Leave Her Alone

Here are the facts in the Terri Schiavo case:

1. Schiavo is in a deep coma persistent vegetative state, and she's not coming back. There are no signs of conscious brain activity, and even if something in her condition were to change, her brain is too badly damaged for it to make any real difference. Everything that made her who she was is irretrievably gone. In all meaningful senses of the word, she is already dead.
2. The courts that have jurisdiction to settle this matter have settled it time and again. They have ruled over a dozen times in favor of the husband. Schiavo's parents want to keep her on life support, and they strung out the legal battle for as long as they could, but the proper process has reached it's end.
3. Tom DeLay is an ass. He is using Schiavo in a calculated political ploy to distract attention away from his own ethics woes, to send an ideological message of support to the Christian conservative base, and to bash the Democrats if they try to stop him. To "save" Schiavo, he has stripped her of her last shred of dignity and personhood and turned her into a thing to manipulate for his own benefit.

In a matter of days the President will sign a bill to send Schiavo's case to federal court. The bill is called a "compromise", but in this case, that simply means the bill is a incoherent and unprincipled mess. There was a lot of disagreement between House and Senate leaders about whether this bill should apply to Schiavo only, or to all people in her condition. The final result federal legislation specific to a single person with language saying that it could not be used as precedent. As Ed Kilgore notes, this focus reduces the bill to an exercise in "pure political exploitation." But the limited scope hasn't stopped people like Frist from bragging that this bill will "uphold human dignity and affirm a culture of life." In the end, the GOP leadership wanted to have its cake and eat it, too — talk about the principle of "life", but avoid the political fallout for supporting an idea with which most Americans disagree.

I'm not sure the GOP will be able to sweep this dispute under the rug, however. For the Christian conservatives who believe that it is never right to withhold treatment, even in hopeless cases, the issue does not end with Schiavo. And emboldened by Congress's action today, they will be back tomorrow with more voices and resources to push the issue further. They aren't concerned about narrow jurisdictional issues, or about the issue of explicit statements of intent, or about the distinction between treatment and life-support. As with abortion, they believe that you should have no choice when it comes to your own body, even when your body is all that you have left. I'm all for having this debate, but let's not close our eyes to what the issue really is.

And in the meantime, leave Terri Schiavo the hell alone.