Mon, March 21, 2005

A federal court in Florida is convening today to consider the argument for re-administering a feeding tube to Terri Schiavo, who has been incapacitated and brain damaged since a seizure/heart failure 15 years ago. As I understand it, the case is pretty clear: her husband Michael is her guardian and has power of attorney. He feels that she would not want her life to be preserved in this "persistent vegetative state," and so he made the difficult call to pull the plug. Which, as I understand it, happens all the time. Without a clear Do Not Resuscitate order on file, the guardian – in this case, her husband – is responsible for deciding when to stop preserving a life that is no longer livable. He's not excited about it; he doesn't want her to die. He'll miss her, too. But he knows that she would not want her life artificially preserved in this state.

However, Terri's parents and family have attempted to wrest this decision away from Michael and the two sides have bitterly fought it out in court for seven years or so. Just when it seemed like reason would prevail and Michael's decision would be carried out, Florida Governor Jeb Bush stepped in, got a state law passed which allowed him to counteract the judicial ruling, and ordered her feeding tube reinserted. The Florida Supreme Court (backed up by the U.S. Supreme Court) later declared the Florida law unconstitutional, and things were back on track to peacefully end Terri's miserable condition until an "emergency weekend session" of Congress handed President Bush the authority to send the case to the federal court which meets today.

It's all part of George W. Bush's "culture of life" philosophy – which he trumpets loudly when arguing against abortion or stem-cell research, although you notice he didn't make a peep about it when executing retards in Texas. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should clarify that I'm not attacking his stance on the death penalty – just his hypocrisy on the "culture of life" issue. I support the death penalty and abortion, because I believe you have to be consistent on these things. I should say "a woman's right to choose to have an abortion"; I can't stand behind mandatory abortions.) This whole "culture of life" thing is so obtuse, and it's yet another reason they shouldn't have given Million Dollar Baby the Oscar. The red-staters think everything Hollywood does is a statement about something – and they'll be damned if a bunch of pansy-ass Hollywood liberals are going to tell them what to do. That dopey boxing movie will set us back half a decade.

Despite the fact that I don't have a life, I respect life. I know Michael Schiavo does, too. But, as with most of these debates, it comes down to a question of defining terms. Anti-abortion crusaders say it's immoral to terminate a pregnancy because life begins at conception, so you're taking a human life. (These people have no problem calling a pea-sized bundle of cells a human baby, but tell them that people grew out of monkeys? That's voodoo!) Bush and others who are using Terri Schiavo's case to set a precedent about the right to die issue say her life must be preserved, but they're focusing on a very narrow definition of "life". Yes, someone in a vegetative state still has cellular functions, a heartbeat, and in some cases can breathe on his or her own. But is that all it takes for someone to be "alive"? Base-level cognitive functions and a pulse? Terri's unable to move or communicate, and her "life" consists of lying motionless in bed getting nutrients through a tube. That simply isn't a life. That's more like a science project.

If I were Terri's parents or siblings or close friends, I too would be very sad at the thought of losing her. But I would also consider her pretty well lost. I'd be thankful for the opportunity to be with her one last time, and then I'd end her suffering. To do anything else – to force her to continue that existence for 15 years – would make me feel like a monster. The only thing more monstrous is the army of politicians and religious leaders rallying around her, not defending her life because they know her or love her, but using her to prove a point. This tube has been in and out three times now at the behest of a series of judges' and governor's orders. Why should she continue to be poked and prodded, starved then renourished, just so they can feel lofty about their culture of respect for life? Respecting a life is more than just respecting the cellular function of living. It's respecting the living thing.

And let's have a little perspective here: life is wonderful and miraculous and meaningful, but in the grand scheme of things it's nothing. A fleeting, microscopic blip in the eye of the vastness of the universe and the infinity of forever. Nobody wants to die. (Well, I do, sometimes – when watching American Idol.) But I think it makes sense to acknowledge that humans, like any other life form, have life spans. Our bodies age; our organs wear out; our functions fade; we die. Hundreds of years ago, this was an okay thing. Native American cultures had deeply spiritual ceremonies to celebrate the circle of life when someone passed. It was a time of renewal. Now, our current pharmaceutical/HMO/insurance industries – or, as I like to call them, Big Health – have created this self-perpetuating money train of preserving life beyond all reasonable limits. We've got people on feeding tubes and seniors popping fistfuls of pills at every meal just to keep the valves pumping and survive one more day to get to another fistful of pills.

Overpopulation is a huge and growing problem. And the artificially-extended life expectancy is right in the middle of it. The Big Health money machine, devoted to preserving the teetering right-most edge of the age graph, is the key cause. Every one of our major problems can be traced back to it. (Except 9/11 – that was Saddam's fault.) The economy is struggling because it's too expensive for companies to pay workers – the cost of health benefits is too high. Social Security is doomed because when our current generation of seniors were paying in, they were covering the cost of benefits to retirees who died at 70 like normal people. Now, the average life expectancy is edging towards 80* – is it any wonder the system is straining under the incoming baby boomers? Health care and prescription drug costs are skyrocketing because Big Health is putting all of its money into coddling its most profitable customers and passing the costs along to everyone. Rent in Santa Monica is astronomical because nonagenarians are still in the same rent-controlled apartments they moved into in the mid-1930s.

From the mission statement of the Culture of Life Institute:

Our purpose is to inform, unify, and affirm all those who seek the truth about the dignity of human life, defending it in all its fullness from conception until natural death.

(And, by the way, how ironic is christianity-dot-com?)

This is absurd, because what's a natural death? Getting hit by a car isn't a natural death: that never happened to the Cro-Magnon men. Does that mean we hook up car accident victims to feeding tubes? Why can't we just agree that life is precious, but it winds down – and when it gets to a point where it isn't livable any more, by any reasonable definition, then of course we don't smother the patient with a pillow – but neither do we force a feeding tube into her mouth by judicial order. We just let life run its course. Let the woman die peacefully and stop imprisoning her in her inert body. The Jesusheads out of anyone should be hip to the idea that the end of mortal life is not the end of everything. Wouldn't she be happier in heaven?

"Cloud goes up. Cloud goes down. Cloud goes up. Cloud goes down."

Average U.S. life expectancy 1959-1961: 69.89; 1969-1971: 70.75; 2002: 77.3 (Source: CDC Life Tables, 2002, PDF)

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