr. Carl D'Angio wrote in a June 21 letter in the New York Times: "Her family loved what was left of her and asked only to be permitted to care for her at their own expense. My question is, who or what was better served by her passive execution by water deprivation than by the first alternative?"

Responding to the autopsy report, Terri's parents said: "Terri's case was NOT an end-of-life case. Terri's case was about ending a disabled person's life. Terri was brain-injured. This does NOT mean that she was brain-dead." Her parents also noted that "according to the medical examiner, Terri was given morphine for pain as she died ... If Terri could feel no pain, as some would say, why would these drugs be necessary? In our opinion, the treating health care officials understood that Terri felt pain."

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Excellent column! http://washtimes.com/op-ed/20050710-100558-1213r.htm