By the time you read this, Terri Schindler Schiavo will most likely be dead. Pro-death Liberals and Deathocrats will be dancing in the streets (figuratively speaking), celebrating their great victory over the religious right (and President Bush) in the judicially-sanctioned killing of a brain-damaged woman. The only thing missing will be the AK-47s, since most of the same Liberals are anti-gun. I wonder, though, about the implications of this event, and where it will take us next.

One result of Terri Schiavo's ordeal has been to prove the unassailable supremacy of the judiciary over the other two branches of government, at both the state and federal level. The legislative and executive branches are each, in theory, equal to the judiciary. On paper, each branch has checks and balances to prevent the other two from becoming too powerful. Many of those on the Right have had their warnings about the increasing power of judicial activists ignored for years. This case has proven beyond a reasonable doubt (to borrow a phrase) that the executive and legislative branches of government combined are powerless to affect decisions made by the judiciary.

Congress even passed a law requiring that the Schiavo case receive a fresh look at the federal level, since there were questions about violations of Terri's Constitutional rights. The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution states, "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Fourteenth Amendment reinforces this at the state level, adding that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." When the State takes a life, it is obligated to be as certain as possible of its findings -- and there are too many questions concerning the Schiavo case to simply ignore.

This law might have become a precedent for bringing other disputed cases to the federal courts. But the action of the federal court mirrored those of the Florida court system. Instead of actually reviewing the evidence and testimony, perhaps calling for new tests to determine Terri's true condition, US District Judge James Whittmore simply checked the original court records to see whether proper procedures had been followed. He adhered to the letter but not the intent of the law. In other words, the merits of the original case have never been reviewed, nor have the original medical findings... only the legal procedures. This despite the fact that Terri has never had a PET scan or MRI, nor a lawyer representing her. There is no way to regulate the power of the courts when no one has jurisdiction over them.

The Liberal advocacy of death for the unwanted and unfit has reached a new low with the Schiavo case. It's hard to understand their mania for death, until we consider the fact that they also believe the government should pay for all health care. Liberals have always advocated national health care (or socialised medicine) as the acme of medical guardianship, despite complaints of long waits and endless bureaucracy from countries that have it. It's not too hard to imagine a future in which national health care is a reality, and Liberals justify the deaths of unwanted children and adults who are disabled, deformed, mentally deficient or terminally ill on the grounds that they cost the government too much money to take care of.

In fact, we don't have to imagine it at all. The T-4 Euthanasia program ran along those very same lines in Nazi Germany. Under Phillipp Bouhler (head of the Fuehrer Chancellery) and Dr. Viktor Brack, Hitler's euthanasia program killed approximately 270,000 people. The original order, signed in 1939, gave them the power to "decide whether those who have -- as far as can be humanly determined -- incurable illnesses can, after the most careful evaluation, be granted a mercy death." Handicapped children were given lethal injections or starved to death. Other victims were gassed to death or simply shot.

How did the Nazis justify their wholesale murder of those they considered "unfit" to live? One propaganda poster showing a mental patient had a caption saying, "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people 60,000 Reichmarks during his lifetime. People, that is your money." Under the national health system of Nazi Germany, it was easy to justify killing the imperfect on the grounds that they cost the State money in the form of medical care -- money that could be better used for education, to alleviate poverty or to create jobs, some would argue.

That sort of thing could never happen today, could it? Consider the British case in which two doctors performed a late-term abortion on a baby whose only defect was that it had a cleft palate -- a condition that can be corrected by surgery. The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) decided not to prosecute the case because the abortion was performed "in good faith" by doctors who believed the child would be handicapped for life. A handicapped child would have required government medical care to live or to have the condition corrected. When you've absorbed that, consider the Liberal support for abortion, euthanasia for the disabled and handicapped, the "right to die" movement, and now their celebration of the state-sanctioned starvation of a woman who had a below-standard "quality of life."

That's the direction in which we're headed, if something is not done to prevent it. The default position of the courts as well as doctors should always be to preserve innocent life without a good reason to end it. Hearsay evidence from a "husband" who violated his marriage vows and suddenly remembered the patient's wishes years after the fact should never be a good enough reason to take a life. Yet in this case, it was. What will come next?

Hat tip to HundredPercenter for the collection of DU posts about Terri.