Terri Schiavo Outrage

It was a sad day for me the day Terri died. Our society has continued to slide down a very slippery slope.

To be clear, Terri Schiavo died through an act of nonvoluntary active euthanasia.

There are two different types of euthanasia: active and passive. There are three different classes of consent: voluntary, nonvoluntary, and involuntary. Voluntary is where someone wants to die. Then you have involuntary where the person does not want to die and that person is put to death anyway (i.e. Holland). Involuntary is where someone can’t tell their wishes or hasn’t given their wishes on the issue. In Terri Schiavo’s case we did not know what her intentions were.

Terri’s death was considered active euthanasia even though no one “actively” took her life. The distinction has to do with the intent or purpose of what you are or aren’t dying of. It is one thing to let a dying person die of their disease, etc. Active euthanasia is when the thing that you do (actively or passively) is the thing that causes the death. In the same way we know that a parent or guardian has a responsibility to feed a baby or toddler, her guardian had a moral duty to makes sure that someone fed Terri.

~ by Barron on April 11, 2005.