Guest Post by Morbo
I have bad news for anyone reading this: Eventually, you are going to grow old and die.
I hate to be a downer, but here’s another news flash that won’t exactly make your day: You could, later today, be driving back from the grocery store when an intoxicated person driving an SUV the size of a combine harvester runs a red light and creams you.
In short, you could, at some point in the distant future or even later today, end up like Terri Schiavo.
If that happens, some of you may really want that extraordinary measures be taken. You might want to be hooked to every machine available and kept alive with feeding tubes for 15 years — even if you’re not conscious. If you feel this way, make sure your will spells out your exact wishes.
But most of you are not going to want that. Most of you will find the idea of being attached to machines and kept alive by artificial means long after you’ve lost the ability to perceive the world around you loathsome.
And most of you sure as hell aren’t going to want Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, George W. Bush and others who have never even met you passing laws to override your wishes and keep you alive anyway. Most of you would be furious if you were able to perceive that you were being kept alive against your wishes solely so the GOP could suck up to the “pro-life” vote and win another Senate seat.
Polls show that Americans, by at least a two-to-one margin, disagree with Congress’ intervention in the Schiavo case. Most people also say they would not want to be kept alive through feeding tubes should they end up in a persistent vegetative state. As the AP noted, “CBS reported that 82 percent of those surveyed want President Bush and Congress to stay out of the situation and that 74 percent said Congress was motivated by political considerations, not concern for Schiavo. At the same time, congressional job approval has dropped to its lowest level since 1997, according to the poll.”
These figures are staggering, and in light of them, I’m having a hard time understanding why the Democrats haven’t been more vocal on the Schiavo case. Indeed, Sens. Harry Reid and Tom Harkin helped broker the deal that passed in Congress.
Why the silence? Perhaps the Democrats are fearful of handing the Republicans another “culture war” issue that will be used against them. They needn’t be. The American people simply are not with the Religious Right this time.
Even many conservatives are not just angry, but livid, at Congress for butting in. On March 23, The Washington Times, a far-right daily GOP newsletter posing as a newspaper that is owned by would-be Messiah Sun Myung Moon, ran eight letters to the editor commenting on the Schiavo case. Seven of them blasted Congress for intervening.
I will concede that some “life issues” can be difficult for progressives. Many Americans retain a type of queasiness over the issue of abortion, for example. Many believe a life is being snuffed at its start, and something about that does not sit quite right.
Most women have not had an abortion, and no man ever has, so it can be difficult for many people to get to the place of a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy. They can’t grasp the difficulty that woman is facing and the anguish they may lie behind her choice.
But people can grasp end-of-life issues. Just about all of us have been there. We’ve seen grandparents, parents, other family members and friends die. We’ve watched some of them linger a state between life and death. We have faced the agonizing choices presented by that dilemma. (And a part of us knows it could happen to us. We are always just one accident away from ending up like Schiavo.)
A family facing these difficult decisions knows instinctively that the last thing they want is interference by outsiders. They understand that attempts by politicians and religious extremists to impose narrow theologies on them are not only wrong and offensive but infuriating.
Carol Marin, in a powerful March 23 column in the Chicago Sun-Times, reinforces this point in recounting her own family’s gut-wrenching decision to disconnect her father from artificial life support.
My father, years before he became ill, used to half-jokingly, half-seriously say, “Don’t ever let anyone hook me up to some damn machine if I’m too sick to stop it. Step on the hose. Pull the plug.”
If he said it once, he said it a hundred times. The problem was he would never write it down.
In September of 1989, Marin wrote, her father was placed on a ventilator in an intensive-care unit. As his organs began to fail and he suffered strokes, the family pulled together and spoke in one voice.
“His eyes were closed, there was a tube down his throat, and we knew he wanted us, in his not-so-gentle words, to ‘step on the hose.'”
Terri Schiavo has lingered in an unresponsive vegetative state for 15 years. Despite the pronouncements from physician/opportunist Frist (who, by the way, is not a neurologist), she is not going to suddenly snap out of it. The only question that remains is if simple human decency will allow the right thing to be done and for her life to brought to a natural end.
The Religious Right claims that would be “playing God.” Far from it. The right wingers are the ones playing God, using artificial means to extend a life that by rights would have ended a long time ago. Once separated from the feeding tube, God — or natural processes, if you prefer — would bring her life to a close.
As I was writing this post, syndicated columnist Richard Cohen published a piece making many of the same points. (Great minds think alike, I guess.) Cohen, as usual more eloquent that I, noted that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) had challenged the GOP on its hypocrisy, but few others had.
But for me the real loser was the Democratic Party. It showed that it’s almost totally without leadership. If there is a national figure (other than Frank) who stood up and took on the GOP in this matter, his — or her — name does not come to mind. In the Senate, oddly enough, it was Virginia’s John Warner who pointed out that he opposed the bill — and he’s a Republican, for goodness’ sake. The Democrats were nowhere.
Democrats need to stand up for Terri Schiavo and by extension for every American who values the right to make his or her own choices about end-of-life issues — which is pretty much all of us. Republicans may say that the law they passed applies only to Schiavo, but if they can force her to stay alive, they can do it to you too. They can pass a law overriding your “living will.” They can turn your fate over to religious extremists.
Some much of what the Republicans have done about this is so offensive that it’s hard to comprehend the depths of their depravity. Through their insistence on federal intervention, they have exposed themselves as hypocrites. Through their exploitation of this poor woman’s life for partisan gain, they have shown themselves as cruel, evil manipulators who are beneath contempt. There simply are no other words for it.
Watching this drama unfold, I’ve noticed the presence of far-right kooks whose views are so extreme they make Jerry Falwell look like Ho Chi Minh. The Rev. Rob Schenck, a third-tier Religious Right activist and anti-abortion zealot, has led prayer vigils. Bo Gritz, a militia fanatic, was hauled away for trespassing at the hospice where Schiavo stays.
When my time comes, these people and those who follow them are the last ones I want anywhere near my hospital bed. The vast majority of Americans would say the same.
The Religious Right has made it clear that it wants to run our lives from the moment of conception until death — and they will determine when the latter will be, based on either their bizarre interpretation of ancient religious texts or papal pronouncements. The American people strongly disagree. What will it take for the Democrats to speak up?