Noonan starts off by calling the religious taliban thugs trying to keep Shiavo on life support "a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live." That's the mantle that Noonan gives to the likes of Tom DeLay, Dr. Dobson and Terry Dolan.

Noonan immediately turns evil by demonizing Michael Schiavo:

Noonan objectifies Michael Schiavo by refusing to grant him the simple courtesey of a name. She classifys him as "other" by claiming he is not "passionate but strange." Noonan has demonized Michael Schiavo by giving hiim less respect than she gives to a corpse, then accusing him of "leading a battle" to kill Terry Schiavo. Noonan is the Michelle Malkin of this evil campaign. An effort to put a pretty face on evil pronouncements.

[Update: I have updated my diary to take account of two articles in the L.A. Times this morning.]

Sciavo Taken Off Food Supply

Thousands of Families Facing Similar Decisions

[Update II: I have added two block quotes about moral ethics from an O.C. Register story, Holding on, holding fast]

[Update: I changed the title of my diary]

Really? A persistant vegetative state is not entirely hopeless, however, "the longer the person remains in a vegetative state, the bleaker their chances of recovery." After fifteen years, it may be time to literally give up the ghost.

Keeping a corpse alive is a very labor intensive and expensive proposition. Just one medical consequence is a decubitus ulcer. Consider the problems we have with nursing home abuse. Consider how this type of waste of medical resources is a diversion from pre-natal health care. Consider that 26% of all Medicare costs are spent in the last year of life.

After 15 years in a vegetative state? Yes, healing is impossible. At least three judges have independently examined the medical evidence and ruled that Terry Schaivo is a brain dead corpse. With all the heat on this case, no judge, no matter how liberal, is going to rule Schaivo is dead unless it is a medical certainly.

Why do we bury dead bodies? How do you kill a corpse Peggy? That is the crux of the issue. What is gained is putting the living, as well as the dead, out of their misery and letting people get on with their lives. What good will come of it is closure and the end of a sick, tragic farce. What good will come of it is that we may be able to make a rational decision about how to deal with 35,000 similar cases and another 10,000 in an irreversible coma. With improvements in medical technology, those numbers are bound to rise.

Keeping the bodily fluids mechanically pumping through the organs of 60,000 corpses is not enough for Peggy Noonan. Noonan is actually pleading for us to protect a cascade of corpses from being declared legally dead. That is a disgusting, immoral and evil proposition. It doesn't enhance life, it devalues life.

Life is not a body, completely lacking in consciousness, being kept alive by mechanical devices. Life is the full complex of responses and relationships and experiences that define human existence. Reducing the wonder and joy of life to keeping a heart beating and lungs pumping devalues life. By devaluing life to trite biological reflexes, Noonan diminishes us all; as individuals and as a society.

How many hundreds of thousands of corpses do we want to keep on mechanical life support? Isn't it a moral consideration whether we are draining medical resources from pre-natal care and nursing home care?

Who pays? Not the insurance companies. You know they don't pay to keep a corpse alive for years, let alone decades. Who is going to pay for upkeep on a corpse after it's parents die? For how many decades after it's parents are dead can they keep this body alive?

Since 26% of all Medicare costs already are dedicated to the last year of life.  What percentage are we willing to dedicate to preserving the organ functions of people after they are brain dead? Are we willing to dedicate 50% of all Medicare costs to keeping people alive in the last year of their life and beyond?

This whole thing is sick. Everybody who has ever watched ER or any other medical soap opera has seen doctors make the emotional decision to stop fighting death after hours and sometimes days of operating room heroics and post-surgery medical care.

The same people complaining about how cruel "starvation" is are the same people who refuse compassionate assisted suicide. That is the typical vile hypocrisy we have come to expect from the "pro-life" community.

 Hospitals make "triage" decisions every day of the week. Every single surgeon is required to play God and decide when life has finally ended and when heroic medical procedures are futile. This is not a complicated ethical question. These decisions are made every hour of every day.

Allow me to inject a few facts from the L.A. Times article about thousands of families facing this very decision:

Do whatever it takes, Noonan says. Pass whatever emergency bill, she pleads.

If I am wrong, then Peggy Noonan and the Republican party have a simple way to prove the authenticity of their convictions. Put your money where your mouth is. When they return from their Easter break, House Republicans should offer an amendment to the budget that puts in black and white how many tens of billions of dollars they are willing to dedicate to keeping bodily fluids pumping through lifeless bodies.

That should be simple enough.