In a rare move, Congress voted, and the President signed, a bill ordering a federal review of the Terri Schiavo ‘Right to Die’ case. Terri’s father, Bob Schindler, who along with his wife, and Teri’s siblings, have fought to keep the brain dead woman on a feeding tube, said Sunday night after President Bush signed the review bill, “All we’re trying to do is get her a fair trial.”
No, you are trying to get a court to decide your way.
In the last 7 years, despite the efforts of Governor Jeb Bush, President Bush’s brother, and the Florida legislature to side with Teri’s family, Florida courts have found no cause to allow Teri’s parents to take over as her guardian, have ruled several times that the feeding tube can be removed, and have declared Florida’s ‘Terri Law’ unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court, twice, has rejected hearing the case.
I won’t presume to second guess the courts, as I have not reviewed the documents submitted and arguments presented.
I would dare not even consider that Terri’s parents are wrong in their unwavering pursuit to put Terri back on a feeding tube and bring her to their home to care for her.
I find no reason that I am qualified to question the purity or impurity of Terri’s husband’s desire to have his wife removed from the feeding tube.
But this political intervention raises concerns …
1. Would President Bush have intervened for any other Governor that wasn’t his baby brother?
2. Did Congressional members not in favor of the legislation stay silent and absent from the Congressional floor because the legislation only applies to Schiavo, preferring to naively pretend that once this door opened, it’s not easier to open it a second, and a third, and a … time?
“Tonight we have given Terri Schiavo all we could — a chance to live,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “After four days of words, the best of them uttered in prayer, Congress has acted and a life may have been saved.”
3. Why doesn’t Congress intervene in every capital punishment case, ensuring at least DNA testing for those who may have been wrongfully convicted? Congress does have federal jurisdiction over these matters. Indisputable evidence that death row includes innocents exists.
4. Why did some members of Congress who supported the ‘Palm Sunday Compromise’ argue Terri is not in a vegetative state, and death by dehydration is inhumane and painful.
- Skipping that hundreds of doctors who have examined Terri say she is in a vegetative state, according to Terri’s husband and unrefuted by her parents, none of the latter’s doctors who disagree that she is in a vegetative state have ever examined Terri.
- Court documents contain doctor affidavits that the vortex area of Terri’s brain, which would allow her to feel pain, does not operate.
5. If this is all about humanity, why did Republicans distribute a ‘talking points memo’ that called the Schiavo legislation a ‘great political issue’ and remind their party members that “the pro-life base will be excited.”?
6. As Representative John Conyers (D-MI) queried, ‘if President Bush really cared about the issue of the removal of feeding tubes, why as Governor of Texas, did he sign a bill that allows hospitals to save money by removing feeding tubes over a family’s objection?”
An ABC Poll conducted overnight showed 60% of Americans opposed the actions of the President and Congress in this matter. Who knows how reliable that figure is since few of us know anyone who has ever been polled. However, it raises the greatest concern of all … how many of us, whichever side of the issue we represent, voiced our position to Congress, and not just each other? How often do we remember the Declaration of Independence, even though it did not originally apply to African-Americans until slavery was banned, says ‘We the People’ and not ‘We the Government?’
The most horrendous acts occur when our silence constitutes complicity.
