I didn't post this earlier because I know my opinion will not sit well with many, if not most, kossacks. But now that the heat is dissipating I have to say that I disagree with the whole approach many on the left have taken over Terri Schiavo's predicament. I personally think that her feeding tube should be reattached and that she should be allowed to exist until her body gives out, so long as her parents or the religious right provide the means to keep her body alive. I respect Michael's desire to carry out what he says are Terri's wishes, and I don't doubt him when he says that's what he's doing. But there's a couple of ways to view this and I think they have yet to be explored by the side that really values life, i.e. progressives.
I think most would agree that either Terri is conscious and aware, or she's not. Some might argue that she's in some limbo in between the two, but from the perspective of whether her heart should continue to beat or not, I think that puts her in the first category. If she is conscious and aware, then allowing her to die of thirst and starvation without some sort of living will that provided stronger legal proof of her wishes would probably be illegal and unethical. After all, the courts seem to have based their rulings to remove her feeding tube on the idea that doctors say she has no functioning brain activity, and will never have any again. If any non-quack doctors had told the court the opposite, I would bet that the courts might have ruled much differently.
As an aside, when I was growing up the two year old son of a family in my church fell into a pool and suffered irreversible brain damage. He spent the rest of his life to age 30 in a curled fetal ball of twisted limbs and a drooling vacant stare, being cared for by his parents who essentially spent their small fortune keeping him alive and comfortable. His name was Stephen. He did smile, though no one could tell at what and for whom. He did feel pain. No one was sure whether or not he was aware when someone entered or left a room. He needed someone else to feed him, change him, bathe him, think for him, make decisions on his behalf, and fight for things like access ramps and medical services and some small place in our society. So that's what his family and their friends did. And no matter what we think of them, that is probably what the Schindler's think they're doing too.
Which gets to my basic reasoning over this: if Terri is no longer conscious, than keeping her body alive is not a hardship for her. She's gone, either to a better place than that immobile body or into non-existence. Either way, she feels no pain and has no wishes about her body that we can divine without acting like religious zealots ourselves. If she is conscious, then despite the fact that she may wish to die if she could speak, she left no legal way for the courts and society to know that beyond a reasonable doubt. As I said earlier, if the legal system had reason to believe that she was alive and conscious, I doubt any judge would allow her tube to be removed no matter what Michael claimed she said when she could speak for herself.
None of the medical and legal facts matter to the religious right of course. Terri Schiavo is being used by them to make a case about their issues--activist judges, "culture of life," etc. But unseemly as it might appear to many Democrats, Terri's case is really about the issues that the left stands for, and in this particular instance have backed away from. Because the part of Terri's story we're not telling very well is that health care and tax cuts and budget cuts and welfare cuts are connected to everyone's everyday life. Instead we find ourselves arguing a states rights/libertarian perspective that will soon be part of the GOP's public face again, certainly before the 2006 midterms.
And that leads me to what I think the left should have done in this case: instead of trotting out old GOP arguments, we should have fought to expand the narrow little law the GOP tried to create for just one person. That after all is the real difference between our two sides. The right believes that some people are more equal than others; the left believes that all men and women of any race, religion or orientation are created equal.
So we should have fought to attach amendments to the Schiavo ruling to nullify the Texas law allowing HMOs to pull the plug on those who can't pay. We should have fought to nullify President Bush's cuts for brain injury patients and others who need Medicaid. We should have fought to strengthen laws that provide for those with disabilities. We should have taken the idea of the "culture of life" and extended it to every living person in the United States, not just those who could be used as tools of the religious right. We should have taken the idea of the "culture of life" and made Republicans live up to it.
If she is still with us, I would like to think that Terri wouldn't have minded helping with that. If she isn't, I'd still like to think it.