Democrats -- the New Spartans

This sentence struck me in a George Neumayr column in The American Spectator:

The self-described party of the 'little guy' is his greatest enemy, aborting him at the beginning of life or dehydrating him to death at the end of life, all the while insisting that it is for his 'own good.'

Isn't that what the Spartans used to do? The need for a strong society was so paramount that the Spartans routinely euthanized dead weight. It's just that they didn't make any bones about it, while the Dems tend to dress it up. Having said that, I feel that I need to make plain that, despite my complete support for Terri's parents, my own feelings about all of these issues are anything but clear. I recognize that the conservatives have the moral high ground on both abortion and euthanasia. Nevertheless, I cannot get over certain ingrained beliefs: Regarding abortions, while I accept completely that the fetus is a life, I still have a strong feeling (and undoubtedly a selfish one) that the woman has a voice in the matter. I'd trust that voice more, though, if we lived in more of a life affirming culture (see my Mark Steyn post, below). I simply can't get over a feeling of revulsion, for example, at the thought of a women being forced to carry for 9 months a child that is the product of a brutal rape. Yes, the child is innocent, but somehow the woman has to matter too. I also continue to be comfortable with pulling the plug on someone who is brain dead, and who is kept alive solely because a machine is handling respiration. That is, if you'll pardon the almost unconscionable pun, a no-brainer. The slope gets more slippery in other situations, even when there is a directive demanding that ones life be terminated. I had a friend who died of AIDS a decade plus ago, and his was a miserable, prolonged death. Early on, he confided to me that he had a stash of medicines that he intended to use when things got too bad to bear. What was fascinating was that, no matter the indignities and pain that the disease visited on his body, things never did get too bad to bear. He ultimately died from the disease itself, although he was no doubt comforted by the fact that he could, if he desired, exercise control over his own end. Science has certainly outstripped man's capacity for dealing with many of these issues. In the old days, medicine was such that it readily killed the living. Now, we have to grapple with the fact that it seems to keep alive the dead.