An interesting phenomena has happened: liberals have abandoned both the family and human equality...and modern conservatism now defends them...
Eric Cohen has written a very thoughtful piece titled How Liberalism Failed Terri Schiavo
The human answer to our dependency is not living wills but loving surrogates. And for those who believe in human equality, this means treating even the profoundly disabled--people like Terri Schiavo, who are not dead and are not dying--as deserving of at least basic care, so long as the care itself is not the cause of additional suffering. Of course, this does not mean that keeping our loved ones alive is our only goal. But neither can we treat a person's life as a disease in need of a cure, or aim at death as a means of ending suffering--even if a loved one asks us to do so....
...In the end, the only alternative is a renewed understanding of both the family and human equality--two things ideological liberalism has now abandoned and modern conservatism now defends....
...marriage often demands heroism, and we can hardly condemn those who fall short of it. But we can surely fault those, like Michael Schiavo, who claim to speak in the name of loved ones they have abandoned, and insist that letting them die is what they desire or deserve.
To question whether Michael Schiavo has his wife's best interests at heart is not to make this case ethically or humanly easy. The decision to continue feeding a person in a profoundly incapacitated state is always wrenching. We must at least wonder whether ensuring years or decades with a feeding tube, with no self-control, and with virtually no possibility of improvement is not love but torture, not respect for life but forced degradation. We, too, must tremble when we demand that people like Terri be fed. But in the end, the obligation to feed should win out, because the living humanity of the disabled person is undeniably real.
On March 18, 2005, the day her feeding tube was removed, Terri Schiavo was not dead or dying. She was a profoundly disabled person in need of constant care. And despite the hopes of her parents, it was unlikely that her medical condition would improve, even with the best possible care administered by those with her best interests at heart. But even in her incapacitated state, Terri Schiavo was still a human being, a member of the Schindler family and the human family. As such, she was still worthy of protection and care, even if some of those closest to her wished to deny it.
Indeed...these are dark times when we are standing by and allowing a helpless, defenseless woman to be slowly starved to death...
DR
