by Alexandra Rosato
By the time you read this, Terri Schiavo may be dead. There is no good reason why she should be made dead, especially under conditions that would appall us if she were in San Quentin, Guantanamo, or the local animal shelter. But all the prayers, petitions and rallies of the righteous cannot force the hand of Justice to bestow upon Terri the liberty to refrain from dying. There is no stopping Justice once she dons her black robe and bellows forth from the bench. The woman must die. After all it is her right and to what end do we provide Justice with a gavel if not to enforce the due protection of rights?
We have been bombarded with commentary this week offering all manner of evidence with which to convince some judge that Terri should not be sentenced to death. If only there were an MRI or what about Michael Schiavo's adultery and maybe if the Supreme Court could hear the case* Objection, your honor: irrelevant. Sustained.
What is relevant is that Terri Schiavo is most obviously and obstinately human. Prior to the removal of her feeding tube, she was not terminally ill or suffering pain. In fact, her medical malpractice judgment was based on a life-expectancy of seventy-some years. Terri Schiavo's great crime is that she has ceased to be useful. And frankly, she makes us squirm with the thought of our own mortality. But do we really want to argue - as the courts have in this case - that constitutional protection of our most fundamental rights be accorded only those who demonstrate some contribution to the public good?
Senator Steven Douglas, when he debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858, in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, argued for slavery on the very same principle. "You and I are bound to extend to our inferior and dependent beings every right, every privilege, every facility and immunity consistent with the public good. The question then arises, 'What rights and privileges are consistent with the public good?'"
Senator Douglas answered that it was consistent with the public good for certain people - presumably the superior and independent - to put other human beings in chains. And Judge Greer has answered that it is consistent with the public good for certain people to put other human beings to death.
The opinions of judges are the opinions of men. They are fallible.
Let us not be too enamored by the costumes and accouterments of their office to recognize when they have usurped their authority.
When we place the state in a position of determining the criteria for the protection of the fundamental right to life and liberty, we essentially become wards of that state. And so we ought not to be surprised when the state comes to retrieve its own.
In 1945, Pastor Martin Niemoller said as much: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up."
Last night Michael Savage said that we - the whole lot of us - have become the good Germans. I know whereof he speaks because my grandfather was a good German. He did whatever it was that men had to do to put food on the table in 1943 and occasionally wrote from the front that the war would soon be over and life would return to normal.
He never made it home because ultimately not even good Germans can be spared from the destructive consequences of bad ideas.
I don't think the comparisons with some of the darkest days in our nation's history are overstated. Court-sanctioned murder of the innocent has always been an exceptionally bad idea.
So - as a favorite teacher of mine always says - what's the point? It is that we must continue to think on these things even after the crisis of Terri Schiavo ends with her death. Let us not sleep through this dark day.
Those who would uphold the dignity to live - even in a condition that is not deemed worthy by the court - must examine where and why we have lost one battle after another for the protection of the most basic of human rights. Are we prepared to articulate why human beings are deserving of protection apart from their size, location and mental acuity? Are we willing to commit the greatest of intolerances in the contemporary marketplace of ideas and assert that Terri Schiavo is worth fighting for simply because as a human being she bears the image of God? These are simple, unsophisticated notions. We should not pretend that they carry any weight in the courts of men today. But this does not discharge us from the responsibility to be advocates for the weak and defenseless.Terri Schiavo's appeal does not end at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Deliver those who are drawn toward death. And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, 'Surely we did not know this,'does not He who weighs the heart consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds? (Proverbs 24:11-12).
Alexandra Rosato
arosato@tiu.edu
Trinity Law School
March 24, 2005
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