Those on the left are not the only individuals intent on seizing control of language to achieve their political goals, and this weekend a perfect example of this phenomenon took place in my neck of the woods. Gov. Manchin attended a pro-life dinner at Lakeview Resort at Cheat Lake, WV (about 15 minutes from my house), where Bobbi Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, had the following to say:
“The medical community wants to refer to people like my sister who are disabled as vegetative because it dehumanizes them, it takes away their personhood,” Schindler said.
“PVS is a very dangerous term, one that I believe should be eliminated, and we should refer to these people as people with disabilities or people with profound brain damage, not in this very damaging, offensive persistent vegetative State that we all hear in the media,” he said.
Putting aside the fact that the autopsy verified that Terri Schiavo’s personhood had long since departed and that she was well beyond what would even be described as ‘profound brain damage,’ what is alarming is the continued effort to avoid dealing with the sad realities of the case, but instead to villify the medical community for daring to have the audacity to name a condition, to attack ‘activist judges,’ and to pretend that somehow, if only we had a different word for Terri Schiavo’s condition, the outcome might have been different. According to Mr. Schindler, had the medical community just used a different term, Terri would today still be gleefully whiling away the hours tracking balloons across her hospice room, engaging in light banter with her pro-life attorneys.
If these people were not trying to wrest away control of my end-of-life decision making rights to cede them to some other entity (the church, the courts, who knows?) all because of their personal religious beliefs, I could probably manage to find a way to tolerate them. Right now, I can not, as too much is at stake.
*** Update ***
As a side note, why is it always the case that groups with names like ‘The Society for Truth and Justice” are usually not interested in either truth or justice:
With the death of Terri Schindler, we have just passed through one of the most ethically horrifying moments in an entire generation of American history. An innocent, handicapped woman was starved to death while the entire world watched. A runaway judiciary successfully carried out her death sentence while the Florida governor, the Florida legislature, the Federal legislature, and the United States President wrung their hands in distress, while pretending that there was nothing more they could do. Simply put: we are ruled by judges; the rule of law and self government are dying.