WorldNetDaily: The culture of death advances

Pat Buchanan writes:

"Terri Schiavo will not have died a natural death. She will have been put to death by the state. The coroner's report should read: This was a state-sanctioned killing of a woman because she was brain-damaged, and the method of execution was by starvation and denial of water. These are methods most of us would protest if imposed on the Beltway snipers.

"Why did Florida put Terri Schiavo to death? Because that was the demand of a husband who refused to divorce her and denied her medical care, while he lived with another woman. Michael Schiavo is the ACLU poster boy for family values.

"In the Old Testament, King Solomon ruled that the mother who had been willing to give up her baby to the woman who had kidnapped the child rather than see the baby cut in half should have the child. Our Florida Solomon ruled that the husband who wanted Terri dead should have custody of her, not the parents who wanted her alive.

"Under the Constitution, no person may be deprived of life without due process of law. This has traditionally meant a trial of one's peers, proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a heinous crime and no cruel or unusual punishment. Though she committed no crime, Terri was put to death in a manner most decent men and women would not use to put a suffering animal out of its misery...

"Americans must face a hard truth. The state of Florida put Terri Schiavo to death. Before Holy Week, she was neither dead nor dying. For 15 years, she had been cared for by nurses and visited by loving parents. She was not dying until the judge ordered her dead, by ordering her feeding tube removed. Then it has taken her nearly two weeks to die, as he blocked the reinsertion of the feeding tube and ordered police to prevent anyone from giving her water.

"When the courts failed Terri, and Congress and the Florida Legislature failed Terri, the governor of Florida, who took an oath to defend the constitutional rights of Florida's citizens, should have taken custody of Terri, ordered the tube reinserted and let the federal courts proceed with the de novo hearing of the evidence, while Terri was still alive... He should have rescued Terri from the death sentence unjustly imposed upon her. If the court held him in contempt, so what? Who does not hold that Florida court in contempt?"

WorldNetDaily: The culture of death advances