Advance directives. living wills, etc, are an example of laws that were intended for good being used for a wicked purpose.
These insturments were intended to spare people who were close to death and unable to be healed the opportunity to die without the pain and indignity of a battery of futile treatments to prolong the process of death. To allow a man or woman with a terminal disease to not be subjected to pointless, expensive, extrodinary, and often agonizing procedures that would not restore or maintain their health. It was a means of allowing people to die with some semblance of dignity; a way of promoting comfort over an attempt to prevent what is ultimately the fate of all of us and a natural end to life--death.
Living wills were not intended as a means to kill those members of society who were handicapped and needed assistance with basic human needs--food and water. They were not intended as instruments for to be wielded to effect the suicide or murder of "defective" humans.
I was raised to be proud of my country--a serviceman's kid who respected and loved my country. I was raised to appreciate the freedom, opportunity, and ideals of my country, even when those goals could not be acheived perfectly by imperfect human beings.
Today, I am ashamed of the direction my country is headed in. A woman's life is being taken by good laws perverted to exploit the weakest and most defenseless of human beings--a helpless woman who is considered to be unworthy of her own life. An woman who has not commited a capital crime is being put to death by a means that would not be tolerated if one chose to apply them to a dog. She is being executed barbarically by deliberate starvation.
Some say the law has no right to intervene. Since when is killing another human being not a concern of the law? Since when is a person's decision to kill another member of their family sacred--a personal matter that does not bring detriment to society as a whole?
Since 1973, when Rowe vs. Wade opened a Pandora's box that made it acceptable to cull our ranks of those who are unwanted and inconvenient. It became acceptable to assign an arbitrary value to the life of another human being, and end that life based not upon just caused but upon "choice."
Who will be the next group of people to be relegated to the delete bin? The feeble-minded? The crippled? A troublesome ethnic group?
Maybe it looks familiar. It should.
