"Who Would Want To Live Like That?"

That is the question asked by Beth Gaddy, referring to her grandmother's glaucoma and heart problems. Mrs. Gaddy, because of her grandmother's heart problems and glaucoma, is attempting to have her starved by the removal of her feeding tube. The kicker? The grandmother, Mae Magouirk, has a living will that states she does not want food or water withheld from her UNLESS she is comatose or in a PVS. She is neither of these things.

Check out Reggienation and Grizzly Mama for the story.

My question is this: How long have pro-lifers been warning that acceptance of euthanasia can lead to more and more human beings getting killed? I'm not going to go all alarmist on you just yet, but when a granddaughter can trump a living will, just because of the value she places on a life, I get a little worried.

In response to Mrs. Gaddy's question, "who would want to live with disabilities like these?"

I tell you that I would. Keep me alive until I am comatose, the majority of my body is not functioning on its own, and it is known beyond shadow of a doubt that I can not recover. I would rather live than die. It's that simple. If it's tough, if I've got some disabilities, so did Helen Keller. So did Beethoven. So did FDR. Countless people have lived with disabilities, and I'm not going to be the one to dishonor them by saying "a life like that isn't worth living." It is worth living. It is life, and whether it is made more difficult by deafness, paralyzation, a coma, heart problems, or an array of other disabilities, it is still a life, and it is worth fighting for.

If we lose our respect for life, then what can we respect? Life is the most basic thing we have; we can lose our jobs, our pets, our money, our houses, our families, and our friends. We can lose every single thing we own, but we will have our lives as long as we remain alive. Life is the thing that sticks with us until our dying day, and if we can't even respect it and find it worth fighting for, then how can we respect anything else we own? If we can't respect our own lives, then how can we respect our friends lives? If we are like Mrs. Gaddy and we can't even respect our family's lives, then how can we respect the life of a total stranger?

And if we can't even respect a stranger's life, my friend, then what kind of society do we live in?