These things need saying
A word needs to be said about a few things which most Americans are missing in the Schaivo affair, but which lie directly at the heart of the matter.
Euthanasia- and, in all but one state, assisted suicide- are supposed to be illegal. But there is one exception: you can starve a person to death or make them die of thirst even if, as in Terri Schaivo's case, they are not already dying- if you can convince a judge that that's what they would have wanted.
The proof need not be conclusive. It need not, on its face, be credible. All that is necessary is that a single judge find it so.
Now, there are many more humane ways to kill someone. A lethal injection would be fast and merciful. While messy, a double-tap to the head with a .22 would be far less barbaric than starvation and dehydration. But something has happened in this regard which threatens the very basis of constitutional government in this country. It is nothing short of amazing that even many who consider themselves Conservatives totally miss this point.
There is an ethical consensus in Western civilization that there is no need to continue life support (i.e., to keep a person on a respirator, or to continue other means of artificially prolonging a life that would otherwise end) in situations in which there is no prospect of recovery, and especially when the person has expressed a wish that this not be done.
But the key words are prolonging a life that would otherwise end. Somewhere along the line, the courts (and apparently much of the medical community) have moved the foul lines by stealth. They have decided that nourishment and hydration somehow constitute artificial life support. If that is the case, of course, every human being on Earth who cannot feed himself or raise a glass of water to her lips is on artificial life support- and logically, we should be ethically able, with complete rectitude, to starve anybody who can't protest! Abortion, logically, has been rendered passe' by this standard; infanticide cannot logically forbidden, if it is embraced.
The equation of the two is, of course, logically absurd- and ethically untenable. It is the difference between letting a person die, and making that person die. It is the difference between allowing nature to take its course- and killing someone.
Now, here is the first point that needs to be made: no legislature decided that euthanasia by starvation and dehydration should be OK, but remain illegal if performed by any other means. So how did it become legal?
The answer is simple: the courts (together with the elite elements of the medical profession) have decreed it so.
There are those who have criticized the intervention of President Bush and Congress on the ground that there is no Federal issue involved in the Schaivo case. Is the total subversion of the constitutional doctrine of the seperation of powers not a Federal issue? When the courts legislate, and even amend the Constitution, by fiat, is the Constitution itself not being subverted? When- as in Roe v. Wade, and again in the more nebulous and subtle matter of the distinction between the "right to die" and the right to kill- an ethical and legal norm is somehow ascribed to and imposed upon society without the ethical and political consensus which our form of government requires for such a change, is not our form of government itself under attack- wholly aside from whatever legal, ethical, or political objections might be raised to the substance of the change?
Certainly we, as a society, never voted on the issue- and neither have our representatives. It is time it was brought to the forefront and submitted to the democratic process on its own terms and in its own right, rather than being thrust into the background as it has been in the Schaivo affair. I have yet to see an objective attempt by any major media outlet to analyze the basis upon which we who oppose the killing of Terri Schaivo do so. This seems to me to be a major failing on their part.
It is hardly an attempt to make America into a theocracy to cite the attitudes of the major religions on the matter of euthanasia by starvation; as all but the most anti-religious of zealots would acknowledge, our religions have, collectively, always played a healthy and legitimate role in informing our society ethically. And they are close to unanimous in their teachings.
Judaism absolutely forbids the withholding of nourishment and water even from those in a persistent vegetative state. So does Catholicism. Those Protestant denominations which maintain a meaningful connection with their traditional teachings agree. Only the so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations- those on the far Left of the American religious spectrum, most of whose own communicants generally do not take their ethical and theological pronouncements seriously- dissent.
So how did we get to a place where something like two-thirds of the American people approve of the killing of Terri Schaivo- even those who supposedly subscribe to the teachings of those traditions? Have we really become so secularized that the unanimous teaching of our three great religious traditions is so easily ignored by such a large majority of the population- even by those who claim to adhere to them? I don't think we have. The reporting of this story by the media has been so sloppy and so selective that I don't think the average American understands the most basic facts about this case.
I have no doubt that large numbers believe that Terri Schaivo is brain-dead. News media throughout the world have been routinely making that totally erroneous assertion, and I have yet to see a retraction.
The media have been conspicuously silent about the fact that Michael Schaivo stands to become a wealthy man upon Terri's death as the result of a law suit predicated on Terri's long life, and the expenses that would entail- expenses he has not incurred, since even before he decided to kill his wife he consistently denied her the very treatment the money supposedly was to pay for. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? Few in the media have mentioned the money that Michael stands to inherit upon his wife's death. The conflict of interest should, by any standard, have disqualified him as Terri's guardian, and certainly excluded him from being in a position in which to decide whether she lives or dies. He is living with another woman, who has borne him two children. Aside from the obvious question as to how he can in any but the most technical legal sense be still regarded as Terri's husband, does not the fact that her death would allow him to marry his present companion without the expense and odium of divorcing a disabled wife cast doubt upon his objectivity? One thing is sure: Michael Schaivo is not the most credible witness to provide the sole testimony upon which a question of life and death hangs.
To be sure, such a conflict exists in any such case. Medical expenses are a heavy burden for those who are disabled, whether or not they are in a chronic vegetative state (as dozens of doctors have found that Terri herself is not). I do not believe that I am being unsympathetic to the burden these expenses place upon the families of such patients when I say that they simply cannot be regarded as objective witnesses to the wishes of the patients. Nor do I think I am being cold- hearted when I ask why even the wishes of the patient should matter in cases like Terri's. Except in Oregon, assisted suicide is as illegal as euthanasia, at least in principle. The law continues, in every other area but the practice of starving sick people , to respect the principle- established by two thousand years of Western ethical thought, and by the law in literally every other circumstance- that there is no moral- and should be no legal-l right for a person who is not dying to die by choice.
There are those who feel that it should be otherwise. Fine. Let's have the debate, and decide the matter democratically. But let's not contaminate it with the apples-and-oranges equation of making a person die who is not already dying with letting a person die who is. And let's not let the courts and the medical profession impose an answer upon us without recourse to participation by the religious and ethical authorities which have always played an important role in such decisions. This matter needs to be sorted out by democratic debate, and not imposed on society from on high. It needs to be a matter of societal consensus, not judicial decree.
When the Schindlers' latest appeal was reported by the media, it was commonly explained that it was based upon Terri's utterance- before a number of witnesses far more credible than Michael (though that comparison was not, of course, made)- that she had screamed "AHHHH! WAAAAH!" Incredibly, I did not see a single account of the appeal which mentioned that the utterance was in direct response to the statement, "You know, Terri, this would all be over if you just said 'I want to live.'" Nor, of course, has the media reported the fact that the police present immediately understood the relationship between that statement and Terri's response; when Terri began screaming, the person who had made the statement- a lawyer for the Schindlers- was ejected by them from the room.
This utterance, in context, would seem to me to be far more convincing evidence of Terri's own wishes than the testimony of a wholly unbelievable witness like Michael. Yet it was ignored by Judge Greer, in an Orwellian decision to the effect that the utterance could not have been purposeful because certain specific doctors had testified that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, and thus incapable of purposeful utterance (the dozens of doctors- ten of them neurologists- who disagreed were simply ignored by Judge Greer throughout the proceedings). The doctors who agreed with the judge's original ruling agreed with the judge's original ruling, and so, ipso facto, both doctors who disagreed with it and the common sense interpretation of the incident any objective observer would first incline to were inadmissible!
It seems to me that another Federal issue is involved here. Terri Schaivo was supposed to be protected by the U.S. Constitution from being deprived of her life without due process of law. But when the testimony of one side in a case is excluded simply because of its content, and when the evidence of a wholly non-credible witness is preferred to that of Terri herself, it seems clear that she was deprived of that protection.
A major news network did a feature on the "love story" of Michael and Terry Schaivo. I have yet to see a major media outlet, however, report the testimony of the nurses who cared for Terri in the past that Michael was in the habit inquiring about her condition by asking, "Is she dead yet?," or even, "When is that bitch gonna die?"
It goes without saying that the ethical distinction between the withdrawal of artificial life support from a dying patient and the withdrawal of food and nourishment from a patient who is not dying has gone genenerally unexplored by the media in its reportage of the Schaivo case- and, for that matter, in its discussion of "right-to-die" issues generally. While I have no proof of this, I strongly suspect that if another poll were taken, one would find that at least as large a majority of the American people believes- falsely- that Terri Schaivo was dying when her hydration and nourishment were cut off as sides with Michael on the basis of their understanding of the case. One thing is certain: the issue of the distinction between letting someone die and making that person die- obliterated, as a practical matter, by the courts and by the medical elite, but very much a live issue for our three great religious traditions and one concerning which we have never had an open and informed debate in our culture- needs to be publicly explored and discussed.
The media has a solemn resposibility to inform and enable that discussion. It has failed. In fact, it has effectively become a third party, along with the courts and the medical elite, in imposing upon society an ethical norm which society has never had the opportunity to examine on its own merits, and unobstructed by the haze of confusion thrown up by the medical and legal equation of euthanasia by starvation and dehydration from those who are not dying with the cessation of artificial life support for those who are.
Nobody objects to the latter. Catholicism and conservative Protestantism alike support the ethical propriety of not keeping a dying person, for whom there is no prospect of recovery, artificially alive, even while rejecting the practice of actively causing the death of a person who is not dying by withholding nourishment and hydration. The ethical tradition of the Western world condemns euthanasia by starvation and dehydration firmly and unequivocally, even while supporting what I personally believe that the overwhelming majority of the American people believe, falsely, to be going in the Schaivo case.
I believe that our devolution into what Pope John Paul II has called "a culture of death" is the single most compelling issue facing the American body politic. We condemned the euthanasia of the infirm as barbaric when the Nazis practiced it. Can it really be that we are ready to accept it now?
And have we really reached the point where the value of a human life is not intrinsic, but rather dependent upon its convenience or inconvenience to others? God help us if we have.
And is it not a fundamental responsibility of the media to make sure that such a debate is enabled by the arguments of both sides being made known to the public? When all is said and done, there simply cannot be a coherent case made that they have done so in the Terry Schaivo case.
That is not a healthy thing for our democracy, or for our souls.
Euthanasia- and, in all but one state, assisted suicide- are supposed to be illegal. But there is one exception: you can starve a person to death or make them die of thirst even if, as in Terri Schaivo's case, they are not already dying- if you can convince a judge that that's what they would have wanted.
The proof need not be conclusive. It need not, on its face, be credible. All that is necessary is that a single judge find it so.
Now, there are many more humane ways to kill someone. A lethal injection would be fast and merciful. While messy, a double-tap to the head with a .22 would be far less barbaric than starvation and dehydration. But something has happened in this regard which threatens the very basis of constitutional government in this country. It is nothing short of amazing that even many who consider themselves Conservatives totally miss this point.
There is an ethical consensus in Western civilization that there is no need to continue life support (i.e., to keep a person on a respirator, or to continue other means of artificially prolonging a life that would otherwise end) in situations in which there is no prospect of recovery, and especially when the person has expressed a wish that this not be done.
But the key words are prolonging a life that would otherwise end. Somewhere along the line, the courts (and apparently much of the medical community) have moved the foul lines by stealth. They have decided that nourishment and hydration somehow constitute artificial life support. If that is the case, of course, every human being on Earth who cannot feed himself or raise a glass of water to her lips is on artificial life support- and logically, we should be ethically able, with complete rectitude, to starve anybody who can't protest! Abortion, logically, has been rendered passe' by this standard; infanticide cannot logically forbidden, if it is embraced.
The equation of the two is, of course, logically absurd- and ethically untenable. It is the difference between letting a person die, and making that person die. It is the difference between allowing nature to take its course- and killing someone.
Now, here is the first point that needs to be made: no legislature decided that euthanasia by starvation and dehydration should be OK, but remain illegal if performed by any other means. So how did it become legal?
The answer is simple: the courts (together with the elite elements of the medical profession) have decreed it so.
There are those who have criticized the intervention of President Bush and Congress on the ground that there is no Federal issue involved in the Schaivo case. Is the total subversion of the constitutional doctrine of the seperation of powers not a Federal issue? When the courts legislate, and even amend the Constitution, by fiat, is the Constitution itself not being subverted? When- as in Roe v. Wade, and again in the more nebulous and subtle matter of the distinction between the "right to die" and the right to kill- an ethical and legal norm is somehow ascribed to and imposed upon society without the ethical and political consensus which our form of government requires for such a change, is not our form of government itself under attack- wholly aside from whatever legal, ethical, or political objections might be raised to the substance of the change?
Certainly we, as a society, never voted on the issue- and neither have our representatives. It is time it was brought to the forefront and submitted to the democratic process on its own terms and in its own right, rather than being thrust into the background as it has been in the Schaivo affair. I have yet to see an objective attempt by any major media outlet to analyze the basis upon which we who oppose the killing of Terri Schaivo do so. This seems to me to be a major failing on their part.
It is hardly an attempt to make America into a theocracy to cite the attitudes of the major religions on the matter of euthanasia by starvation; as all but the most anti-religious of zealots would acknowledge, our religions have, collectively, always played a healthy and legitimate role in informing our society ethically. And they are close to unanimous in their teachings.
Judaism absolutely forbids the withholding of nourishment and water even from those in a persistent vegetative state. So does Catholicism. Those Protestant denominations which maintain a meaningful connection with their traditional teachings agree. Only the so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations- those on the far Left of the American religious spectrum, most of whose own communicants generally do not take their ethical and theological pronouncements seriously- dissent.
So how did we get to a place where something like two-thirds of the American people approve of the killing of Terri Schaivo- even those who supposedly subscribe to the teachings of those traditions? Have we really become so secularized that the unanimous teaching of our three great religious traditions is so easily ignored by such a large majority of the population- even by those who claim to adhere to them? I don't think we have. The reporting of this story by the media has been so sloppy and so selective that I don't think the average American understands the most basic facts about this case.
I have no doubt that large numbers believe that Terri Schaivo is brain-dead. News media throughout the world have been routinely making that totally erroneous assertion, and I have yet to see a retraction.
The media have been conspicuously silent about the fact that Michael Schaivo stands to become a wealthy man upon Terri's death as the result of a law suit predicated on Terri's long life, and the expenses that would entail- expenses he has not incurred, since even before he decided to kill his wife he consistently denied her the very treatment the money supposedly was to pay for. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? Few in the media have mentioned the money that Michael stands to inherit upon his wife's death. The conflict of interest should, by any standard, have disqualified him as Terri's guardian, and certainly excluded him from being in a position in which to decide whether she lives or dies. He is living with another woman, who has borne him two children. Aside from the obvious question as to how he can in any but the most technical legal sense be still regarded as Terri's husband, does not the fact that her death would allow him to marry his present companion without the expense and odium of divorcing a disabled wife cast doubt upon his objectivity? One thing is sure: Michael Schaivo is not the most credible witness to provide the sole testimony upon which a question of life and death hangs.
To be sure, such a conflict exists in any such case. Medical expenses are a heavy burden for those who are disabled, whether or not they are in a chronic vegetative state (as dozens of doctors have found that Terri herself is not). I do not believe that I am being unsympathetic to the burden these expenses place upon the families of such patients when I say that they simply cannot be regarded as objective witnesses to the wishes of the patients. Nor do I think I am being cold- hearted when I ask why even the wishes of the patient should matter in cases like Terri's. Except in Oregon, assisted suicide is as illegal as euthanasia, at least in principle. The law continues, in every other area but the practice of starving sick people , to respect the principle- established by two thousand years of Western ethical thought, and by the law in literally every other circumstance- that there is no moral- and should be no legal-l right for a person who is not dying to die by choice.
There are those who feel that it should be otherwise. Fine. Let's have the debate, and decide the matter democratically. But let's not contaminate it with the apples-and-oranges equation of making a person die who is not already dying with letting a person die who is. And let's not let the courts and the medical profession impose an answer upon us without recourse to participation by the religious and ethical authorities which have always played an important role in such decisions. This matter needs to be sorted out by democratic debate, and not imposed on society from on high. It needs to be a matter of societal consensus, not judicial decree.
When the Schindlers' latest appeal was reported by the media, it was commonly explained that it was based upon Terri's utterance- before a number of witnesses far more credible than Michael (though that comparison was not, of course, made)- that she had screamed "AHHHH! WAAAAH!" Incredibly, I did not see a single account of the appeal which mentioned that the utterance was in direct response to the statement, "You know, Terri, this would all be over if you just said 'I want to live.'" Nor, of course, has the media reported the fact that the police present immediately understood the relationship between that statement and Terri's response; when Terri began screaming, the person who had made the statement- a lawyer for the Schindlers- was ejected by them from the room.
This utterance, in context, would seem to me to be far more convincing evidence of Terri's own wishes than the testimony of a wholly unbelievable witness like Michael. Yet it was ignored by Judge Greer, in an Orwellian decision to the effect that the utterance could not have been purposeful because certain specific doctors had testified that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, and thus incapable of purposeful utterance (the dozens of doctors- ten of them neurologists- who disagreed were simply ignored by Judge Greer throughout the proceedings). The doctors who agreed with the judge's original ruling agreed with the judge's original ruling, and so, ipso facto, both doctors who disagreed with it and the common sense interpretation of the incident any objective observer would first incline to were inadmissible!
It seems to me that another Federal issue is involved here. Terri Schaivo was supposed to be protected by the U.S. Constitution from being deprived of her life without due process of law. But when the testimony of one side in a case is excluded simply because of its content, and when the evidence of a wholly non-credible witness is preferred to that of Terri herself, it seems clear that she was deprived of that protection.
A major news network did a feature on the "love story" of Michael and Terry Schaivo. I have yet to see a major media outlet, however, report the testimony of the nurses who cared for Terri in the past that Michael was in the habit inquiring about her condition by asking, "Is she dead yet?," or even, "When is that bitch gonna die?"
It goes without saying that the ethical distinction between the withdrawal of artificial life support from a dying patient and the withdrawal of food and nourishment from a patient who is not dying has gone genenerally unexplored by the media in its reportage of the Schaivo case- and, for that matter, in its discussion of "right-to-die" issues generally. While I have no proof of this, I strongly suspect that if another poll were taken, one would find that at least as large a majority of the American people believes- falsely- that Terri Schaivo was dying when her hydration and nourishment were cut off as sides with Michael on the basis of their understanding of the case. One thing is certain: the issue of the distinction between letting someone die and making that person die- obliterated, as a practical matter, by the courts and by the medical elite, but very much a live issue for our three great religious traditions and one concerning which we have never had an open and informed debate in our culture- needs to be publicly explored and discussed.
The media has a solemn resposibility to inform and enable that discussion. It has failed. In fact, it has effectively become a third party, along with the courts and the medical elite, in imposing upon society an ethical norm which society has never had the opportunity to examine on its own merits, and unobstructed by the haze of confusion thrown up by the medical and legal equation of euthanasia by starvation and dehydration from those who are not dying with the cessation of artificial life support for those who are.
Nobody objects to the latter. Catholicism and conservative Protestantism alike support the ethical propriety of not keeping a dying person, for whom there is no prospect of recovery, artificially alive, even while rejecting the practice of actively causing the death of a person who is not dying by withholding nourishment and hydration. The ethical tradition of the Western world condemns euthanasia by starvation and dehydration firmly and unequivocally, even while supporting what I personally believe that the overwhelming majority of the American people believe, falsely, to be going in the Schaivo case.
I believe that our devolution into what Pope John Paul II has called "a culture of death" is the single most compelling issue facing the American body politic. We condemned the euthanasia of the infirm as barbaric when the Nazis practiced it. Can it really be that we are ready to accept it now?
And have we really reached the point where the value of a human life is not intrinsic, but rather dependent upon its convenience or inconvenience to others? God help us if we have.
And is it not a fundamental responsibility of the media to make sure that such a debate is enabled by the arguments of both sides being made known to the public? When all is said and done, there simply cannot be a coherent case made that they have done so in the Terry Schaivo case.
That is not a healthy thing for our democracy, or for our souls.
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