More concern for quality of life, not just life

Terri Schiavo’s case began receiving national attention last week when doctors removed the… Terri Schiavo’s case began receiving national attention last week when doctors removed the brain-dead woman’s feeding tube. But until March 20, it had not become the obscene political spectacle that it is now. On that night, Congress, staying up far past its bedtime.

What many don’t know from the massive media barrage is that this congressional intrusion is the culmination of a two-year effort by social conservatives to prevent Schiavo’s death. It would appear that, at least temporarily, the right-to-life advocates have found an able ally in the White House, in addition to a sympathetic Congress.

Yesterday, the federal judge to whom the case was sent ruled that doctors do not have to reinsert the feeding tube into the body of Terri Schiavo. Still, it will be a long time before the argument over her will go away.

One of the first questions anyone who has read about the case has asked himself is whether or not it is the government’s role to pry into such a deeply personal matter.

Schiavo’s husband does not want massive nationwide attention shed on his family’s private suffering — and rightly so. Congress had no right to interfere as it did. The combined power of the White House and Congress were obviously capable of taking the actions that they did, but it was not right for them to.

Additionally, Congress overstepped its governmental and constitutional authority. It is not the place for the lawmaking body to overrule a state court, especially when it is apparent that they did it for no other reason than disagreement with the outcome of the case. This intervention comes against the opinions of many federal and state judges, medical professionals and care workers.

And yet, social conservatives at all government levels interfered. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said earlier of the case, “We in government have a duty to protect the weak, disabled and vulnerable.”

While this is a good quotation, it is hollow. I side with Terri Schiavo’s husband in wondering why the government chooses to care so deeply about this one specific family matter, when it should be actually helping people.

If Congress and the White House were as serious about improving the lives of children, 20 percent of whom live in poverty, as they are with interfering in personal and private ethical decisions, then by tomorrow we would have an allocation bill to that effect. The priorities of social conservatives are reflected when we see how quickly they mobilize when someone dies because he or she lacked health care or when a school goes under-funded.

It is all well and good for Gov. Jeb Bush to say that the government has the duty to protect the “weak, disabled and vulnerable,” but this is a misguided effort to do it.

There has been no recent effort to improve schools or increase funding for education. And there has been no allowance for increased grants for students to go to college, even though education is a proven method of improving quality of life.

There has been no massive, nationwide push to grant more money to social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. There is not more discussion about providing universal health care, although that would arguably create more of a “culture of life” than keeping a brain-dead woman mechanically alive.

If the government is suddenly in the caring business, it can start by ensuring that people are cared for, not simply kept in a perpetual vegetative state.

Coupled with the baseball hearings, the government seems to be more in the business of “governtainment” than of either governing or acting in a meaningful way.

If social conservatives and their congressional allies want to make anyone else believe that they are out to protect the vulnerable and promote life, they’d better start by ensuring that life is not simply a working respiratory system and a feeding tube, and that people are able to live well.

E-mail Sam Morey feedback at smorey88@hotmail.com.