"Next time it will be easier"

National Review's March 31 editorial on the killing of Terri Schiavo notes the polls showing high public approval for her death, but also suggests that public opinion was greatly manipulated through the use (by the media and by George Felos) of euphemisms to mask what was actually happening.

The disinformation campaign was so successful that most people were untroubled by the manner of Terri's killing. NR makes an observation similar to ones made here and elsewhere:

Why not kill Mrs. Schiavo quickly and efficiently, by depriving her of air to breathe? In principle, that would have been no different from denying her the other basic necessities of life. Why not give her a lethal injection? The law would not have allowed those methods; but the reason nobody advocated them was that they would have been too obviously murder. So the court-ordered killing was carried out slowly, incrementally, over days and weeks, with soft music, stuffed animals, and euphonious slogans about choice and dignity and radiance. By the time it ended, no one really remembered how many days and hours it had gone on. The nation accepted it, national polls supported it, and we all moved on to other things.

There's no going back— a line has been crossed regarding what the American public will tolerate:

Next time it will be easier. It always is. The tolerance of early-term abortion made it possible to tolerate partial-birth abortion, and to give advanced thinkers a hearing when they advocate outright infanticide. Letting the courts decide such life-and-death issues made it possible for us to let them decide others, made it seem somehow wrong for anyone to stand in their way. Now they are helping to snuff out the minimally conscious. Who's next?