A Poppy for Mrs. Schiavo.

On Easter Sunday, the saga of Terri Schiavo draws rapidly (but not rapidly enough, in many senses) to a close:

“Terri is declining rapidly,” Schindler attorney David Gibbs said on CBS' “Face the Nation.” “We believe at this point she has passed where physically she would be able to recover.”

Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, who is acting as a spokesman for Schiavo's parents, said Gibbs' description of Terri Schiavo as past the point of recovery is “absolutely untrue.”

Gibbs also said Terri Schiavo is receiving morphine for pain.

On the face of it, providing Mrs. Schiavo with opiates whilst denying her basic sustenance is both nonsensical and contraindicated, given the contention of the 'experts' that she is incapable of feeling pain. Even less understandable, now that the decision has been made to drug her with morphine, is the refusal of the self-arrogated arbiters of Mrs. Schiavo's existence to simply increase the morphine dosage sufficiently to send her off into lethean oblivion.

However, on closer examination, this makes a perverted kind of sense. It's apparent that those who swore to avoid the trap of therapeutic nihilism desire to make the claim that, technically speaking, they didn't in fact kill Mrs. Schiavo, but that she merely expired for want of sustenance (how this is to be reconciled with well-established precedents governing neglect, abuse, and depraved indifference is unclear). In this confederacy of dunces we've created, there are no responsible actors, only victims — except for those who've grown burdensome, such Mrs. Schiavo, and whom are somehow to be held responsible for the supposed victimization of the hale and hearty, such as Michael Schiavo.

We should do well to remember the words of that most eclectic founder of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson:

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.

One can only pray that the end comes for Mrs. Schiavo with a minimum of further suffering; as for those who actively engineered her demise as well as those of us who merely stood by and watched, it is to be hoped that when we reach the respective ends of our days, we are in fact shown the mercy which we signally denied this helpless, inconvenient woman.