Life Everlasting-the religious right and the right to die

March 29, 2005 4:46 AM

Does the right to life trump the right to die?In an increasingly hysterical debate surrounding Terry Schiavo, Garret Keizer provides a thought-provoking analysis of who should decide when and how a person dies: "The alarms raised in America’s ongoing right-to-die debate have always been characterized by a curious selectivity. You will notice, for example, how the fear of playing God operates exclusively on one side of the medical playground. Thus to help a patient end his or her life “prematurely” is playing God, while extending it in ways and under conditions that no God lacking horns and a cloven hoof could ever have intended is the mandate of “our Judeo-Christian heritage” and the Hippocratic oath."
posted by MadOwl (33 comments total)

Not that I particularly care (I have low standards when it comes to issues like this), but I'm certain you'll be getting a lot of this:

If you're looking for info on the Schiavo case, try the Schiavo tag. It's been talked about quite a bit, so please direct comments there instead of new posts.
posted by panoptican at 4:52 AM on March 29, 2005

Jeb Bush ordered Florida cops to seize Tery Schiavo, and they refused.

Ha ha.
posted by troutfishing at 4:58 AM on March 29, 2005

Did you know that Tom DeLay pulled the plug on his dad 17 years ago? He won't talk about it, though, because it's a "private matter"... irony surrenders.
posted by clevershark at 5:35 AM on March 29, 2005

Does the right to life trump the right to die?

Yes, and more importantly it trumps ANY right to privacy, especially when the potential for political gain may be evident!
posted by nofundy at 5:43 AM on March 29, 2005

An excellent essay, Madowl. A feeding tube, which is neither comfortable nor painless, is certainly not God's will.
I feel the same about the death penalty. God can smite whomever he chooses. Do we need to spare him the trouble?

I particularly like this passage:

The suicide, the mystic, the woman who seeks an abortion, the cancer patient who smokes a joint (the cancer patient’s long-suffering lover who smokes a joint)—all are roundly condemned for their escape from “responsibility” but truly feared for their escape from jurisdiction. It is a fear with a long and traceable history. The Roman emperor Tarquin crucified the bodies of citizens who committed suicide in order to escape his tyranny. When Margaret Sanger began her campaign for birth control, she was accused of permitting women to escape their God-ordained sorrow in bearing children.

I'd be willing to listen to pro-lifers if I saw more of a genuine effort to help pregnant women in distress, and make their lives as single mothers easier. But it is about jurisdiction. The prolifers will help a woman, but only as far as it serves them, until she has had her baby.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 5:52 AM on March 29, 2005

Jeb Bush ordered Florida cops to seize Tery Schiavo, and they refused.

What? When did that happen?
posted by Item at 5:53 AM on March 29, 2005

The real sadness here is that the use of a lethal injection is illegal. Instead of a quick, painless end, we get this long, drawn-out excruciating drama.

Excruciating for the family and the TV-news watching audience, that is.

On preview, while my comments may be specific to the Schiavo case, the illegality of the lethal injection is general and national.
posted by Slothrup at 6:09 AM on March 29, 2005

Jeb Bush ordered Florida cops to seize Tery Schiavo, and they refused.

What? When did that happen?


The Miami Herald ran a story about Jeb ordering Schiavo seized and the local cops refusing the order. I found the full article online here.
posted by showmethecalvino at 6:21 AM on March 29, 2005

The real sadness here is that the use of a lethal injection is illegal.

It's ironic that lethal injection to spare pain is illegal, while lethal injection to an otherwise healthy person may be perfectly within the bounds of the law. George W. Bush should know, of course.
posted by clevershark at 6:24 AM on March 29, 2005

Paul Krugman has a good piece in the NYTimes on the dangers of the pro-death pro-life movement.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 6:33 AM on March 29, 2005

I'd be willing to listen to pro-lifers if I saw more of a genuine effort to help pregnant women in distress, and make their lives as single mothers easier. But it is about jurisdiction. The prolifers will help a woman, but only as far as it serves them, until she has had her baby.

Mind you, there are a couple of places, and a few people, who do this. Not all pro-life people are Randal Terry style ideologues.

Mind you, I grew up in a conservative Christian home and I'll be the first to say that vast swaths of pro-life Christians paradoxically oppose programs that would help women get better jobs, better health care for themselves and their babies, and so on. There IS a great deal of baby-blindness (seeing the fetus, but forgetting the infant... the toddler... and so on) that goes on.

Part of this is the mistaken subconscious assumption that the traditional church structure -- a community that often provides daycare and financial support -- will help.

It's patently false, though, to say that there are no pro-life groups out there trying to help women and families and children in real, tangible ways after they decide against abortion. They just aren't the ones out there chaining themselves to clinic doors and giving quotes on network television. Most of the pro-life protestors you see on TV are the equivalent of the black-masked anarchy d00dz network television splatters all over the screen whenever there's a globalization protest.
posted by verb at 6:45 AM on March 29, 2005

Feh. This thread already has a double-digit number of comments. I'm gonna post a new Schiavo thread so we can look at this whole thing from a fresh angle.
posted by soyjoy at 6:47 AM on March 29, 2005

Most of the pro-life protestors you see on TV are the equivalent of the black-masked anarchy d00dz network television splatters all over the screen whenever there's a globalization protest.

Well, the right has been saying for years -- decades even! -- that those "black-masked anarchy d00dz" are representative of liberals everywhere. It's not just the organized right wing either, just look at any thread on this site where anti-globalization protests are discussed and you'll see that it's not an uncommon view.
posted by clevershark at 7:07 AM on March 29, 2005

Feh. This thread already has a double-digit number of comments. I'm gonna post a new Schiavo thread so we can look at this whole thing from a fresh angle.

Cool. When you're done, I'm going to post a new Schiavo thread so we can look at it from the other fresh angle. Won't someone please post another Schiavo thread?
posted by odinsdream at 7:17 AM on March 29, 2005

our Judeo-Christian heritage

Now that's my kind of revisionism!

"It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent."
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:22 AM on March 29, 2005

Well, the right has been saying for years -- decades even! -- that those "black-masked anarchy d00dz" are representative of liberals everywhere. It's not just the organized right wing either, just look at any thread on this site where anti-globalization protests are discussed and you'll see that it's not an uncommon view.

Indeed. It sucks. I try to point that out in both situations -- it doesn't do either side any good to make those sorts of sweeping generalizations. I'm no conservative when it comes to my voting, and the positions that I tend to stake out. The sad fact is that there ARE a lot of opportunities for connection and synergy even in diverse and seemingly contradictory groups like labor activists and pro-life groups. Many Catholic social services have traditionally been seen as liberal in non-reproductive matters.

It certainly won't happen on every issue, but there's a lot of potential there. Ah, well. I can dream. Not much chance of it ever happening. And I think I'm drifting farther and farther from the topic. Whoops.
posted by verb at 7:26 AM on March 29, 2005

Terry Schiavo's blog. Check out what she's got on her ipod. Michael Schiavo's blog.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:31 AM on March 29, 2005

I'm sorry, I didn't intend this specifically as another Schiavo thread, although it relevant to her case. I think the issues it raises are important ones, not only in terms of personal choices about ones own life. Should we as a society, for example, be throwing vast amounts of money into living for as long as medically possible when throughout the world children die of preventable causes because of the want of basic medical care/food/water etc?
posted by MadOwl at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2005

SchiavoFilter

MetaSchiavo?
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:50 AM on March 29, 2005

Should we as a society, for example, be throwing vast amounts of money into living for as long as medically possible when throughout the world children die of preventable causes because of the want of basic medical care/food/water etc?

Not to hijack a thread, but the question of resources is applicable in a lot of other places? Should public school systems, for instance, be continued to spend large sums of money on learning disabled children at the expense of the non-learning-disabled? My sister works in special education, and the amount of money spent there on "hopeless cases" frightens me. In one case, the child's accomplishment for the year was "learning three new words". And this, with a significant amount of one-on-one instruction -- all paid by the taxpayer.
posted by Slothrup at 7:52 AM on March 29, 2005

I am reminded of the supertwin births a few years back--in both cases, the mother only got pregnant thanks to artificial insemination with multiple blastocysts, and wound carrying a litter of 8 or so--but refused selective reduction because it was "God's will."
posted by adamrice at 8:10 AM on March 29, 2005

My sister works in special education, and the amount of money spent there on "hopeless cases" frightens me. In one case, the child's accomplishment for the year was "learning three new words".

I'd rather my taxes pays for an achievement like that than building another WMD to defend our free world. At the end of the day your life is just as trivial and meaningless as her life. We are all little little nothings in this universe and it's time we realised that.
posted by twistedonion at 8:33 AM on March 29, 2005

I was about to link to that, monju. So I guess we're going straight to hell together. :)
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:52 AM on March 29, 2005

twistedonion : " I'd rather my taxes pays for an achievement like that than building another WMD to defend our free world."

I don't think it's a binary choice.

twistedonion : "At the end of the day your life is just as trivial and meaningless as her life."

I also don't think the idea is that all the money spent on her would be applied to Slothrup.
posted by Bugbread at 8:55 AM on March 29, 2005

At least I'll have company. ;)
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:18 AM on March 29, 2005

MadOwl I'm glad to have read the link. It strikes me as a very thoughtful response to the larger issues raised by the Schaivo case--but, as you say, it is hardly limited to that.
posted by Pattie at 9:43 AM on March 29, 2005

Thank You MadOwl.
…… the wisdom of the right consists of knowing how to take its absolutes just far enough, which is to say never so far as to relinquish the prerogatives of wealth and power. The achievement amounts to an ethical sleight of hand. You work the trick by shifting the domain of moral absolutes to those areas of life where they least apply. You treat the gray areas of human existence as though they were black and white, the better to disguise one’s self-interested smudging of black and white to gray. You erect castles of rectitude on the frontiers of mortality in the hopes that the murder and rapine taking place in the town squares can go on undisturbed. You accept the death of a six-year-old child by aerial bombardment or economic sanctions and defend the life of a six-week-old fetus. ....

On the other hand you could always medivac everyone to Holland
posted by adamvasco at 10:07 AM on March 29, 2005

This is very good stuff, I have only had time to skim it and found myself nodding right-ons time and again.

The protesters outside where Terri Schiavo is aren't there to protest for her. They've been asked to leave or protest silently, to show some respect for a family that is approaching the end of the line. The protesters continue to make dramatic and self serving attempts to get her a bottle of water or whatever other symbol they feel will get them airtime.

The amount of effort and money that's been put into her case could have really and truly helped millions of other people.

Nice quote from the article, adamvasco. It really does help to define what the real issues are here.
posted by fenriq at 10:28 AM on March 29, 2005

At least I'll have company. ;)

More than you realize. That made me laugh.
posted by a3matrix at 12:09 PM on March 29, 2005

Photoshop Terri Schiavo onto album covers
posted by mr.marx at 12:31 PM on March 29, 2005

I hope a protester pours the bottle of water down her throat and she chokes to death.

I'm obviously a bad person. I also thought Terri Schiavo's blog was funny.

Michael Schiavo's isn't, only because it reads like the 'eyewitness accounts' the protestors are taking as truth. You know, the ones about him cackling manaically while pulling her IVs out.
posted by anthill at 12:46 PM on March 29, 2005

Uguk say no.
posted by m39 at 1:36 PM on March 29, 2005

God's will is obviously that she should die, as that would be her fate without doctor intervention. If you believe is such malarky.
posted by sophist at 11:08 PM on March 29, 2005