An Unfortunate Precedent Setting Case

Cal Thomas | Syndicated columnist | Updated: Oct 21, 2003

An Unfortunate Precedent Setting Case

It matters what you think about life and where it comes from. It matters whether you believe we are evolutionary accidents in a random universe or unique creations of an infinite personal God.

Take the case of Terri Schiavo in Florida. She's the brain-damaged woman who had her feeding tube removed last week by court order. Her parents say she is conscious and responds to human voices. Her husband says she has no chance of leading anything approaching normal life and that she would want to die.

What to do? I prefer to err on the side of life. But our culture of death thinks otherwise. Ours is a society that wants to be free of burdens and so anything that imposes things we don't want is to be gotten rid of - unwanted spouses, unwanted babies, unwanted elderly parents, brain-damaged relatives.

There are times when letting someone go is moral and right. There are other times when precedents are set in hard cases that make it easier to kill in other cases. I fear this case may be one of those.

I'm Cal Thomas in Washington.

 

An Unfortunate Precedent Setting Case