Okay, it's caught me. The media/government/blogosphere obsession with Terry Schiavo has sucked me in. I didn't really care before; I viewed it as a private affair. But with all that's happened in the past week or so, I'm hooked. Why? Because now, this matters. Not that it didn't before - it mattered deeply to the family, Terri's parents and siblings, and to her husband, whose diligent care of her is a testament to his love for a wife who has not spoken to him in fifteen years. But it mattered to them because it was a personal tragedy, their tragedy, a family dilemma. Today, it has become a national dilemma, a dilemma about our rights as individuals, about the role government should play in our private affairs, and about the say that others have in regards to the decisions we make for ourselves.
Had Terri Schiavo left a living will, she would not be alive right now. Terri Schiavo did not want to live like this, fed through a machine and unable to function as a human being. And ultimately, that is what this is about - Terri Schiavo and what she wanted. Not what her parents want, or Tom DeLay, or even her husband. It is about what Terri Schiavo and her wishes. Michael Schiavo gets this - his position has been consistent: we should do what Terri would want.
Some people don't get this, but for another group of people the problem is a different one: they don't care what she wanted. It is not about what Terri Schiavo wished for herself, or what any of us would wish for ourselves. It is about what those people would want for us. The "right to life" movement does not want you to have dominion over your own body. And that is what this battle has become about. It does not matter that court after court has upheld Michael Schiavo's testimony that his wife would want her feeding tube removed. For the right-to-lifers, Terri shouldn't have wanted her feeding-tube removed in the first place, and if she did, she was wrong for thinking so. The "right to life" apparently isn't a right - it is an obligation, or a duty, or in this case, a burden. And that leads us to the "culture of life", which in reality, is the culture of control.
The politicos who fear the wrath of the right-to-lifers overstepped their constitutional bounds and interfered in the issue of an individual's rights. Take the tube out, no put it back in, take it out again, no let's ask the Supreme Court to put it back. They play with our lives - and our deaths - and they think not of our wishes but of what the culture of control dictates. That's what's happened here, and the American public sees it. As poll after poll shows us, public opinion is with Terri and Michael Schiavo, not with corrupt government officials who would step into our lives and dictate the most sacred aspect of life to us.
And that is because we realize that Terri's right to die in dignity is the same right we should all have. And when Tom DeLay and Bill Frist and George W. say otherwise, well, that doesn't make Americans too happy. So perhaps there is a sliver lining in this: as we see the government meddling in the affairs of one ordinary woman, we - the American public - start to consider not just an individual's right to die, but an individual's right to anything. The negative reaction to this will seep into the national consciousness, and as it lies there, festering, maybe more of us will understand a woman's right to choose, or the rights of two people of the same sex to express their love in marriage, or the rights that the Patriot Act takes away from us, or the most basic American right to pursue our happiness, wherever that may lead us, and regardless of what others think.
I hope that Terry Schiavo gets what she wants (and thank God, it looks like she may). Because if she doesn't, I fear what that means for the rest of us.