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Never Say Die

Thread ID: 17535 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-03-26

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Okiereddust [OP]

2005-03-26 22:56 | User Profile

[URL=http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/hardright.cgi]Hard Right[/URL]

Never Say Die

Hard cases make bad law. They also cause people to lose their moral bearings and their political principles. The case of Theresa Schiavo is no exception. Like many controversial issues, the Schiavo case pits states’-rights/limited-government Republicans against big-government Democrats who want to take power away from families and give it to federal judges. In this case, however, it is Barney Frank who is arguing for states’ rights and the entire Republican congressional caucus that is empowering judges. To take the irony one step further, President Bush—who, as President, has done next to nothing to protect innocent life—is now emerging as the spokesman for a “culture of life.” As governor of Texas, however, he signed a bill turning over the power to make decisions in apparently terminal cases to a medical-ethics board, which could authorize a hospital to end life support for a terminal patient even against the wishes of the next of kin. Under Texas “Advance Directives Act” of 1999, a children’s hospital, over the objection of the mother, removed a five-month-old boy from a ventilator. I should like to hear the President explain this away to the pro-life evangelicals he has betrayed at every turn.

Perhaps the most bizarre utterances have come from official Vatican spokesmen who compare the removal of Mrs. Schiavo’s feeding tube to capital punishment, apparently believing that an act of capital punishment is worse than an act of what they believe to be murder. This is the most nonsensical pro-life argument to come along since Lew Lehrman popularized the Roe v. Wade = Dred Scott analogy, which is predicated on the idea that killing the innocent is almost as bad as slavery. Cardinal Martino, former archbishop of Milan and a staunch leftist, has also weighed in, saying that, “If Mr. Schiavo succeeds legally in causing the death of his wife, this not only would be tragic in itself, but would be a grave step toward the legal approval of euthanasia in the United States.”

Cardinal Martino should consult his American brother-bishops on this question. The U.S. Conference of Bishops, in a humane and carefully nuanced set of answers to “Questions about Medically Assisted Nutrition and Hydration,” acknowledge the moral complexity:

Even Catholics who accept the same basic moral principles may strongly disagree on how to apply them to patients who appear to be persistently unconscious—that is, those who are in a permanent coma or a “persistent vegetative state” (PVS). Some moral questions in this area have not been explicitly resolved by the Church’s teaching authority. Contrary to accounts in the popular press, the Catholic Church has never taught that capital punishment is per se evil (and, thus, forbidden) or that physical existence under all circumstances must be prolonged at any cost. As the bishops observe, “Our tradition does not demand heroic measures in fulfilling the obligation to sustain life.” The termination of special measures, however, is not to be made lightly, especially when there is reason to doubt, as there is in this case, that such a move has been authorized by the patient. The Catechism advises that

discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of over-zealous” treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected. [B]From the perspective of the religious tradition to which the Schindlers are appealing, removal of the feeding and hydration tubes is probably permissible if, first, she is not conscious and, second, she has no hope of recovering consciousness. [/B] The decision would be made by her next of kin, which, in Florida, means her husband, and not by other family members or the courts. But is Mr. Schiavo making the correct decision?

To come to a proper understanding of this issue, we have to distinguish between what we know and what we do not know. Let us begin with the negatives. We do not actually know, for example, if Mrs. Schiavo can ever be made to regain consciousness. Her parents have claimed to find evidence of response and consciousness, but the evidence they present has not been verified, and the films of her interactions with them, having been edited, do not adequately reflect the hours of non-interaction that have been recorded. Even in their edited form, the disturbing films and images of Mrs. Schiavo’s responses—and her parents’ accounts of them—are perfectly consistent with the diagnosis of a permanent vegetative condition. In fact, the Schindlers had no trouble with that diagnosis when they supported their son-in-law’s malpractice suit or even later, when they attempted to replace him as legal guardian. What has changed in the interim? Certainly not her condition—not, at least, for the better.

The physicians who have examined the patient say flatly that she can never regain consciousness. Physicians have made mistakes, however, and the fact of their saying something does not make it so. But, in a dispute over facts, the only qualified authorities are the attending physicians, not bloggers, activist clergymen, or physicians who have not examined the patient. They sometimes cite miraculous recoveries, but everything lies in the details. To prove their case, they would have to cite medical histories of patients in a coma for over a decade after their brains had suffered serious damage as a result of being deprived of oxygen. This has not been done.

We also do not know enough to read the hearts and minds of the contestants, the husband—or, as I should prefer to consider him, the ex-husband—Michael Schiavo and Mrs. Schiavo’s parents. Partisans of each have sworn that the other side was only in it for the money, but there is little money left to quarrel about. There are rumors of possible book deals to be made by Mr. Schiavo, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the rather distressing marketing of the Terri Schiavo donor list to conservative non-profits. If I had to guess, I should say that the parents are entirely sincere in their desire for a miracle that would restore their daughter to them and that Mr. Schiavo is, at best, a weakling and, at worst, the contemptible self-seeking reptile denounced by his in-laws. He need not, however, be mercenary. In the early years, he did make heroic efforts in seeking treatment and therapy for his wife. When these failed, and the medical malpractice suit was settled, his attitude changed. He has, as he might complain to us, “moved on” with his life, found another woman, the fiancée with whom he has fathered two children. He needs no other motive than the very American desire to forget the past and pretend it never happened. (In his defense, however, Mr. Schiavo might point out that the Schindlers, while they were collaborating with him on the malpractice suit, encouraged him to go out with women, some of whom he introduced to his in-laws.)

Nor do I think we need to take very seriously Mr. Schaivo’s claims, repeated ad nauseam to Larry King and other gossip mongers, that his wife had told him she did not wish to be kept alive or that her father had demanded a share of the malpractice settlement. His originally good relations with the Schindlers have soured, and we can expect neither side to be fair to the other.

But supposing we still believe, despite the strong weight of evidence, that Mrs. Schiavo remains conscious at some level and might someday lead a normal life. The question then becomes not “What is the right thing to do,” but “Who is to decide?” As in so many human affairs, it is easier to have moral knowledge than knowledge of facts. [B]We do know that, in our tradition, spouses are next of kin and empowered by law to make decisions when their wife or husband is incapable. That is why Mr. Schiavo, when the physicians concluded the case to be hopeless, was free to decide his wife’s fate. To change this legal tradition, in the heat of a passionate case, is a perilous undertaking.[/B]

I do not know what Mrs. Schiavo’s husband ought to do, but I do know that the decision belongs to him and not to either Jeb or George Bush. To those who wish to defend physical existence for its own sake at any cost, this will seem like Pilate’s decision. They are wrong. Pilate shirked his responsibility as Roman procurator by giving in to the mob. He should not have allowed the execution of Jesus, but neither should he have overturned both Roman and Jewish laws in order to strip families of their legal rights. The analogy, used with increasing frequency, between Mrs. Schiavo and Christ is blasphemous on many counts. She is not the God who willingly accepted death in order to redeem mankind. She is only a poor, frail mortal, like the rest of us, and her condition and death, so far from being a willing sacrifice, is the result, apparently, of binge dieting.

We also know, from our moral and legal traditions, that it can never be safe to entrust such a decision to the self-seeking politicians who seek public office, whether as state legislator, governor, congressman, or president, and that the only step more perilous than entrusting politicians with the power of life and death over members of our family is to give such power to the most dangerous enemies of morality and religion: federal judges. The Republican strategy, even if it had not been revealed in a GOP Senate memo as a cynical ploy, is subversive of the constitutional order of the United States and of what moral order is left in our society.

That much, a well-intentioned pagan might have said, but, for Christians, there is another dimension to this question. Liberal nonbelievers, who believe that “this is all there is,” may be pardoned for their hysterical attachment to physical life. This makes the non-Christian willingness to practice abortion and euthanasia all the more terrifying in its implications. For them, other people’s lives are mere commodities to be used when they are convenient, discarded when they are not.

Christians know better. They know, not only that life is a precious gift, but also that it is not all there is. There was a time when believers gratefully accepted even martyrdom because it was a chance to live and die for their faith. Life can and ought to be beautiful, and we who believe that God looked at His creation and saw that it was good cannot contemn the joy and beauty of everyday life. But we also know that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. We are sojourners here, like the Hebrews in the land of Egypt. Our home is elsewhere.

Mrs. Schiavo’s parents have the right and duty to do what they can for their daughter, but the rest of us—and, by the rest of us, I include Bill Frist, Tom Delay, George Bush, and the Vatican spokesmen who so cavalierly intrude themselves into legal and constitutional matters they do not understand—have no business. Playing politics with a dying woman, even if it advances the pro-life cause or expands the electoral base of the Republican Party, is contemptible.

The basic moral problem lies with Mr. Schiavo himself, and with a society that turns a blind eye to his adultery or bigamy. The American states, once upon a time, had stiff laws on both, and even today Florida’s statutes make living “in an open state of adultery . . . a misdemeanor of the second degree” punishable by up to 60 days in prison. Mr. Schiavo is also guilty of “lewd and lascivious behavior,” another second-class misdemeanor applied to “any man and woman, not being married to each other, [who] lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit.” In other words, the faithless husband might be sent to prison for 120 days and, if he returned to his “fiancée,” he might be slapped with a second set of sentences.

Michael Schiavo has effectively demonstrated that he does not regard Theresa as his wife: In filing obituary notices for each of his parents (in 1997 and again in 2001), he described them as survived by himself and his fiancée Jodi Centzone. [B]This loving, caring husband, as he likes to portray himself, has effectively repudiated his first wife, and, if Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature wished to do anything productive, they would stiffen laws protecting marriage and strip people like Mr. Schiavo of their power to act on behalf of their wives.[/B] It is not judges who need more power, but families.

I do not propose to legislate for the people of Florida, but there are any number of useful measures that might be passed in response to this agonizing case. Apart from stripping adulterers of spousal rights, they could specify a line of authority passing from parents to siblings to aunts and uncles, and so on, with a final provision for a family council to be made up of a group of the nearest living relatives who can be found. Admittedly, a handful of cousins may not take their responsibility very seriously, but even a long-lost cousin is more closely attached to me than any judge or politician.

Every decent American must feel sympathy for poor Mrs. Schiavo and her parents, but thousands of people die every day, and 50 years from now—a mere twinkling of a star—all of us will be dead: the Schiavos, the Schindlers, even the Bushes. If Mr. Schiavo is, in fact, murdering his wife, he will hardly be the first husband to get away with such a crime on one or another technicality. In 2003, 599 people were murdered in Chicago alone. Although the homicide rates have taken a drop in recent years, the United States leads the way in the developed world. We can take comfort that South Africa, Russia, and the Baltic republics are even more homicidal. Nonetheless, judges and parole boards continue to put dangerous felons and psychotics back on the streets. I wish that the Vatican spokesmen who want to change the laws of these United States from the safe distance of Italy (a country with one-fifth the per capita homicides as the United States), would express as much concern about a criminal justice system that, for a variety of reasons—liberal theories of penology, minority sensitivities, political corruption—refuses to protect American citizens from murder. Yet it is to these judges—the class with the most blood on its hands—that we are expected to turn for protection. Every preventable murder is a travesty of justice, and every intentional murder that goes unpunished—i.e., does not end with the execution of the murderer—is a sin crying out for vengeance.

Christians are right to be disturbed by the culture of death that has made abortion and euthanasia not only acceptable but legal and is well on the way to legitimating that form of homicide that goes by the name “assisted suicide.” But Christians should also bear in mind that we are not called upon to keep our mortal bodies running for as long as possible—indeed, the saints were always somewhat careless in this regard. We need to lead moral lives, accepting our responsibilities, both those we have inherited and those we have undertaken willingly, in the knowledge that we are preparing for another, better life. Mrs. Schiavo, in her current condition, cannot get on with this, the most important business of life. Her parents and friends who have told us she was a good Christian woman can be confident that she is passing on to a better life. If we do not believe this, then what do we believe?

[I]Another commentary on the Schiavo matter. It is interesting, even Tom Fleming seems preoccupied with legal precedent and legal considerations - states rights - power of judges - political maneuverings.

I can't help that people like him and Reese are overlooking the forest for the trees a bit. And it seems a little off for him to be accussing other people of playing politics, when he, like everyone elsehere, isdoing a little of the same thing.

He does bring up a legitimate point though - who decides ultimately. True someone has to. Or do they? With the death penalty we don't make the trial absolute authority. The presumption is in favor of life, and the rights of appeal are always asserted vigorously and made available to anyone in the defendents team willing to avail themselves of them. I don't entirely understand this attitude on the part of some many conservative commentators.

I guess I'm with Pat on this one.[/I]

Phantasm

2005-03-27 21:42 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Okiereddust]... Apart from stripping adulterers of spousal rights, they could specify a line of authority passing from parents to siblings to aunts and uncles, and so on, with a final provision for a family council to be made up of a group of the nearest living relatives who can be found. Admittedly, a handful of cousins may not take their responsibility very seriously, but even a long-lost cousin is more closely attached to me than any judge or politician. ...[/QUOTE] Here, Here!

IMHO... decisions in matters such as these should be left to “caring” family members. The surviving spouse should be the last resort... if no other family members exist.

:whlch: