JANE EISNER Forcing one definition of human life on us all

When members of Congress and the president raced back to Washington over the weekend to intervene in the heart-wrenching case of Terri Schiavo, they inserted themselves into a controversial agenda that seeks to preserve life at any cost, regardless of science or circumstance.
This is not the first time these particular elected officials have done this. They are seeking to define life as something that starts earlier and must hold on longer than tradition has dictated. In this, they are taking advantage of advanced technology that keeps alive the severely brain-impaired and personalizes the fetus.
This extreme position may be an inevitable response to our modern, medical ability to extend life, in all directions. But it also radically intrudes on the right of individuals to exert moral jurisdiction over their own lives.
There is disagreement, even within the oldest faith traditions, on when "life" begins, when the fetus' right to be born trumps the mother's right to decide whether and how to live, when ensoulment occurs and that mass of cells is developed enough to be called human.
Perhaps that is why we have long considered "life" to begin at the moment of birth. When the lungs spring into action and the umbilical cord is cut is the sharpest, clearest illustration of independent existence, and much in our social structure is based on that definition.
We may mourn when a fetus' journey through pregnancy is prematurely ended, either intentionally or by awful chance, but "birthday" still means the "day of birth."
Embryonic cells
Modern science has let us see the heretofore unseeable -- the fetus floating in the womb -- and conduct experiments on embryonic cells at their earliest stages. That allows us to do what we self-centered humans do: assume as human something that isn't.
So the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, signed into law last year, makes it a crime to harm or kill a fetus in the act of harming or killing the mother. The act is called not just "Laci's Law," for the pregnant Laci Peterson, who was killed by her husband. It's called "Laci and Conner's Law." The latter name was what the Petersons reportedly planned to use had a child been born. We're naming and therefore humanizing things not yet alive -- naming them not only in our hearts and speech, but also in our laws.
Now the same is being done by Terri Schiavo's parents and their legion of supporters. Even though court-appointed physicians testified her brain damage was so severe that there was no hope she would ever have any cognitive abilities, Florida passed "Terri's Law" to prevent the removal of the feeding tube keeping her alive. "Terri's Law" was an attempt -- rightly struck down as unconstitutional -- to define life rigidly by humanizing someone who has not been conscious in any traditional or meaningful sense for 15 long years.
Understandably, her parents have trouble letting go, letting their daughter slowly die, letting go of even the slimmest hope that she someday will recover something. I can't blame them for trying. Who among us would wish to walk in their shoes?
Wrenching issues
But our legal system exists to decide such wrenching issues. The law says that husband and legal guardian Michael Schiavo gets to decide, and the state courts have ruled repeatedly in his favor. It might have been simpler years ago had he relinquished legal guardianship to his estranged in-laws, but he believed he was doing what his wife wanted. I'm not going to pretend I can walk in his shoes, either.
The problem with the new, rigid definition of "life" is that it idealizes life and ignores the reality of death. It ignores the fact that we choose, every day, to count the costs of caring for the living in social policy that privileges some needs over others.
By usurping individual and state prerogative to intervene in this case, federal officials are trying to force their particular definition of "life" on all others. In a nation that prizes thoughtful self-determination, I don't know who gave them that right.
X Jane R. Eisner is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.