JJB Blog

The Terri Schiavo case/issue/hype has nothing to do with life or death. The neo-conservatives have selected this case because it can easily be used as an appeal to emotion [1 2]; people will be distracted by the emotional elements of the case and not notice the real issue at stake: courts and states are losing power, law makers and the federal government are gaining power. Some people might say that this is by definition the first step toward Fascism.

Here are some excerpts from an excellently written email that MoveOn sent out:

Even many right-wing activists are concerned about Congress’s interference in this case. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizi told the L.A. Times, “It becomes a more crystallized proof point that we are no longer the party of smaller government. We have become a party of ‘It doesn’t matter what size the government is as long as it is imposing our set of values.’”

The New York Times talked to David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization, who said, “When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it’s been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked even if it hasn’t given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism.”

“It’s disturbing that doctors who would never venture a comment about the health of anybody from a homemade video are sitting on the floor of Congress making declarations,” said Art Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. “My own impression, from a distance, is that they’ve subverted what they know to be good medicine for the aim of achieving a political goal.”

And reporters are now raising questions about a right-to-die law Bush signed as Texas governor, contradicting his position in the Schiavo case. Just last week, the law was applied for the first time, allowing doctors to remove a critically ill infant from life support against his mother’s wishes. According to the Houston Chronicle, this marks the first time in American history that courts allowed a pediatric patient to die against the wishes of their parent. …

“The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head,” said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University’s Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. “This does appear to be a contradiction.” Brody said that, in taking up the Schiavo case, Bush and Congress had shattered a body of bioethics law and practice.”

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