Circling the Drain
The Mainstream Media is presently (temporarily) consumed with the Terri Schiavo case -- a development I would otherwise greet with skepticism save that I'm ecstatic over the fact that something (dear god, anything!) has come along to whisk the attention away from the uber-creepy Michael Jackson trial.
Except that this brief shift in the attention of the Media Beast has led to its pitiless focus upon an even creepier Michael Schiavo and his quest to legally kill his wife . . .
*shudder*
But what appears on the surface to be a simple issue of life, death and the love of a family for their daughter/sibling is actually a minefield of custodial rights and guardianship issues, domestic dispute regulations and state vs. federal law. Mary Cheh, a law professor at George Washington University, stated today in an interview with the Washington Post, "If I were the judge who got assigned to this (case) by the computer, I'd flee the country."
With Terri Schiavo as both the plaintiff and the defendant, represented for the last fifteen years by her parents as plaintiff and by her husband as defendant, the situation is thorny, to say the least.
The issue is currently being debated before yet another Federal Judge, the seventeenth judge to hear this case, while all the while the Mainstream Press trumpets that the majority of Americans believe that Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die (really? -- a majority?) and the Republican representatives in Congress and the Senate are fighting to keep Terri alive, claiming that it's important to "err on the side of life" and criticizing their Democratic counterparts for falling too easily into what they believe to be a culture of death.
There have been 23 appeals in this case already, and yet they're still fighting it out, each side desperately appealing to public opinion through the miracle of 24 hour cable news coverage.
I think I'd flee the country, too.
ADDENDUM:
I find it odd that judges and attorneys, in some strange and archaic way of viewing death and dying, speak as if their rulings and arguments have no personal bearing upon the potential death of Terri Shiavo, when, genuinely, every word in this case is about personal bearing as the woman either lives or dies by the rulings of the legal system.
Any doctor who testifies that she's "better off dead," any attorney who argues that her husband has the legal right to order the removal of the feeding tube, and any judge who rules that the Federal Courts have no jurisdiction over the State Courts and that Terri Shiavo's family cannot take her home and personally care for her themselves . . . each one of them holds personal responsibility for the woman's death.
You cannot remove life support and then claim that a person died on her own. That's an impossible argument to make in a technological age.
I'm just sayin' . . .
Comments
Just cruised by from various parts of the interweb and I thought I'd drop off some input about how I view responsibility.
Your statement that every person involved in the defendant's case (that is, those who testify for, advocate, and judge in the direction of allowing Mrs. Schiavo to die) are not responsible fore her death, in my opinion. Rather, the responsibility lies solely with those responsible for her life by the mandate of current laws, in this case, Terri's husband. The justice system, on the other hand, has a responsibility to the rest of the country to see the case out in a way that leaves case law the most beneficial, the most just and the most in keeping with upright American values and understandings of human rights.
Which is why I say that any judge who ruled in favor of government intervention in the Schiavo family's drama has let down the rest of the country. In a way, we are all responsible for her death, since we all subscribe to the social contract that has agreed to let our society be run the way it's being run. So to accuse those on the side of the staus quo of being responsible for her death, and implying that they are wrong for doing so seems irresponsible to me.
Also, Terri died by her own actions, by her own irresponsible actions. Her body gave up the ghost 15 years ago, we kept her alive until her husband determined it was no longer appropriate to do so, at which point someone decided she still had the right to life. Sorry, but whatever Power you want to belive in gave up on Terri a decade ago, we're the ones who have been interfering. As far as I'm personally concerned, anyone breathing in that situation is living on borrowed time anyway.
Such a sticky issue.
Posted by: Gerritt | April 21, 2005 1:00 PM