Thoughts on the Terri Schiavo Case - April 2005
With all of the commotion and political absurdity it generated, the Terri Schiavo case
served as an apt commentary on the current Republican leadership and their fanatical
“cult-of-life” supporters. It revealed their hypocrisy, disregard of the law,
and lack of understanding of how our system of government works in such an obvious way
that even much of the short-attention-span segment of the American public saw it, and got
it. As with most things of this sort, Bill’s brain has spent some time musing on the
whole sordid situation, and has some thoughts to share.
Help, I’ve Got Tape on my
Mouth!
First of all, what’s up with the protesters putting tape that says “LIFE”
on their mouths? What exactly are they trying to say? That they have life on their lips?
That life is sticky and prevents them from talking? One thing is for sure, they must not
have much respect for life if they'll just slap it on their faces like that. One reporter
asked a protester what it meant, but all they were able to say was “Mmllf mungr
ergins ngle grtm.” Well, I guess that made the point loud and clear!
Fear of Heaven
Why is it that the right-wing religious folks who claim to believe in Heaven, a wonderful
perfect place where they will be with their Lord after they die, are the ones who work
most fervently to prevent terminally ill people from going there? You’d think
they’d be the first ones to say “Let them leave the suffering of the body behind
and go to a better place where they won’t be crippled any more. Let them join their
Lord and find peace.” But oh no, that doesn’t happen. Do they not really believe
what they claim to believe? After all, if you really believed Heaven was so great, why
would you be so adamantly against letting someone as crippled as Terri Schiavo go there?
Treating People Worse Than Dogs
Why is it that if my dog is terminally ill and cannot be healed a veterinarian can put her
to sleep in a quick, painless, peaceful manner, yet when Terri Schiavo is terminally ill
and cannot be healed she has to endure weeks of slowly dehydrating and starving to death?
We have the ability to make her transition from life to death a painless five-minute
process, yet we won’t do it. We force her to endure two weeks of suffering. Think
about how messed up that is, and what it says about our society. How would you feel if
your dog (or cat) was sick, you took them to the vet, and the vet told you that they
couldn’t be healed so you should stop feeding them and watch them slowly starve to
death. You’d be outraged. You’d say it was animal cruelty. Yet this is the same
“human cruelty” that our society forces thousands of people and their families
to endure every year. Why does our society have such compassion for pets, for animals, but
not for our fellow human beings? Medical science cannot always extend life, but it can
always alleviate suffering. We should value and respect our fellow human beings enough to
give them that option, that kindness, that compassion, when they reach the end of their
lives.
Does Anyone Here Know How Our
Government Works? Anyone?
One thing that amazed me throughout the whole Schiavo ordeal was the number of pro-life
protesters and commentators who apparently slept through their high school civics classes.
Time and time again I heard them criticizing the judges involved when the judges
accurately and consistently interpreted the laws that governed the situation. For these
folks, who apparently missed the whole discussion about the functions of the three
branches of government, separation of powers, checks and balances, and all that, I hereby
present the following News Flash as a public service:
NEWS FLASH: Judges don’t make the law, the legislature does! That’s why
Congress is called the Legislative branch, because they legislate. (That’s
just a fancy word for “make laws.”) So, if you’re unhappy about the fact
that the law says a husband can act on his wife’s wishes and have her feeding tube
removed against the wishes of her family, DON’T BLAME THE JUDGES, THE JUDGES
DIDN’T MAKE THE LAW!
Furthermore, some of these
right-wing cult-of-life folks seemed to get really upset about the fact that the judges in
the case interpreted the law. To those people I say: Well DUH! Judges are supposed to
interpret the law, that’s what they do, it’s their job. That’s exactly the
way our system is designed to work. (Geez, pay attention, will ya?)
For more on this, please see this Bill's Brain Public Service Announcement.
Activist Judges: Good or Bad?
Did anyone else notice the irony and hypocrisy of the fact that the right-wing
crowd, who had been roundly denouncing “activist judges” for months before they
made Terri Schiavo the center ring in their circus, were suddenly clamoring for an
“activist judge” to take on the Schiavo case and “legislate from the
bench” by reversing dozens of previous legal decisions? I have to say, these folks
may change their “morals” and “values” on a daily basis depending on
the circumstances, but there is one thing about them that’s consistent and
that’s their desire to get their own way no matter what the cost or consequence.
Every Tragedy Deserves a Memo
Of course the Republicans had to figure out how to benefit from the Schiavo tragedy, and
they outlined their strategy in a “talking points” memo containing statements
like “This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the
Senate is debating this important issue,” and “This is a great political issue,
because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a
tough issue for Democrats.” The memo even had an obvious typo and three misspelled
words, one of which was Terri’s name (spelled “Teri”), but hey, what do you
expect, those Republicans never were big on education.
Defending Life! Or Death! Or
Whatever …
As noted in this
article, Bush outdid himself in the hypocrisy department in this case. First he signs
a bill allowing hospitals in Texas to pull the plug on patients when they can’t pay,
and then he grandstands for Terri Schiavo and says he’s “defending life.”
Yea, right George. It’s funny how you forgot to mention how your proposed 2006 budget
eliminated the Traumatic Brain Injury Program that has helped thousands of patients like
Terri Schiavo in 49 states since 1997, or the 13 other programs for the disabled, children
and families that you completely eliminated from your proposed budget. Or the fact that
your budget included major cuts to Medicaid, which helped to pay Terri’s medical
expenses. Or the fact that Michael Schiavo has been using $700,000 he won in a medical
malpractice lawsuit to take care of Terri, but you want to “reform” medical
malpractice lawsuits so that victims will no longer be able to win awards like that.
I wonder, how would Terri have fared over the past 15 years in a world of Bush
policies? With Bush’s proposed cuts in Medicaid and other medical assistance
programs, plus his desired limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, the money to take care
of her would have run out years ago. Thanks to the law Bush signed while governor of
Texas, that would have allowed the hospital to pull the plug on Terri. The fact is that if
Bush had his way, if his policies had been in effect, Terri would have been dead years
ago. And what if Michael had been financially wiped out and buried in debt while trying to
pay for her medical care? Well, Bush and the Republicans in Congress would have made it
extremely difficult, if not impossible, for him to get financial relief by filing
bankruptcy, thanks to the bankruptcy “reform” bill they recently passed. The
truth is that if Bush and his fellow Republicans had been “defending” their
lives, Terri would have been dead and Michael would have been financially devastated long
ago. Do me a favor George, please don’t ever “defend” my life, OK? I’d
prefer not to be killed or financially ruined by politicians who are only looking out for
themselves and their big campaign donors.
More Republican Hypocrisy
And let’s not forget Republican House Crime Leader Tom “The Indicted”
DeLay. He actually said "It won't take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only
take the medical care and therapy that all patients deserve." The medical care and
therapy that all patients deserve, huh? Tom, is that why you supported Bush’s cuts to
all those medical programs? Is that why you oppose Democratic proposals for universal
healthcare as if they’re heresy? DeLay’s apparent concern for maintaining
Terri’s life support seems suspect in light of the fact that he and his family
decided to remove life support from his father in 1988 after he was seriously injured.
Doctors said that Charles DeLay would “basically be a vegetable,” and his wife
said "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that." Of course when asked
about this blatant contradiction, a DeLay spokesman said "The situation faced by the
congressman's family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo's." Uh-huh, entirely
different. Let’s see, a spouse has a mate who’s been seriously brain-damaged in
an accident, they claim that their mate wouldn’t want to live in that condition, so
they decide to remove life support and allow them to die. Gosh, I don’t see a single
thing that’s like the Schiavo case! (Note to DeLay spokesman: I’ve tried to see
this from your point of view, but I just can’t get my head up my ass that far. How do
you do it?)
Disregard of the Law
The Schiavo case also clearly highlighted one of the most dangerous characteristics of the
Bush administration and their cohorts, and that is their willingness to disregard the law
whenever it gets in the way of their agenda. Right from the start in the 2000 election,
when they went to court after court all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to stop
the Florida vote counting and declare themselves the winner, instead of letting the count
proceed as prescribed by state law, they have shown that they think nothing of
disregarding and violating the law, or even the US Constitution, when it prevents them
from getting what they want. This was blatantly obvious in their rush to attack Iraq, a
move which which violated international law as well as the proper process for declaring
war. (Only Congress can declare war, which they didn’t, and Bush didn’t ask them
to. Therefore the US is not “at war,” no matter how many times the
neoconservatives say it is.) Bush also failed to fulfill the requirements of the
resolution that Congress passed authorizing military action against Iraq. The resolution
is clear that military force could be used only after the requirements were met, but Bush
ignored that.
Bush’s disregard of the law has also been painfully obvious in his handling of
“enemy combatants,” where his administration has tried to assert that he has the
authority to arbitrarily declare anyone an enemy combatant, strip them of all legal
rights, deny them the protections of the Geneva Convention, and ship them off to an island
to be imprisoned indefinitely (and as we have learned, be tortured). This is the type of
tyrannical and unlawful behavior we would expect from someone like Saddam Hussein, but it
is being done by the president of the United States. The US Constitution does not give the
Executive branch of government this authority, and for Bush to claim that he has that
authority as commander in chief at a time when the US is not at war (as I’ve noted,
Congress has not declared war) is an absurd abuse of the Constitution and an Executive
branch power grab that should deeply concern all Americans. Remember, this is the
president who said it would be easier to have a dictatorship (as long as he was the
dictator), and when push comes to shove he’s shown that he behaves much more like a
dictator than the president of a democracy.
Other examples of Bush/Republican disregard for the law include the propaganda
“news” videos which the administration produced using taxpayer money and
distributed to television stations, to be shown as if they were legitimate news reports.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated the videos and found that they
violated two federal laws. The Bush administration’s response? They circulated a memo
telling everyone involved to ignore the GAO finding and continue producing the videos.
Laws? We don’t need no stinkin’ laws, we’ll do whatever we want!
Ultimately this comes down to a value decision about which is more important, carrying out
a political agenda or following the rule of law, and I’ve noticed that it’s the
Bush administration and their supporters who consistently seem to have no problem
disregarding the law or trying to change the rules whenever they prevent them from getting
what they want. Remember how, after the House Ethics Committee admonished Tom DeLay three
times for unethical conduct and there was the possibility that he would be indicted by a
grand jury, the Republicans on the House Ethics Committee changed the rules to allow
indicted members to continue to hold leadership posts? (If you get caught doing illegal
things don't clean up your act, just change the rules!) When too many people protested the
change the Republicans reversed it in order to limit the political backlash. Of course
shortly thereafter House Republicans changed Ethics Committee rules again so that no
ethics investigations would go forward if there was a tie on the committee (an equal
number of votes for and against an investigation). Of course the committee is made up of
half Republicans and half Democrats, so now Republicans can just all vote together and
block the investigation of any of their party members. Nice huh? I honestly don’t see
how anyone in their right mind, anyone who wants to do what's best for America, can
support these slimeballs.
And so it was once again with the Terri Schiavo case, where the law took a back seat to
the Republicans’ desire for political gain. Judge after judge had ruled in a manner
consistent with applicable law but that didn’t give Bush and his cohorts what they
wanted, so they stepped in and tried to change the rules. It wasn’t surprising. Sad,
but not surprising. |
