Courts and medical profession allied
against life and need reform:

Both have hardened their hearts
toward the vulnerable

By James Horsley

The courts and the medical profession are out of control. Both professions have selectively hardened their hearts and have displayed an unholy alliance against life, specifically, inconvenient life, polluting the good they have achieved.

Since the passage of Roe v. Wade, 43 million unborn persons have been legally exterminated behind the closed doors of operating rooms. And now, more openly in hospices, people are being executed by court order, with the order being carried out by members of the medical profession. An example of this is Terri Schiavo.

Terri Schiavo

The feeding tube of the severely brain damaged woman was ordered removed March 18, 2005 by Judge George W. Greer of the Florida State Circuit Court. According to NBC10.com, the hospice caring for Schiavo issued a statement, saying it wouldn't remove the tube and any such action would need to be performed by Schiavo's personal doctor at the hospice. Following the tube's removal, it took her 13 days to die of starvation. As a pathetic gesture to relieve the pain of the dying woman, an anesthetic drug was administered.

Records show that morphine was given after hospice nurses noticed "light moaning and facial grimacing and tensing of arms," George Felos, the attorney for Terri Schiavo's husband and guardian Michael Schiavo, told reporters several days before she died, according to the Associated Press March 28, 2005. As the state took her life, she died, Felos said, with music playing and a stuffed tabby cat under her arm.

Pat Robertson called the removal of the feeding tube "judicial murder," and House majority leader Tom DeLay called it an "act of medical terrorism," according to Time's April 4, 2005 issue. In the March 31 Fargo Forum, nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas said:

The biggest lesson from the Schiavo case-and it is one that must be sent to as many people as possible-is this: The courts are a mess and need to be reformed.

The medical profession is also in a mess. It is now legal in Oregon for a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to end the life of a terminally ill patient if the patient so wishes. While Oregon is the only state that allows physician assisted suicide, the practice is also going on outside Oregon, according to the Time article.

Many doctors admit to being willing to administer so-called terminal sedation, raising drug levels high enough to induce a fatal coma. Others simply increase morphine doses until the patient stops breathing. In 1998, the New England Journal of Medicine published a physician survey showing that when a patient asked for lethal prescriptions, 16 percent of doctors complied, albeit quietly.

"We're replacing the sanctity of life with the quality of life in this country," observed Ken Connor, Florida Governor Jeb Bush's counsel in the Schiavo case. As reported in the Time issue:

"This is not about Terri Schiavo," says George Annas, chairman of the health law department at Boston University School of Public Health. "I think this is about abortion and stem cells. Congress wants to say that we need pro-life judges because the judiciary is out of control and favors death over life."

He is right. While, yes, it is about Terri Schiavo, it is also about more--about the looming shadow of the culture of death spreading over America.

So, what can be done to rectify this? According to Cal Thomas:

Judges should be appointed who believe not only in the Constitution, but also that our rights are endowed from outside the state. Fundamental rights are not granted or denied by judges who create and eliminate them at will.

What can be done right now? Repealing the filibuster rule that allows blocking the nomination of conservative judges by the minority party is critical. To help rectify the wrong being done in America now, wrongs allowed by the courts, judges must be appointed that know right from wrong--with what is right and wrong being based on fundamental Biblical concepts. Our Congressmen should be contacted. Letters to the editor should be written.

Fetal pain awareness act
An educated public is also a necessity. One of the most critical needs is public awareness about where we are going and where this destination will take us as a nation. One of the most recent efforts in this regard is the fetal pain bill now before Congress. Officially, it is called the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2005."

The bill cites numerous scientific findings, including evidence that at least 20 weeks after fertilization, an unborn child experiences pain. It also cites at length federal laws that require pain-free methods of slaughtering livestock. Based on these findings, the bill would require that an abortionist provide a pregnant woman seeking an abortion with the following information:

You are considering having an abortion of an unborn child who will have developed, at the time of the abortion, approximately weeks after fertilization. The Congress of the United States has determined that at this stage of development, an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain. There is substantial evidence that by this point, unborn children draw away from surgical instruments in a manner which in an infant or an adult would be interpreted as a response to pain. Congress finds that there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain, even though you receive a pain-reducing drug or drugs. Under the Federal Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2004, you have the option of choosing to have anesthesia or other pain-reducing drugs or drugs administered directly to the pain-capable unborn child if you so desire. The purpose of administering such drug or drugs would be to reduce or eliminate the capacity of the unborn child to experience pain during the abortion procedure. In some cases, there may be some additional risk to you associated with administering such a drug.

Because of Roe v. Wade, a pregnant mother has been granted the status of an autocrat vis-à-vis her unborn child and can personally issue a death sentence, having that order of fetal execution upheld by the U.S. Constitution. It is tragically sad that the best we can do now for the victims of this violence by the judiciary and the medical profession is the palliative act of providing pain killers to the individuals who we as a society are allowing to be killed. It is equally sad that the bill would require that killing innocent human beings be accorded at least the same pain-free methods as federally mandated for the slaughter of livestock.

Informing women of the pain they are causing by choosing abortion is a vital step in educating the public about the evils of feticide.

Pathological violence promoted
Normally, court decisions are designed to promote justice and social health. Court decisions, such as Roe v. Wade and the Schiavo mandated death sentence, now promote violence against the defenseless and the guiltless--and this is an indication of psychopathology at the judicial level, as well as those who do the bidding of the judiciary, physicians and medical personnel. Dr. James Gilligan, who directed the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, the former medical director of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane and past director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system, states in Violence, reflections on a national epidemic that:

Violence, then, can be seen as a symptom of individual or group psychopathology, whether it is an individual case (murder, suicide) or an epidemic (war, genocide). (p. 98)

Violence is either defensive or aggressive. Self-defense is a response to aggression. But where is the aggressor when the object of the lethal attack is an unborn child or a vulnerable adult? We are witnessing an unprecedented level of violence that is being sanctioned, not controlled, by the state in the form of abortion, and to a growing degree now, assisted suicide and euthanasia. And it is a symptom of a sick society.

Rewriting the Constitution to give legal permission to this pathological violence is our own U.S. Supreme Court. The generals carrying out this battle plan are the abortion providers, medical doctors. What kind of people would do this? Dr. Gilligan makes the following observation:

...only the living dead could want to kill the living. No one who loves life, who cherishes and feels his own aliveness, could want to kill another human being. (p. 32)

While Dr. Gilligan was talking about the murderers incarcerated in state prisons, how are abortionists any different? Their violence is aggressive, not defensive. In fact, they are worse, for they represent a privileged class, have studied living organisms and how to heal, and have been trained in the medical profession to conform to the Hippocratic oath. The traditional version includes the following language:

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death. Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.

On the contrary members of the medical profession, as well as we as a society, have declared war on the unborn and the vulnerable. Physicians are intentionally doing harm. This is a genocidal war, for the meaning of genocide is "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political or cultural group." The key to the concept of genocide is that it involves the killing of individuals simply because they belong to a group and for no other reason. The "crime" these victims have committed warranting execution is belonging to the wrong segment of society, which, of course, is no crime whatsoever. The Nazis sanctioned murder of Jews simply because they were Jews. The edict of Roe v. Wade sanctions the murder of the unborn simply because they are unborn. The order by Judge Greer sanctioned the murder of Terri Schiavo because she was the member of a group--the vulnerable, incapable of defending or speaking for oneself.

Lack of feeling Common to this genocidal war is a lack of feeling by the members who commit these sadistic acts, with the word sadistic meaning "extreme cruelty," as defined by the 1987 Random House Dictionary of the English Language.

One of the preconditions for engaging in violent behavior, according to psychiatrist Dr. Gilligan is that:

the person lacks the emotional capacity or the feelings that normally inhibit the violent impulses... The most important are love and guilt toward others, and fear for the self. What is most startling about the most violent people is how incapable they are, at least at the time they commit their violence, of feeling love, guilt, or fear. (p. 113)

At least one abortionist demonstrated this lack of emotion in a trial before Judge Richard C. Casey in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, according to the Associate Press March 31, 2004. Judge Casey asked Dr. Timothy Johnson, a plaintiff in one of three lawsuits brought to stop enforcement of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, this question: "Does the fetus feel pain?" The judge said that he had been told that studies of a form of abortion usually performed in the second trimester had concluded they do cause pain. Dr. Johnson is a University of Michigan professor and research scientist at the school's Center for Human Growth and Development. The Associated Press reported his answer:

Johnson said he did not know, adding he knew of no scientific research on the subject. The judge then pressed Johnson on whether he ever thought about fetal pain while performing abortions involving dismemberment. Another doctor a day earlier had testified that a fetus sometimes does not immediately die after its limbs are pulled off. "Simple question, doctor," the judge told Johnson. "Does it cross your mind?" Johnson said it did not. "Never crossed your mind?" the judge asked again. "No," Johnson answered.

It is without question that what is being engaged in is violence at the level of extreme cruelty toward another human being. Dr. Johnson's answer demonstrates what psychiatry calls a "shallow affect," that is, lack of feeling, in this case concerning unborn children being surgically dismembered.

Medical evidence indicates that a fetus after 20 weeks gestation does, indeed, experience pain. Moreover, the pain is probably more intense than at other stages of human development. In an expert report on pain provided for the U.S. Department of Justice to assist the court in its assessment of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act , Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand, director of the Pain Neurobiology Laboratory at Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute, stated that the highest density of pain receptors in human development occurs in utero from 20 to 30 weeks of gestation.

Because pain inhibitory mechanisms do not begin to develop until 32 to 34 weeks after gestation, "a fetus at 20 to 32 weeks of gestation would experience a much more intense pain than older infants or children or adults, when these age groups are subjected to similar types of injury or handling," Anand said.

In a hearing by the New York State Department of Health to discuss the professional misconduct of Dr. Abu Hayat, an abortionist, it was revealed that a patient of his, Rosa Rodriguez, gave birth at a nearby hospital after Dr. Hayat tried to abort her in his store-front clinic, but failed to do so. The infant was a girl, who was born with one arm missing, which had been surgically removed in the attempted abortion.

"The child to this day is perfectly healthy, but is missing her right arm," reported Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, a former abortionist himself, in The Hand of God. Can one say, in all honesty, that she did not feel pain when the physician, who was attempting to abort her, sliced off her arm?

And can one deny that the unborn child filmed by ultrasound in the film The Silent Scream, is feeling pain? It shows an actual abortion in progress, with the twelve-week-old fetus being torn to pieces in utero by the combination of suction and crushing. As the instruments approach, the child opens its mouth in a howl.

A remarkable feature about Roe v. Wade is its absolute silence on the suffering of the aborted fetus.

De Sade's view of life
This same absence of compassion for a person being harmed was a prominent characteristic of the French novelist and criminal who is responsible for the word "sadism," namely, the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). He spent 27 years confined in institutions such as the Bastille, the dungeon at Vincennes, and Charenton asylum for sexual offences. Throughout his writings, he considered cruelty and murder simply "natural." In his Philosophy in the Bedroom, he asks: "From Nature's point of view, is murder a crime?" He then goes on to answer this question:

What is man? And what difference is there between him and other plants, between him and all the other animals of the world? None, obviously. Fortuitously placed, like them, upon this globe, he is born like them, he reproduces, rises, and falls; like them he arrives at old age and sinks like them into nothingness at the close of the life span Nature assigns each species of animal, in accordance with its organic construction. Since the parallels are so exact that the inquiring eye of philosophy is absolutely unable to perceive any grounds for discrimination, there is then just as much evil in killing animals as men... (pp. 329-330, Grove Press 1965)

De Sade claimed that the ancient civilizations that glorified murder were the greatest.

What people were at once greater and more bloodthirsty than the Romans, and what nation longer preserved its splendor and freedom? The gladiatorial spectacles fed its bravery, it became warlike through the habit of making a game of murder. Twelve or fifteen hundred victims filled the circus' arena every day, and there the women, crueler than the men, dared demand that the dying fall gracefully and be sketched while still in death's throes. The Romans moved from that to the pleasures of seeing dwarfs cut each other to pieces; and when the Christian cult, then infecting the world, came to persuade men there was evil in killing one another, the tyrants immediately enchained that people, and everyone's heroes became their toys. (p. 334)

What he is describing is a civilization that idolizes brutality. The Roman world he recounts has unsettling parallels to the present day world of television and its devotion to violence, as well as to the current laws that permit this violent behavior. De Sade continued to extol this Roman world, describing the employment of infanticide and abortion. De Sade was one of the first persons since the fall of the ancient civilizations to favor these practices that had been banned for centuries under Christianity. It is tragic that his vision, via Roe v. Wade, is now in part the reality of America. He wrote:

Up until the transferal of the seat of the Empire, all the Romans who were not disposed to feed their offspring flung them upon the dung heaps. The ancient legislators had no scruples about condemning children to death, and never did one of their codes repress the rights of a father over his family. Aristotle urged abortion; and those ancient republicans, filled with enthusiasm, with patriotic fervor, failed to appreciate this commiseration for the individual person that one finds in modern nations: they loved their children less, but their country more. (p. 335)

De Sade here ridicules having empathy for the individual. And the laws of our own land also fail to have commiseration for the unborn and the vulnerable. The American code, namely the U.S. Supreme Court's decision of Roe v. Wade, is equally not repressive regarding the rights of the mother over her unborn child. She has unlimited power.

This lack of feeling toward the suffering of other human beings was recently the subject of the cartoon strip Mallard Fillmore in the April 20, 2005 Fargo Forum. It showed a professor talking with the duck, Mallard Fillmore, while reading a newspaper with the headline "Schiavo." The caption said:

We Progressives are better than you because we're more compassionate! Especially toward minorities! Except the unborn and incapacitated minorities, of course...

Three days later, apparently after receiving comments about this cartoon, Tinsley, the cartoonist, carried this monologue of Mallard, pencil in hand:

At the request of some of our readers, we're considering providing you with a series of sweet, treacly, warm, fuzzy cartoons, "more suitable for the comic page," which we'll do, as soon as we figure out how to incorporate those things into our concerns about a culture that starves its weakest members to death. Stay tuned!

We are on a slippery slope of legal and medical ethics and are falling into an abyss where life has become meaningless, not just at the fetal stage, but now at the other end, where persons are deemed useless if they are incapacitated. The window of life as something significant is gradually closing.

The absolute right as guaranteed by the Constitution of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been replaced by a qualitative right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, the sanctity of life is being replaced by the quality of life.

Schiavo case
An example of this trend is the Terri Schiavo case. Schiavo was in what some doctors called a "persistent vegetative state" for 15 years stemming from a loss of blood to her brain caused by an eating disorder. She and her husband Michael Schiavo together received $1 million in an award and settlement resulting from a medical malpractice suit in 1993, with $700,000 going to Terri for her care and $300,000 to her husband for loss of consortium. He was in a position to inherit the remaining funds if she died and is presently living in an adulterous relationship with another woman. According to the Associated Press March 16, 2005, most of this money has been spent on her care and in her husband's legal battles to stop her tube feedings.

Appointed by the courts as her guardian, he sought to end his wife's life, claiming he remembered her saying that she would not want to be kept alive on "anything artificial," according to his court testimony as reported in the St. Petersburg Times November 8, 2003. Despite testimony by other witnesses disputing this, Judge Greer sided with her husband and ordered the tube removed. The order was based in part on an evidentiary hearing mandated by the appellate court, which directed the circuit court, under Judge Greer, to obtain evidence from five physicians to determine whether:

...new treatment offers sufficient promise of increased cognitive function in Mrs. Schiavo's cerebral cortex--significantly improving the quality of Mrs. Schiavo's life--so that she herself would elect to undergo that treatment and would reverse the prior decision to withdraw life-prolonging procedures.

According to the court order, three of the five doctors testified that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, while the remaining two said she was not, pointing out her interactions with her mother and her ability, shown on a video, to have her eyes follow a balloon across the room.

However, the order by Judge Greer noted that Schiavo did not "consistently respond to her mother," and that she was unable to visually track the balloon on several other occasions. Judge Greer observed:

At first blush, the video of Terry Schiavo appearing to smile and look lovingly at her mother seemed to represent cognition. This was also true of how she followed the Mickey Mouse balloon held by her father. The court has carefully viewed the videotapes as requested by counsel and does find that these actions were neither consistent nor reproducible.

The court then made the following finding, becoming a crucial step in shooting down Schiavo's chance for life. Judge Greer wrote:

The court finds that based on the credible evidence, cognitive function would manifest itself in a constant response to stimuli.

For this reason, the court concluded, Schiavo remained in a persistent vegetative state. The next step was to show that she could not recover from that incapacitated state.

Two physicians testified that several new therapies had a chance of improving her mental condition. The court concluded, however, that this was not sufficient.

It is clear from the evidence that these therapies are experimental... The Mandate requires something more than a belief, hope or "some" improvement. It requires this court to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the treatment offers such sufficient promise of increased cognitive function in Mrs. Schiavo's cerebral cortex so as to significantly improve her quality of life. There is no such testimony, much less a preponderance of the evidence to that effect.

Judge Greer then "entered an order scheduling the withdrawal of life-support"--similar in effect to a gangland contract on someone's life as issued to a hit man--and ordered that:

Michael Schiavo, as Guardian of the Person of Theresa Marie Schiavo, shall withdraw or cause to be withdrawn the artificial life support (hydration and nutrition tube) from Theresa Marie Schiavo at 3:00 p.m. on January 3, 2003.

More than two years later, after numerous legal maneuvers and appeals, the tube was finally withdrawn and she died. What was legally determined to be at stake was not her life, in and of itself, but instead a sufficient quality of life. To receive further medical treatment, according to the court, it had to be shown by the preponderance of evidence that Schiavo's quality of life could be improved to the level where she, herself, could reverse "the prior decision" to end her life by withdrawing life supporting procedures.

Note that the court order does not say "her prior decision," but instead "the prior decision." This so called "decision" was based on casual comments years ago by Terri Schiavo as supposedly recalled by husband after they had watched television together. At a trial in January 2000, according to the November 8, 2003 St. Petersburg Times, Michael Schiavo testified that:

We would be watching TV... a documentary would come on... It would depict, you know, adults, children that are being sustained and kept alive by parents at home. People that had to be on ventilators. People getting tube feedings. Medications throughout. IVs. She made the comment to me that she would never want to be like that. Don't ever keep her alive on anything artificial.

According to him, even medication and intravenous therapy were not wanted by her to prolong her life. However, her mother, Mary Schindler, testified at the trial that she discussed with her daughter the famous right-to-die case of Karen Ann Quinlan, back when the legal fight to take Quinlan off a ventilator was front-page news. "If they take her off, she might die. Just leave her alone and she will die whenever," she said her daughter told her.

Almost a million dollars has been spent by one group trying to kill an incapacitated woman in opposition to another group trying to save her. In the end, her life was ordered ended by the state because it was not of a sufficient quality, that quality being the absurd position that there had to be a high probability that treatment could make her well enough to say herself that she could withdraw "the decision" that she wanted to have medical treatment withdrawn.

"The decision" was not a direct decision of the person's whose life was at stake, but instead a court opinion about comments she made years ago regarding prolongation of one's life. Her life, therefore, was taken based on a rumor labeled a "decision" by the state.

A Mayo Clinic neurologist's view
But the picture gets darker. According to Lifesitenews.com March 24, 2005 Dr. William Cheshire of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and head of the Christian Medical Association, spent one hour in Terri's room observing her and also watched a full set of exam videos of Terri. He concluded that Terri had been misdiagnosed and was not in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS), but instead was in a minimally conscious state. He said:

I, like many Americans who have seen the videos of her interacting with her parents, also question the PVS diagnosis. In fact, I question the validity of the concept of Persistent Vegetative State diagnosis. It is pejorative because it labels a person as being a vegetable--taking away their humanity. It is also impossible to establish this diagnosis. Some patients who have come out of PVS have stated that their mind was in a prison but they knew what was going on around them.

Dr. Cheshire, a renowned neurologist, had evaluated Schiavo for the Florida State Department of Children and Families. "When I first walked into the room," he said, "she immediately turned her head toward me and looked directly at my face. There was a look of curiosity or expectation in her expression, and she maintained eye contact for about half a minute." Cheshire said she also appeared to attempt to speak to him.

He examined her, recommending in an affidavit to the court that she be immediately removed to another facility and the restoration of food and water to the dying woman. However, Judge Greer barred the state--specifically Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the agency--from putting Schiavo into protective custody.

In his affidavit, Dr. Cheshire said he found Schiavo was aware of pain and reacted visibly to it, according to WorldNetDaily March 25, 2005, noting she also reacted to the expectation of pain based on conversations she overheard in her room.

"If Terri is consciously aware of pain, and therefore is capable of suffering, then her diagnosis of PVS may be tragically mistaken," he wrote.

He cited numerous reasons to doubt the prior diagnosis of PVS in Terri Schiavo, according to WorldNetDaily. He said her facial expression brighten and she smiled in response to the voice of people familiar to her, as well as to music. "She lifts her eyebrows, smiles and even laughs," he said, regarding her reaction to jubilant piano music. He said that she also laughed on several occasions when someone in the room made a humorous comment.

She fixated her gaze on colorful objects. He found in examining other affidavits that she told a nurse to "stop" during certain procedures and in response to commands by medical personnel, raised her right leg four times when asked to do so.

He said that her situation differed fundamentally from end-of-life scenarios where it is appropriate to withdraw life-sustaining medical interventions that no longer benefit or are burdensome to patients in the terminal stages of illness. He noted that her feeding tube was not a burden to her. It was not painful, infected, nor eroding her stomach lining.

"But for the decision to withdraw her feeding tube, Terri cannot be considered medically terminal. But for the withdrawal of food and water, she would not die," he said. "As I looked at Terri, and she gazed directly back at me, I asked myself whether, if I were her attending physician, I could in good conscience withdraw her feeding and hydration. No, I could not. I could not withdraw life support if I were asked. I could not withhold life-sustaining nutrition and hydration from this beautiful lady whose face brightens in the presence of others."

But the courts could and did--our courts, not the courts of Germany, the Nazi government nor Russia, all noted for their past repressiveness, but, instead, our own American courts.

As a last ditch effort to save her life, Terri Schiavo's parents filed a motion based on their daughter's plea to stay alive moments before the tube was withdrawn. According to March 25, 2005 LifeNews.com, Barbara Weller, an attorney for Terri's parents' Bob and Mary Schindler, said she went into Terri's room and said to her:

"Terri, if you would just say, 'I want to live,' all of this will be over." Weller said Terri desperately tried to repeat Weller's words. "I waaaaannt ...," Schiavo allegedly said. Weller described it as a prolonged yell that was loud enough that police stationed nearby entered the hospice room. "She just started yelling, 'I waaaannt, I waaaannt,'" Weller explained.

A new and deadly phase
The motion, however, was denied. We are now entering a different phase in America. Peter Singer, an Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, gave the following overview on abortion in the 1995 Oxford Companion to Philosophy:

The central argument against abortion may be put like this:

It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.

Defenders of abortion usually deny the second premise of this argument. The dispute about abortion then becomes a dispute about whether a fetus is a human being, or, in other words, when a human life begins.

However, he said, those who wish to deny the fetus a right to life may be on stronger ground if they challenge the first, rather than the second premise of the argument.

If, on the other hand, "human" is taken to mean no more than a "member of the species Homo sapiens," then it needs to be shown why mere membership of a given biological species should be a sufficient basis for a right to life.

In other words, according to one of the nation's leading bioethicists, being a "mere" human may not be sufficient basis for a right to life. And if that is the case, then what is? Singer concluded:

Rather, the defender of abortion may wish to argue, we should look at the fetus for what it is--the actual characteristics it possesses--and value its life accordingly.

How would one value life under this view? Roe v. Wade had an answer. The unborn, unwanted by their mother, have no right to live. Judge Greer had an answer. Those who do not have a sufficient quality of life do not have a right to live. De Sade had an answer. Humans are nothing more than animals. Hitler had an answer. Aryans were not permitted abortions, but Jews and Slavs were. And then the final solution--Germans had the right to live, but Jews did not.

Basing life on the "actual characteristics it possesses" is basing life on quality. But, who would make the judgment on what characteristics of a person merit life? Obviously not the person whose life is at stake, so it would be some other person or organization. That is a dictatorship. At any stage--fetal, old age or in between--when your innocent life is at the mere whim of another--whether it be an individual or a government, courts or doctors--that is tyranny. And that is where America finds itself today.