Layered Tragedy
The Terri Schiavo matter seems to top the list of issues in multiple newspapers’ letters to the Editor. Of those I read, I found thefollowing to be the most poignant. I think it is important to note this letter was published in The State, a major newspaper in South Carolina. South Carolina is an extremely conservative southern state with a high percentage of the population being Christian fundamentalists.
GOP using tragedy to score points
This week, conservatives in Congress trashed the separation of powers, states’ rights and the sanctity of privacy between a man and a wife, all so they could try to score points with radicals on the right. Unfortunately for them, their hypocrisy is clear.
My suspicions were confirmed when a Republican talking points memo was discovered that coaches GOP senators on how to make political hay of this tragedy.
President Bush traveled from Texas to Washington so that he could take his place in this circus, declaring that government should “err on the side of life”. However this stance represents a giant flip-flop. In 1999, while governor of Texas, he signed a law that gave medical professionals the ability to terminate life-supporting care, even against the wishes of the family.
During this same week, a hospital in Houston was employing Bush’s “culture of death” law to remove an infant from life support against the wishes of its mother. The baby, whose mother begged for more time, is now dead.
From Watergate to Whitewater, I’ve never seen a more detestable and cynical manipulation than what we have witnessed over the withering body of this suffering woman and the despair of the family.
Kenneth F. Styer - Columbia, SC
Well said.
