This editorial in the Charleston Gazette is so despicable it is hard to know where to begin. In applauding the Federal Court’s decision not to extradite George Exoo at the request of Ireland for allegedly assisting the suicide of an Irish woman, the editorial makes the most disgraceful, ignorant, and insensitive statements:
Jack Kevorkian, an eccentric known as “Dr. Death,” spent eight years in a Michigan prison for murder because he helped a Lou Gehrig’s disease victim end his hopeless life.
Yes. And he also assisted the suicides of more than 130 people, most of whom were not terminally ill but disabled. More urgently, imagine how it feels to be a Lou Gehrig’s disease patient or a family member, and read in your local newspaper that it officially considers someone with ALS to have a “hopeless life.”
And then, the editorial brings up Terri Schiavo:
The grotesque Terri Schiavo case, in which Republican congressmen rushed into emergency session to continue life-support machines sustaining a brain-dead woman, spotlighted the thorny topic.
Never mind, as I wrote in this week’s Weekly Standard, that bill was passed with broadly bi-partisan support, including unanimous consent in the U.S. Senate. Terri was not on “life-support machines.” Nor was she “brain dead.” She was profoundly disabled.
The editorial writer is not only crassly insensitive, but incredibly ignorant. Disgraceful, but all too typical of the MSM on these issues.
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