Thursday, March 24, 2005
Schiavo.
Up to this point I’ve remained silent on the Terri Schiavo controversy, with the exception of a comment or two left elsewhere. I’ve done this for a couple of reasons, the primary one being that this is really none of my freaking business and I am really reluctant to feed the blogospheric monster here. The number two reason, of course, is that I’m struggling with my blood pressure and my views on the case are a bit outside the “conservative” norm, and from glancing around a bit this seems to be one of those issues where an opinion outside the mainstream earns one lots and lots of delightful hatemail, and I’ve got no real desire to deal with that, because as interesting as it may be to watch part of the right totally decompensate, I’ve got no real need to participate. It does strike me, however, as incredibly sad that those whom I would normally consider to be on my “side” have been reduced to calling those who disagree with them murderers and even Nazis, in the grand tradition of those they reviled for doing such just a few short months ago. How quickly we forget. How quickly we abandon principle when we have the power to do so. How disgusting.
There’s obviously something very large and compelling and dangerous about this case that we never should have heard of. I have to confess that I’m not entirely sure what to make of our collective obsession with this poor woman, but I don’t know that it bodes well for us, especially considering the behavior of those who are arguing about it. Of course, the blogosphere tends to be an exacerbation of real life, since much of its purpose seems to be the facilitation of argument, but that it might not be so bad “out there” offers me little in the way of comfort given the actions of the Congress and the President.
And those actions are why I finally decided that I can’t in fact, leave this particular issue alone. To cut right to the heart of it, I believe that the aforementioned legislative and executive branches were unequivocally wrong to act as they did in this case, and that their hypocrisy is sickening, besides. I’m just sick at heart over the way this woman’s life has turned into a pawn in a political game, and one that shows my beloved Republican party to now be bereft of the principles that drew me to her in the first place. This is hardly the first time we have disagreed, but this speaks to a role-of-government sea change that I was trying to ignore, and can ignore no longer. Laurence Simon sums this up pretty neatly in this post. Like Laurence, I have no immediate intention of going Democrat. I will, however, be keeping my ears open, just in case they take the opportunity to start talking sense.
We love to talk about “judicial activism” and how the Democrats are trying to suspend the rule of law by forum-shopping for judges who agree with them so they can wave their magic judicial wands and “make it so.” I’ve seen a lot of protesting about how this isn’t the same thing, and it isn’t. It’s much, much more serious. This is two branches of your federal government deciding that they don’t like the result of a court decision and forcibly removing jurisdiction from the court which properly has it in order to go forum shopping for a judge who will wave that magic wand for them. If we choose to approve of this, we castrate the judicial branch, and while arguing about the dangers of legislative tyranny instead of the dangers of judicial tyranny would provide a nice change, if we allow the branches to become too seriously unbalanced the government will certainly collapse in a steaming heap.
That aside, that the Republicans who claim to revile such things are actively promoting this disgusts me. I understand that this is a case that hits one right in the heart, and I don’t think anybody in this argument is pleased that the legal solution seems to be that a woman must starve to death, even if she isn’t aware at all that it’s happening. But we cannot suspend the law of the land based on this emotion. While emotion can certainly inform one’s opinion of the law, if we just start tossing the things out the window every time we feel bad, and if we moreover give the power to the government to do that without even consulting us if it makes them feel bad (or if they smell political gain in it), then our nation as we know it collapses in a steaming heap.
At least we seem to be limiting our appetite for tyranny to the legislative and judicial branches. There’s a word for a man who waves the executive magic wand and has his government make it so, and it isn’t a flattering one.
Incidentally, the Supreme Court has just declined to hear the the Schindlers’ appeal.
I think that much of what is fueling the emotion in this case is that it is impossible not to take it personally. There’s something within us that compels us to try on each role, to imagine how we would feel if we were Mrs. Schiavo, if we were her husband, or her parents. If we were there, what would we do? Which way would we turn? Could we let go? Would we want to live? How can you comprehend a body without a mind inhabiting it in some way? It speaks right to the very basis on which we determine humanity. Is it the body, the mind, some combination of the two? Can a soul live in a body with no mind? Or is the functioning of the body an indication that somewhere inside there is a soul worth saving? And is keeping that body alive indefinitely the way to save it?
This is the reason that there are laws, that there are rules and procedures for these things. If every decision that must be made brings on a societal existential crisis, if each decision requires a ruling from the federal government, there won’t a lot of time left over for anything else. Some say that this means that we should always err on the side of life, but I don’t see any way to do that, since we can’t agree on what life is or what it means to be alive in a human sort of way. So we allow decision-making to be a private thing, a right of the family, a duty that falls on the shoulders of those who know us and our beliefs the best. This is, I believe, absolutely as it should be. If we codify the idea of “erring on the side of life,” if we invite the government to make our medical decisions for us, we’re inviting them into a part of our lives where they just don’t belong. We are furious when an insurance plan says that we must try one medication before they will pay for us to have a different one, we accuse them of getting between us and our doctors, we’re furious that the decision-making has been taken out of our hands and put into the hands of some distant entity. And yet we are contemplating inviting the federal government to mandate the treatment we must receive if we sustain a certain type of brain injury, based on the sad case of a single woman whose husband and parents can’t get along. Staggering.
There’s been a lot of talk about living wills, and how everybody should have one, and even a suggestion that they should be mandated. I think such a suggestion, while well-intentioned, is more of exactly what we don’t need. I also think that such an instrument is not anywhere near as helpful as people might like to think it would be. Imagine that you have a living will that states that you don’t want a feeding tube if you were to find yourself in Mrs. Schiavo’s condition. Imagine that you have family members who are suspicious of your husband, and that they believe that you were forced to sign that living will under duress of some sort. Imagine the court case that results from their attempt to have that living will declared null and void. Doesn’t take much imagining, does it?
And this is the point that offends me the most, that the legislative and executive branches of the federal government dared to step into someone’s marriage in such a fashion. I’ve told my husband, over and over again since folks starting chanting “living will, living will, living will” that I certainly don’t understand why I should need one, since I have a husband who knows my wishes. And let me tell you, if anyone dared to violate our marriage the way that we have attempted to violate the Schiavos’ marriage, they’d better hope they succeed in keeping me alive, because once I’m gone I’ll haunt them.
I’ve written rather a lot for someone who intended to say nothing about this at all, and it all started yesterday with a post Acidman pointed out, one that says much better than I could ever hope to all of the things I wanted to say about the sanctity of marriage and why that must be defended, and why, as Queenie says, you can’t have it both ways. That post is right here, and it hits the nail on the head as neatly as any I’ve ever seen on any topic anywhere.
You see, it doesn’t matter if Michael Schiavo is an asshole. It doesn’t matter who makes or doesn’t make money off of this, it doesn’t matter what her parents want, it doesn’t matter what you the viewer personally feel or believe. What matters is that in our collective angst over the fate of this poor woman, we don’t bring crashing down around us the very rule of law and way of life that allows us to speculate endlessly about the justice of the outcome.