As I write this, it looks as though all legal options are exhausted in the fight for Terri Schiavo’s life. It also looks like the option of intervention by Gov. Bush is extremely unlikely. If Gov. Bush had decided to send in the National Guard, it would have been a constitutional exercise of a governor’s authority, in my view, and would have been a healthy rebuke to a judiciary that is frankly out of control. It also would have corresponded nicely with John Calvin’s doctrine of civil resistance through the “lesser magistrates.” But it appears that this ghastly starvation is going to go through, and that Terri Schiavo is going to die in a manner that would be rejected out of hand as inhumane if someone decided to dispatch unwanted dogs at the pound in this way.
What should our reaction be? I agree fully with The Banty Rooster that our response ought not to be railing and vituperation against those who did not do enough (in our view) to save Terri Schiavo’s life. At the same time, our desire should be to learn the right lessons from this event.
Just as the homosexual marriage thing blew up in the face of the blue staters, so might this. We are probably coming up on a series of Bush nominations to the Supreme Court. This is another example of the hemlockers and the death lobby over-reaching at exactly the wrong time. Just before we are about to begin the inevitable battles in the Senate over high court nominees, the national Intoleristas have arranged to starve a woman to death, at the order of our courts, in line with the wishes of her unspeakable husband, with the entire nation looking on.
If Terri Schiavo starves, then there is only one appropriate response. And that is that every Christian who cares about what is happening to our nation should insist that every nominee to the high court, from this point out, must be Scalia on steroids. And by “insist,” I am not referring to lobbying efforts, but rather to the prayers of the saints, lifted up in public worship on the Lord’s Day. This is necessary because Bush is capable of going wobbly on issues like this one. He might appoint an honest man to the court, and he might fight for the appointee. But, let it also be said, he might not. But for those of us who have seen the tyranny of the courts in this instance, no one will do unless they are a crawl-over-broken-glass pro-lifer. We are opposed to any nominee who does not include in his introductory remarks before the Senate confirmation hearings something like, “May God damn Roe v. Wade.” The culture of death is not content with killing children in utero. They always insist on more. Death and destruction are never satisfied; their maw always opens wider (Prov. 27:20).