Infringing on the right to life?
As this column goes to press, Terri Schiavo is dead, having been starved to death. Her life has been taken from her in a most inhumane way, worse than we would allow for an animal or even a convicted criminal on death row. In the end, the courts spurned the will of the people as spoken through their elected representatives. Beyond a cursory nod of approval or grimace of disapproval, what does her case really mean to us?
First of all, we should be outraged. Terri has been used as the sacrificial lamb for the right-to-die movement from the beginning, and her fate was sealed almost before her case even began to be heard.
The suppression of facts in this case by the mainstream media is astronomical. Few people are aware that Terri was never definitively diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Such a diagnosis would require magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which was refused by her husband.
The doctor that made the diagnosis of PVS, Dr. Ronald Cranford of none other than our very own University of Minnesota, is one of the most outspoken advocates of the right-to-die movement in the nation. He is on the record as advocating the starvation of Alzheimer’s patients. He appears to believe that people in PVS are no different from animals, and have no rights. Terri Schiavo was not his first victim; Paul Brophy, Nancy Jobes, Nancy Cruzan, and Christina Busalucci were all brain-damaged but not dying, and Dr. Cranford recommended that all be denied hydration and nutrition.
What makes Terri different from Dr. Cranford’s other patients is that her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, refused to accept this diagnosis from an obviously biased doctor clearly bent on advancing his own agenda. The Schindlers had over 30 affidavits from doctors, almost half of them from board-certified neurologists (some are even fellows of the American Academy of Neurology), who maintained that Terri should have been reevaluated.
Why did Terri’s parents so adamantly fight for her life? Because she was not on life support. She only had need of a feeding tube for nutrition and hydration. This was not extraordinary medical treatment. She was healthy and was able to respond to people and things around her.
You can see Terri yourself on video at the Schindler’s website, terrisfight.org. Before this battle began, she was making outings to the mall in her wheelchair and eating Popsicles and Jell-O. Was she severely brain-damaged? Of course. Did she lose some of her humanity or soul when she suffered the brain injury? Not at all.
We should be outraged. Terri’s husband, Michael Schiavo, had total control over her, and not in a loving, husband-like manner. His claim that Terri would want to die was first brought forward after he won a million dollar malpractice suit, seven years after her collapse. He has gone on to nearly exhaust the funds—intended for her rehabilitation—on legal expenses resulting from his drive to see her dead.
Not only did he refuse the MRI (which could have complicated his plan to kill her if a contrary diagnosis was made), but he reportedly also stopped all therapy, denied her parents visitation rights, denied her the sacraments or visits from her priest, failed to have her wheelchair repaired, and neglected her daily care to the point that her teeth rotted and had to be extracted and she suffered bedsores. He kept her isolated in her room with the blinds closed.
These years of neglect caused Terri’s muscles to suffer contractures. Michael Schiavo refused to turn over custodial rights to her parents, even when they made an eleventh hour offer to not press charges but simply take Terri home and care for her at their own expense. Why? There are allegations that he physically abused Terri during their marriage, and may have been responsible for her brain trauma. A dead witness is a silent witness.
After the anger subsides, we should reflect on the bigger picture of how this touches us. Our nation has already embraced a culture of death mentality in regards to the unborn. The effects on the “quality of life” of the mother or the unborn child are considered to be of greater importance than the sanctity of human life. Now this deadly mindset is making inroads into other areas of our society, targeting the weak and disabled. This is the same ideology that Hitler and his Nazis promoted: That the lives of the frail and unproductive are without value, but in Hitler’s time our country rose up, strong and valiant, and crushed his philosophy. It is a fast and slippery slope once the floodgates open to legislating death, especially from the judicial bench. We need to rise up again and make our voices heard.
“This is all well and good,” you may be thinking, “but I would never want to be in her place and I hope they just put me out of my misery if I am.” We can safely assume that no one would welcome such a fate as Terri’s, but at the same time we need to recognize that this fact has no bearing on the value of such a life.
Consciousness versus unconsciousness does not determine whether or not we are human. Each and every human life is sacred, whether in the womb, conscious, unconscious, healthy, unhealthy, old or young. It is sacred because we are made in the image and likeness of God, and it is God alone who created us and who has sole authority to end our lives. We belong to Him. The idea of “quality of life” is of secular origin, not finding support in the wise and holy teachings of the Catholic Church. We were created for greater things than our “quality of life.” Decades of suffering on earth—though difficult and immensely trying—pale in the grand view of eternity
We cannot, from our vantage point here on earth, fathom the Divine Wisdom behind the great trials many people experience. It may be that their agonies gain graces for all of humanity. Recently experiencing Holy Week, the most solemn of times in the Liturgical Year, we saw the profound value of suffering and the true meaning of life: To gain heaven. Christ willingly embraced the Cross to gain heaven for us: We have to place ourselves in the steps of Simon the Cyrenian and take up our crosses (and Terri’s cross, to be a voice for her and those others who have no voice)—no matter how heavy—and follow Him.
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