Saturday, March 19, 2005
The very same congressmen who claim that the sanctity of marriage would be diminished if gays were allowed to marry has now taken the extraordinary step of trying to strip a husband of his right to make medical decisions regarding his wife's care.
The same congressmen who would cut the food stamp or school lunch programs, demand that a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years be force-fed and kept alive for perhaps another 40 years at a cost that would feed hundreds of poor children.
The same congressmen who maintain that medical malpractice awards must be capped at $250,000 to avoid bankrupting the nation, are willing to spend millions to maintain a woman in a vegetative state, knowing that only a miracle could give her a normal life.
Lacking consistency
How does one explain such incongruity? The most charitable explanation is that Congress has been caught up in the human drama of the Terri Schiavo case, a case in which her parents are unable to let go and in which their supporters are perfectly willing to demonize the husband who says his wife did not want to live in a body over which she has no control.
The less charitable reading would be that a majority of Congress is captive to a conservative religious philosophy that is far outside the American mainstream.
The vast majority of Americans, given the choice between decades of being totally dependent on caregivers, unable to move, eat, drink or communicate in any meaningful way, would choose death. Most people, given the choice of death, or binding their spouse, parents, siblings and children to a life that revolved around their maintenance, would choose death.
Why is it so difficult for those keeping a vigil outside Terri Schiavo's hospice center -- or for those in Congress or the Florida legislature who would pass laws to make themselves her guardian -- to accept that Michael Schiavo is telling the truth when he says that his wife did not want to live the life she is living?
A Congress that truly believed what its members preach would leave Michael and Terri Schiavo alone.