Is “Terri” Really a First? - Comments (1)

Category: Applied,Articles
Author: John Malone
Date: 29th March, 2005 @ 07:45:29 AM

The Terri Schiavo case might be a bit unique in that it is about a bigamist (or polygamist) and alienated husband (with some money) denying a handicapped wife food and water, but it is BY NO MEANS UNIQUE as far as killing the handicapped under the guise of mercy and care.

I have been a first-hand witness of numerous attempts to kill a handicapped child, and except for rather extraordinary determination by parents and some well-meaning others against the “medical establishment at work,” that child would have been outright murdered (with parental participation!) by those who profess to care for the child, even while the same ones line their pockets with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just a few years ago, right here in Omaha, Nebraska, close friends of mine gave birth to a boy who had a form of what some of the Pharisees call “Osteogenesis Imperfecta. (OI)” Interestingly, at about the same time that young Jonathan was born, OI was made famous by the movie “Unbreakable,” starring Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson. (Jackson played the part of a victim of OI.)

Now I will tell you that this was a real important experience in my own life, as I tried to assist the family in “boning up” on this malady. The father of the boy, an engineer, has a facile mind for learning, and a healthy skepticism of common perceptions.

From the outset, the family was told by doctors that the child would not live to leave the hospital. Our church prayed together about the matter. One father of nine children (at the time) began to help do some research with the father, and the result of the research placed them in contact with a research doctor in Canada who disagreed that the child was condemned to certain early death, and who was working on a form of treatment that was not practiced here in Omaha, or for that matter, many places in the US.

Of course, the information, being found fairly easily on the Internet, was most certainly as available to a $500,000 per year physician as it was to the $40,000 per year father of 9!

I was present for at least two sessions with doctors and their retinue of staff, including nurses and a hospital “grief counselor” wherein they bring up the subject of the likelihood of an early death, and press upon the parents to remove the child from a ventilator – that’s right, AIR SUPPLY – and hold him (so he’s comfortable!) until he dies! They positioned this “remedy” as an act of mercy and kindness!

Well, I am a bit more blunt than to talk around a pre-meditated murder in those terms! Things like air, food, and water are, in my view (and the view of the Bible), every man’s right because they are promised from God Himself Who delivers on those promises, except as man intervenes.

So audacious are these Pharisees, that one doctor, who became frustrated that the parents would not comply with the suggestions of murder, asked “I need to know how much you want me to do to keep this child alive?” It was more than I could take! I said to him, “Who do you think you are to say you keep someone alive? Don’t you know that God keeps YOU alive, He keeps your heart beating, and you are sucking His air?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he backtracked. “It’s exactly what you meant,” I said. “You people do not even understand Who it is that is the Giver of life.”

As a church, we became persuaded that this child was not going to die, and he didn’t. He would still be alive today, except that finally by incompetence or worse, a nurse took him off his ventilator, turning off the alarms so the family would not wake up, and held the child until he died.

But the thrust of this story is that they wanted to dispose of this child because he was born as one inconvenient. His father, to this day, claims the world {unworthy|Heb 11:37-38} of such a child.

I am persuaded, due to the incredible organization and planned persuasiveness that was institutionally available to have this child’s life terminated, that depriving Jonathan of air – just like depriving Terri of what God assures all of us, is a common occurrence.

In fact, these quiet little polite murders probably go on all the time, right in your own neighborhood.

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