March
22, 2005
Life and Other Disputed Questions
By
William Murchison
There
is -- yes -- a certain wackiness to the Terri Schiavo proceedings.
How often does the president of the United States fly to
Washington, D.C. to sign a bill prolonging the life of one
woman?
We
can't wonder, nevertheless, that it has come to this. Our
culture is loudly, messily working out its views on human
life, which are not the same views we entertained as recently
as 50 years ago.
Our
views back then were largely formed by a sense of religious
duty or, at any rate, religious precedent. God had given
life to mankind. It was no trifling gift. Neither war, nor
disease, nor capital punishment essentially modified the
view of life as a possession to be cherished and shielded.
That was before Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court's announcement
of a previously unsuspected right to abort a pregnancy.
The court told us life had just become a choice. Well, to
some extent it had. We could not gun down anyone we wanted
to just because we wanted to, but a woman, if she wanted,
could expel life from her body. It seemed there were exceptions
to life's preciousness. Within limits, the individual could
determine for himself how precious, or the reverse, a particular
life had become.
It
is interesting, in a lugubrious way, to see how thinking
has evolved in this matter. We're surely not surprised that
it evolved. Give "choice" to one and someone else will ask:
"What about me, too?" That is the question Terri Schiavo's
husband appears to have asked. What about my right
to decide when life isn't worth living, consonant with my
own insights and understandings?
No
doubt those who haven't walked in the shoes of someone long
deprived of meaningful life with a spouse should be careful
in distributing condemnations. Michael Schiavo may be a
brute, or he may not be. I wonder if it isn't less useful
to examine the man's character than to scrutinize his attempt
at radical extension of the Roe principle. Michael Schiavo
wants to judge. He instructs us all, in essence: Leave me
alone to judge; it's my affair, not yours.
That's
the Roe principle at work, and a good old secular, non-theological
principle it is. The Roe principle says to everyone from
your congressman down to your in-laws: Shut up, don't bother
me; I'm in charge here. Small wonder Michael Schiavo
raged at Congress' and the president's intervention in what
he took to be his personal affair.
The
Roe principle is intensely me-centered. If I want, I can
admit God to my deliberations; and, if I don't want, you
can't make me. The only trouble is the Roe principle, 32
years after the Roe decision, provides no sure basis for
comfort. The way we come to understand a principle is watching
it at work -- like now, in the Schiavo case. A woman who
may not -- but also may -- be capable of recovery is threatened
by the courts with death. There is no presumption to which
her life is entitled? None at all? It is possible (under
Roe) to answer yes. But to answer without some uneasiness?
That would seem another matter entirely.
This
same uneasiness about how we judge life was on exhibit at
the Scott Peterson trial -- provided we had nothing better
to do than watch the Scott Peterson trial. California had
charged the husband with the murder not just of the wife,
Laci, but also of the couple's 8-month-old unborn son. Some
probably find this circumstance odd: You mean, like, the
mom can abort, but the dad (so to speak) can't? Why?
Perhaps,
in part, because of that uneasy feeling in so many stomachs
-- the intuition that life, in all its wonder, is a matter
best left, not to private opinion, but to the conscientious
oversight of the larger society. That society's present
uneasiness over Terri Schiavo must be counted a profoundly
healthy development.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
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