Terri Schiavo’s parents, the Schindlers, are continuing their desperate fight to save their daughter’s life. This is a current Schindlers’ List, but there is only one name on it. As the vigil and the appeals continue, here are just a few more scattered observations.
First, as Thomas Sowell observed, this whole fiasco shows exactly how the “right to die” rhetoric so easily morphs into the “right to kill.” In all the debates over the right to die, how many times have we heard about safeguards, and the need for a living will, and so on? And where were these safeguards in this instance? Did Terri have a living will? No. How do we know that this was her desire? On the hearsay testimony of an interested party, a husband who is living with his mistress, having had two children by her, and who received a large cash settlement in order to take care of Terri Schiavo. The whole thing mystifies. Michael Schiavo does not need to kill her in order to be a jerk. He could divorce her and do that. Michael Schiavo taunted the president the other day by asking him what color Terri’s eyes were. I am sure the president does not know, as most of those protesting on behalf of Terri’s life do not. But neither do we know the color of his concubine’s eyes. It is, as they say, beside the point.
Second, as I have already noted, food is not medicine. Yes, someone might answer, but the food is being administered to her. She cannot feed herself. Exactly, and note where this logic takes you. Babies cannot feed themselves either. There is nothing here that cannot serve equally well as an argument for starving an unacceptable infant. And if what constitutes “acceptable” or “unacceptable” is to be waved off as an “intensely private issue,” just know that you have opened the door to starving people because they have Downs, a club foot, or simply because she is a daughter and not a son.
Third, in this day of medical technologies that can help your body do all sorts of things, a living will is a good idea. But that living will ought to be put together with the help of Christian doctors and attorneys who know, honor, and respect the law of God. These are difficult questions, but to allow ethical relativists and hemlockers into the debate turns the difficult questions into impossible questions. For Christians, a good place to start in working through issues of this nature is John Frame’s very helpful book, Medical Ethics. But in short, that living will may not include things like “do not feed,” or “do not give water.”
We have to sort through these things with biblical wisdom, a common law approach, and a recognition that no two situations are identical. But in every situation, we are not God, and in every situation, those making the decisions have an obligation to recognize that God’s law is to be honored as above all human authority. With that in mind, if a ninety-year-old man discovers that he has some form of inoperable cancer, and will die in six months, but that for $700,000 his life can be extended for three additional excruciating months, it is no sin for him to choose to go home to die. And if parents of a newborn refuse to put a baby on a ventilator for three days because they wanted a boy, they are guilty of murder.
Human life does not provide the standard. We must recognize God as God, and honor His law as the standard. This is the trap that many pro-lifers have fallen into, talking about the sanctity of human life. We ought to have been talking about the sanctity of God’s law, and the consequent dignity of human life. If human life is sacred, then human life is the standard. But if God’s law is the standard, then we must give ourselves to the study of it. We must do this because we are living in difficult times. We are living in a time when an attorney for a man like Michael Schiavo can get in front of the cameras and compare the actions of the U.S. Congress in this to the actions of Stalin — and he is not immediately laughed off the public stage. Stalin, the man who starved millions in the Ukraine? Congress, for trying to prevent one starvation, is likened to one of history’s great starvation masters? George Orwell, call your office.
But the pundits nod sagely, and end their television segment by saying that this is a difficult debate. Huh. There is nothing difficult about it. If Michael Schiavo’s attorney got on camera and compared Typhoid Mary to Florence Nightengale, that wouldn’t make it a complexity.