Terri Schiavo...

I know its been a while since she was in the headlines. Almost two months. I didn't blog then, so I write something now.

I was rereading an article on her death, and the various arguments that surrounded her situation. The quotes that particularly interested me was this: "Patients in vegatative states seem deceptively aware. Experts write off their smiles, tears, and gestures as involuntary reflexes. But families still struggle with the decision to remove life support, as the story of Terri Schiavo makes clear." This was a Newsweek article by the by--I doubt they'd track me down and post porn on my blog, but I guess better safe than sorry. In case you're wondering--I didn't write it. :)

The impression I received from this statement is that its foolish nonsense to assume that there remains any meaningful life when someone has passed into a vegitative state. Nothing is intentional--therefore how could anything be worthwhile, right? It passes over the protests of the families--because they're motivated by love and clearly cannot be objective to the reality that when the body fails, life stops...or should stop. At least, that's the message I get from this statement. This really re-enforces the suggestion that more and more we ARE embracing death in our society.

Its not worth fighting to give people a better life (even if we fought for oil, the people of Iraq will be better off in a free environment than they were under Saddam) but refusing the essentials of life from an otherwise self-sufficent woman makes sense--because her life isn't worth living, somehow. The deaths of civilians in the course of opposing terror and a cruel dictator aren't justified--because their lives, no matter how tortured or deprived, were somehow worth living and it wasn't worth risking lives to save them.

I don't get it.

Perhaps I am not being clear...

On the one side, the side that is labeled as war mongering etc, I see values that go beyond the simplistic clinging to the "value" of life as above all others. It suggests that all life is sacred--which applies to Terri--and that since all life is sacred it is the duty of the strong to protect the lives of the weak.

The other side seems to boil down to this: life has a value which can be taken away by the quality of the life--though somehow that quality doesn't include the lack of freedom, the presence of terrorized oppression. In those cases, it seems that this side would say that while it may not be a great life, its still life and its more important to protect that then to end lives in the pursuit of a better life for the majority of people living in that terrible situation. However--people physically incapable, or mentally damaged have lost the true value of life--and shouldn't be made to endure the burden of life any longer then necessary.

This seems very wrong.