Life and Death

Just because we CAN do some things, Bush, doesn't mean we SHOULD do them. I'm talking, today, about the unfortunate Terri Schiavo, down in her Florida hospice, where she has lain incapacitated since 1990. That's fifteen years, Bush. Fifteen. In a completely unchanged, vegetative state. Thank God they have now removed the tube that was the only thing keeping her alive. I hope fervently that she will now finally be allowed the dignity to die.

Yesterday, for a while, it seemed not. After all the legal battles and the personal recriminations, Congress got its nasty hands on the case, and was requesting her appearance later this month so that congressmen, presumably, in their wisdom, could "hear" her plea and decide for themselves whether or not the poor woman had the right to die. What arrogance! Their decision, it seemed, was to protect her, as Senate Majority leader Dr. Bill Frist pompously announced, "from anyone who may obstruct or impede a witness' attendance or testimony"--and therefore from the intention of her husband and her doctors, supported by countless judicial opinions, to allow her to finally die in peace.

As if your brother Jeb had not already meddled enough, Bush, you felt obliged to step in with a statement of your own, suggesting that "where there are serious questions and substantial doubts"--after fifteen years? Substantial doubts?--"our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

My judgment: this was pure pandering on your part, Bush. Only the most fervent religious ideologue could want to protract the life of a woman who only a few years ago could not have been saved by all the medical skills in the world. I know they're out there, these ideologues. There's a bunch of them still standing and praying in front of Schiavo's hospice. There's obviously a bunch of them in the congress, too. You might ask what business it is of mine, and I concede that it really is none of my business. But is it then the business of those pious prayer-offerers who presume to speak for God? Or of those upstanding, righteous men in Congress? Men like your Delay, whose ethics are hardly a model for the rest of us.

We need to be able to live with tragedy, Bush. We need to learn to accept it as a part of our human experience. Even by the standards of your Christian rightists, is not death a part of God's plan? There comes a point, surely, after fifteen years, where it's clear that it's man, in this case, who is thwarting that infinite wisdom with his arrogant pride--and not the other way around. If it were me lying there in Terri Schiavo's bed, and if I were able utter the slightest sound, I'd be screaming with rage at those people standing between me and the death that I deserved, and so earnestly desired.

So call off your self-righteous dogs, Bush. For God's sake, since you believe in him and, presumably, his wisdom and his mercy, quit pandering to those merciless meddlers, puffed up with their own religiosity. Say something wise and merciful yourself. Show us all what it means to exercise true compassion.