Posted by Andy
Up to now, I had considered liberal fears of theocratic intrusion into public policy overblown, even a tad hysterical. But the Schiavo case gives me pause. Not only the lunatics like Randall Terry parading outside the hospice, but the support of more or less respectable conservative commentators like Peggy Noonan, Limbaugh and Buchanan, Bob Novak and Fred Barnes, not to mention Sean Hannity, who has been devoting his widely heard radio and Fox TV shows to rousing the rabble and implicitly suggesting possible criminal villainy on the part of Michael Schiavo. Even “liberals” like Ralph Nader and the crassly opportunistic Jesse Jackson. And of course George and Jeb.
The “culture of life” folks made much of “Terri’s wishes,” as though they were somehow relevant after 15 years. Whatever her views before she was incapacitated, if in fact she had any–and of course there are conflicting accounts–it is impossible to know how she would have felt about her own vegetative condition. And the great preponderance of neurological evidence, including a CAT scan–disputed only by those with axes to grind, and not credibly–indicates that the cerebral cortex, the seat of consciousness, was utterly gone. Despite the wishful thinking of her parents and their partisans she was incapable of thought about her own state or anything else, and the possibility of “rehabilitation” was a cruel mirage.
It is also difficult to reconcile the intense focus on “Terri’s wishes,” necessarily conjectural, with the views of her self-appointed advocates on related matters, most notably their adamant opposition to any decision by terminally ill people or their designated proxies to choose assisted suicide. Of course some people, including the Catholic hierarchy, consider it wrong to take any life (except perhaps in a “just war”). But the selective inconsistency does undercut their argument of individual choice in cases that suit their philosophical preferences. And it is passing strange that people who believe in a blissful hereafter would go to any length to postpone the inevitable reunion with Jesus, at whatever cost in earthly pain and suffering. Modern medicine, for all its miracles, is not God. And for those who believe in a Deity it would not be illogical to think that unnatural intervention, by means of man-made tubes and machines, even in hopeless cases, is not conforming to God’s will but thwarting it. It may seem callous to talk about costs in this context, but Medicare and Medicaid are under siege, much more than Social Security, and any legislated mandate to prohibit removal of life support without explicit written directions from a patient–as some legislators are proposing–would lead to a crisis dwarfing the altready dire situation.
As a conservative, I have long felt that judicial overreach is a real and serious problem. But in this case it was our elected legislators who overreached, and I can only applaud the principled, even courageous, refusal of the courts to bow to the egregious attempt by Congress and President Bush to intercede–apparently, by the way, in conflict with the popular will: The polls (and two referendums in Oregon) suggest that the general public is firmly opposed not only to such politicized intervention but to stringent limits on an individual’s right to choose death rather than a grotesque and often painful twilight, in thrall to the compassionate cruelties of medical technology abetted by religious fanaticism.