Compounding the Schiavo tragedy

[question everything]

The Daily Breeze

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Compounding the Schiavo tragedy

Congress has taken action that threatens the U.S. system of checks and balances.
By Dan K. Thomasson

(snip)

Very little good can come out of this, particularly since there is strong indication that the motives for doing so are not as pure as House Republican leader Tom DeLay and others contend. Schiavo, they have indicated, is a good political issue that appeals to the GOP's reactionary conservative base, which they hope will respond at the polls in the fall of 2006. If there is a more cynical reason for action given the nature of this case, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find.

Actually, the Schiavo case is the most prominent of a number of attempts by socially unreconstructed movements to install their own values formally through government action by reversing the law on abortion, stifling the teaching of evolution, and insinuating religious rituals in public schools, among other things.

In Kansas, for instance, the strongly antiabortion Republican attorney general is battling to get the clinical records of any girl who may have interrupted a pregnancy under age 16, the age of consent. His stated purpose is to go after rapists and those involved in incestuous relationships and so forth. That is all well and good -- except he is making no such efforts to get the records of those under 16 who became pregnant and had the baby. At the same time, this avowed restorer of American morality has been working to make certain that children are informed that evolution is only an unproven theory, no matter how much scientific evidence exists to the contrary.

The Schiavo situation is a tragedy that has enormous transcendental import. In addition to the danger it brings to our system of checks and balances, it impacts the right of privacy of all Americans who believe that life is not life without some dignity, without some quality beyond merely breathing in and out. If there is no sign of cognitive activity, there really is no life. The beleaguered husband, who normally would have the call in this after all the courts have spoken, seems to understand this, long arguing plaintively that his wife would not like to merely exist as a carrot.

(snip)

Somewhere along the line, the U.S. Supreme Court, if for nothing than to preserve the rule of law and the constitutional separation of powers, needs to speak to this issue in dramatic fashion. That may set up a confrontation with Congress, but so be it. Meanwhile, the Schiavo tragedy continues.

Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.


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[liberal N proud]

1. These are the dark ages for democracy

Where does it go from here