Schiavo case :A blow to human dignity

June 21, 2005

Those who supported the forced death of Terry Schiavo hailed her autopsy report as validating their position.

As might be expected, the autopsy found Schiavo's brain withered and deteriorated beyond any reasonable chance of recovery. Physicians concluded it was unlikely she could see or experience meaningful emotions with the level of damage done to her brain.

Those who defended her life and those who fought for her death will likely dispute the level of Schiavo's consciousness for years to come. Her parents claim she smiled at them, recognized their voices and followed balloons with her eyes. Ultimately they claimed to have loved her and were willing to sacrifice their time and energy to care for her.

Fundamentally, the love Schiavo's parents had for their daughter transcended her ability to speak, or see, or hold interesting conversations. They loved her very being, which wasn't dependent on physical skills or abilities - abilities that are always temporal and usually fade, either because of injury, illness or age.

Schiavo's inability to recover from brain injury or communicate her desire to live is only a license to starve and dehydrate her if one takes a certain view of humanity.

No reasonable person argues that people should forcibly take the life of an innocent person while they still have ability to communicate their will to live. Likewise, few argue that a person's living will should be violated when they reach a vegetative state.

But what of those who cannot care for themselves? What of those who have no voice and who never wrote a will?

Is the protection and care of human life reserved only for those who tell us what they want? What about those who cannot grasp the concepts of life and death and therefore cannot form a view on the matter? What of the elderly, whose memories, emotions and speech slowly fade away, or the severely mentally disabled, who have never had the ability to defend their own lives with a written will?

Those who argue for Schiavo's death must face the reality that their position further opens Pandora's box, a box that has been swinging wider for some time now.

The rationale behind allowing Schiavo's forced death is born of a view of human life, one that maintains people are worth protecting only as long as they or the people in charge of them think fit.

Under this view, if a person reaches a vegetative point with a slim chance of recovering, then their legal guardian, whether they be a parent, spouse, or the government, is the sole authority over their life and death. With this view, nothing inherent in humanity itself compels people to defend someone's life. The value of human life hinges on certain measurable characteristics, which, if void, allows for their forced death.

Without holding to the inherent dignity of human life, it is difficult to argue against many of the uses or abuses of humans, so long as they are severely damaged or lacking certain traits and cannot will themselves to live or communicate that desire to others.

Under this paradigm, no one should rest assured that their life will be defended until their death. The right to live becomes contingent on physical or mental abilities, traits lawmakers and politicians decide upon.

Terry Schiavo breathed on her own, her heart pumped on its own and her parents loved her and wanted to care for her. Florida law, however, would not defend her, and her death was nothing short of a devastating blow to the dignity of all human life.