There's something about this Terri Schiavo case that won't let go of me, and I think it's this.
The people who mourned today when she died didn't know her. Few of them got a chance to see her - most based their opinions on selected video clips and pictures of her, helplessly made up for the camera. There is no doubting the parents' profound anguish over losing their daughter twice, and I am sure they really believed she could get “better.” And there is every reason that her husband acted out of sincere conviction that Terri was already dead.
But this was a profoundly private affair. Terri Schiavo never gave consent to be pictured in newspapers and televisions. Whether or not you believe she was a corpse (as Christopher Hitchens does) or a living human being before today, you can't possibly believe that it was right to expose her as was done. The parents - or perhaps really their handlers - wanted to convince the world that she was sentient, at least somewhat aware of what was going on. She died a horribly undignified death, thanks to people who didn't know her, didn't care about her, and were trying to make a point for which their is no evidence in their convictions otherwise.
The point, the pundits say, is all about abortion. A society that discards people like Terri Schiavo will naturally discard the inconveniently conceived unborn. It is “liberals,” with their vicious moral relativism that wish to show mercy on the guilty (death row inmates) and cruelty to the innocent (fetuses and Terri Schiavo).
This is if you live a life free of moral distinctions, if all have to do is determine whether something is black or white to decide what's next. It's an easy world to inhabit, because it's free of agonizing choices and painful distinctions. But of course, it's a conjured world. We all have to decide between competing evils every day.
In the meantime, who could have justified publishing photographs of Ronald Reagan in his last years, or of Terri Schiavo after she had indisputably died? Sometimes we have to make choices for people who can't for themselves, but we owe them a chance at dignity, a presence out of the spotlight.
Terri Schiavo - when she was well - looked like the kind of woman I'd like to have known. Whether or not she wanted to die as she did, I believe that she didn't want me or anyone else to get to know her as we did - a helpless, diminished creature that evoked pity.
What a shame. Sent wirelessly from my Blackberry.
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