The War on Terri Part XIX

The vigil continues.

Hunter Baker says we're on a slippery slope.

Before we blame the liberal judiciary, we might want to take a long, hard look at the 1990 Supreme Court decision William Rehnquist handed down which made this tragedy possible:

In short, Rehnquist's preposterously invented "right" was the Court's way of blessing a practice called "substituted judgment": the process, varying from state to state, by which parents, spouses, or other close kin establish to a court's satisfaction either that when the patient was competent, he did express a desire not to live as an otherwise healthy incompetent, or (in states a bit more lax) that if he had thought about it when he was competent, it would have been his desire not so to live. This legal practice may have made sense at first, beginning as it did with the cases of patients kept alive on respirators or other "life-support machines" who would die very rapidly of underlying causes as soon as these measures ceased, or whose suffering could be brought to an end by a simple "do not resuscitate" order in the event of a cardiac arrest. But thanks to statutes and judicial decisions, "substituted judgment" in many states in 1990 was already moving toward the withdrawal of food and water from otherwise physically healthy patients, and Rehnquist's "right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition" gave this fateful step a veneer of principle putatively derived from the U.S. Constitution.

Unintended consequences work both sides of the political aisle.

Deroy Murdock notes that it's not only the religious who have made Terri's battle their own:

Perhaps grasping the disposability with which Terri is being treated, Eleanor Smith — a self-professed agnostic, liberal, lesbian — held a "Feed Terri" sign while she told Reuters from her wheelchair: "At this point I would rather have a right-wing Christian decide my fate than an ACLU member."

"There are issues in this case that well-meaning and intelligent people on both sides can disagree with and have to think seriously about," says Ed Hudgins, executive director of the Objectivist Center. He describes himself as "an atheist and a humanist in the Aristotelian tradition." He adds: "I hope this case focuses people's attention on the importance of living life and flourishing while you have it, and on getting everything you can out of this wonderful condition we call conscious life."

For non-believers, this case has little to do with God. One need not be religious to side with Mr. and Mrs. Schindler.

I fear that the mere presence of giant crucifixes, priests dressed like Medieval friars, people praying with outstretched arms — as important, meaningful, and admirable as all that may be — has shuttered the hearts and minds of many secular people and nonbelievers who might sympathize with Terri Schiavo, were her supporters clad in black turtlenecks and equipped with decaf lattes and I-pods brimming with techno-trance music. As best they can be ascertained, the facts of this case show that, even for those of us who only like churches for their architecture, Terri's fight is our fight, too.

Maybe so, but would anyone care to bet on the relative proportion of Christians to crystal worshippers in the camp of life?

Jonah Goldberg doesn't believe the Schiavo case points toward a conservative crack-up.

I tend to agree, but only because there aren't a whole lot of death-loving conservatives out there to begin with. It's the Democrats who have by and large kept really quiet about this issue. I wonder why.

Jay Nordlinger notes another telltale sign that compassionate conservatism was no mere buzzword:

Another thing I have been reminded of, during this last week or so: A great shift has occurred in American politics. The story used to be that the Left, broadly defined, was the party of love, compassion, softness — the large-hearted party. We used to say, "Bleeding hearts!" And the Right was cold, materialistic, callous — Hobbesian. What happened?

What's happened is that the Left hasn't been able to perpetuate the lie that they're the caring ones. The Communist fellow-travelers in this country had no trouble at all explaining away the mass murders of the monsters they admired, quoted, and feted. They have always been quite comfortable with atrocity and the abattoir, so long as their particular ideological god was properly sacrificed to.

The touchy-feely facade was nothing more than a rose petal briefly obscuring a turd.

Eric Pfeiffer has the goods on George Felos, Michael Schiavo's dirtbag lawyer:

Felos describes his spiritual beliefs as syncretistic religion, mixing elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Native American ceremonial practices. In Litigation as Spiritual Practice's introduction, he declares, "evolution of consciousness is our ultimate salvation."

His apparent lack of concern for Terri Schiavo's plight might be better understood in the context of his belief that "[i]n reality you have never been born and never can die."

This is all not to say that Felos isn't entitled to believe whatever he wants to. He, of course, is. However, this is the same man who has described the Schindler family and their supporters as "fanatics." It's a belief many in the media have reciprocated in their analysis of what drives the Schindler's fight for Terri's survival. But, really, who's three sheets to the moonbeam?

I wonder which party his voter registration card favors.

The battle lines between life and death have rarely been more clearly drawn than at this moment. We have the opportunity to choose which side we are on.

God help us if America prefers the charnel house to the church.