Terri Schiavo and our Brave New World

After 13 days without food or water, Terri Schiavo passed away this morning.

Just yesterday, via Bob Tarantino, I came across this Village Voice column by Nat Hentoff, one of the few columnists left in America not blindly beholden to the Democratic or Republican parties. Hentoff, an atheist and civil libertarian, called Schiavo's dehydration "the longest public execution in American history".

There's too much in the column to cite, and I ask you to read the whole thing. I also think Jay Nordlinger best captured my feelings about this whole matter in his NRO column:

Mrs. Schiavo has parents willing to feed her and watch over her. No one else need lift a finger. Terri Schiavo's continued existence is no skin off anyone else's nose. No one need bestir himself; no one has to visit; everyone can just go on doin' his thing: drinkin', buyin' Lotto tickets, chasing the neighbor's daughter — whatever. People can go on studying Shakespeare or exploring Patagonia. Terri's parents ask for nothing except that their daughter not be starved to death.

I believe that a lot of people simply want the case off their television screens. But they don't have to watch; and the media don't have to cover.
[...]
Maybe I'm dense, but I don't get it. Does deference to the natural order of things require starvation? A newborn would die of starvation — or dehydration — if not fed by his mother (or a caring other). Would that be natural? In a sense, I guess. No food, no continued material life — so has Momma Nature decreed! Terri Schiavo is not a child, but she is helpless to feed herself, and her mother wishes to feed her. (Why not?) People are often helpless, requiring the aid of others.

If the point is to have her dead — because it would be merciful to her — why go through this starvation/dehydration? Why not, indeed, shoot her, or smother her with a pillow — whatever? And I'm not sure that passively standing by should be honored as "deference to the natural order of things." We intervene all the time, to stop bad outcomes.

But this is beginning to sound like kindergarten class — and the Schiavo case does, it is true, return us to the basics.

If we don't know for sure whether someone wishes to live or die, we have always presumed she wants to live. That, it seems to me, has always been the natural order of things. But a woman was condemned to a slow, excrutiating death when we don't know what she really wanted - and the media, to its enduring shame, has framed this as a "right-to-die" issue.

Yes, death is part of life. It's going to happen to all of us someday, and I can think of circumstances where I'd probably prefer to die than be kept alive. But once you die, that's it. I don't know what happens when you do pass away, but you ain't coming back to the life you had just before. That's certain. And it's why, if someone is going to be "allowed to die", we'd better make darn sure that's what they want. (For a similar reason, the possibility of taking the wrong person's life explains my opposition to capital punishment - though opposing the death penalty can be really, really hard in some cases.)

I've been told this kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and in the "progressive" Netherlands they've already moved on to euthanizing newborn babies with serious illnesses and handicaps. But I feel like a line has just been crossed, and I don't like where we're going.

Rest in peace, Ms. Schiavo.

Posted by damian at March 31, 2005 11:37 AM