By Michael R. Hirsh<\/p>\n
The post mortem on the court ordered dehydrated body of Terri Schiavo is complete.\u00a0 Her fight to live continued for a decade and a half. What her horrific death hails for us continues to unfold.<\/p>\n
Sadly, her killing could have easily been avoided. All that was needed was for those in a position to do so to courageously exercise their legitimate authority. But alas, rather than sip the elixir of courage, they drank deeply from the cup of cowardice.<\/p>\n
For example, Governor Jeb Bush consistently beat his breast over Terri\u2019s plight. And just as consistently he refused to take meaningful steps to actually save her life. Proving that a lack of candor is the twin sister to a lack of backbone, the Governor publicly stated that he had been advised that he lacked the constitutional authority to act.<\/p>\n
That, in fact, is not true.<\/p>\n
Governor Bush had been provided with the legal advice on his right to act from a variety of sources on numerous occasions. Some of that legal advice came as early as October 2003. At about the same time I was asked by the Schindlers to help them save their daughter shortly after Terri\u2019s source of food and water had been removed.<\/p>\n
Numerous court petitions were predictably denied. Governor Bush and the legislature pushed through the constitutionally dubious \u201cTerri\u2019s Law.\u201d This thwarted the killers for a time, but that statute was eventually struck down.<\/p>\n
Rather than creating a sloppy law, they could have simply amended the state\u2019s guardianship law, which they were advised to do. It was an easy out and a no-brainer. The new law simply could\u00a0 have said: If you are fornicating, adulterating, and\/or making babies with\u00a0 another person, you will not be allowed to make life and death decisions for your incapacitated spouse. If are cohabitating with another person and you stand to inherit a pile of money upon the death of your incapacitated spouse, you are disqualified as guardian. But this wasn\u2019t done. There were other available legal avenues; they too were simply ignored.<\/p>\n
Rather than do something significant, Governor Bush kept looking for loopholes.\u00a0 But Terri didn\u2019t need \u201cTerri\u2019s law.\u201d She needed a governor with fortitude.<\/p>\n
And I know whereof I speak. When I questioned the Governor\u2019s staff counsel as to why Governor Bush was reluctant to operate as an executive \u2013 and make an executive decision \u2013 I was chided for being oblivious to the political ramifications. I was not oblivious, only indifferent.<\/p>\n
On Good Friday, 2005, Jeb Bush opted out of his customary church service. Had he attended, he would have participated \u2013 or at least heard \u2013 the prayer for the day from the 5th Station of the Cross, which states:<\/p>\n
Lord Jesus, sometimes I don’t want to do what is right or to help someone in need, but you want me to respond positively to the needs of others in my life. Help me to say ‘yes’ and be willing to give heroic assistance to all who are in need.<\/p>\n
Shifting denominations and focus for a moment to the Southern Baptist Judge who had Terri killed: Judge George Greer. His honor, whose otherwise iniquitous career will forever be defined by his misconduct in Schiavo, was privately advised by the pastor of his Baptist Church to withdraw his membership. This pastor was heralded as being courageous enough to have the jurist quietly resign from the roll.<\/p>\n
Imagine the result had the reverend confronted Greer, the parishioner, with warnings of a public excommunication followed by a first class eternity in torment. Greer may not give a rat\u2019s rear end about Terri\u2019s soul, but he might have had some concern for his own.\u00a0 But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king; and, in the land of the eunuchs, the fractionally endowed becomes an inept father of a multitude.<\/p>\n
Equally emasculated is the United States Congress. There was a momentary flourish when a subpoena was issued for Terri as a material witness. Judge Greer immediately scoffed at the Order and ignored it. Greer rightly guessed that there wasn\u2019t a thimble full of testosterone among them.<\/p>\n
Not only did Congress back down, but both Vice President Cheney and Republican Senator Bill Frist declared that there should be no retribution for the defiance. Had a pro-lifer tendered a similar snub to Congress he would have seen a show of force that would have made Janet \u201cElian, go home\u201d Reno proud.<\/p>\n
Steadfast House Majority Leader Tom DeLay originally declared that \u201cthe time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.\u201d He later apologized for saying things in such \u201can inartful way.\u201d Which is an artful way of saying he meant every word of it, just not the words of it. He did later artfully add, \u201cWe set up the courts. We can unset the courts.\u201d President Bush distanced himself from DeLay, saying he believed in an independent judiciary. But he\u2019s not quite so sure about that Kris Kringle guy.<\/p>\n
To add insult to injury, a top aide to Republican Florida Senator Mel Martinez \u201cresigned\u201d after admitting authorship of a memo wherein he\u00a0 observed that the Schiavo fight \u201cis a great political issue . . . and a tough issue for Democrats. This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.\u201d Senator Martinez assured, \u201cThis type of behavior and sentiment will not be tolerated in my office.\u201d Martinez didn\u2019t clarify if it is getting the pro-life base excited or taking advantage of important moral issues that won\u2019t be tolerated.<\/p>\n
Imagine that politicians in political office hire political advisors who consider the political advantage on \u201can important moral issue.\u201d Heretofore the rule has been to gain political benefit only on unimportant issues. Let the major league baseball steroid hearings begin!<\/p>\n
If only Terri could have lived long enough to see her courageous Senator in action! She would have been glad to buy him a drink. At least the sanctity of Congress is secure, even if the sanctity of life is not.<\/p>\n
This self immolation wasn\u2019t enough for Democrats. The always artful former presidential candidate (and current Democrat National Committee Chairman) Howard \u201cI Have a Scream\u201d Dean promised that his fellow dems were going to make Schiavo a campaign issue next time around. Rarrrrrrrrr!!! Former vice-presidential candidate and Democrat poster boy, John Edwards, speaking even less artfully than Tom DeLay agreed: \u201cWe saw the memo . . .\u00a0 about how they could take political advantage of Terri Schiavo. That\u2019s disgusting. They will pay a price for this in the 2006 and 2008 elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank offered his support: \u201cI really want to get behind Senator\u00a0 Edwards on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
This John Edwards expressing his disgust with making political gains on a moral issue is the same pretender who promised us that the now deceased Superman star Christopher Reeves would walk again if John Kerry was elected president.<\/p>\n
On the legal front, lawyers seemed concerned with making nice-nice with Michael Schiavo\u2019s accomplice\/attorney George Felos when they weren\u2019t preoccupied about getting top billing on court filings. Enquiring minds like mine can\u2019t help but wonder if the initial meeting might have set the stage for an improved result:<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Felos, I am Michael Hirsh, attorney for the Schindlers. While I am tempted to say \u2018nice to meet you,\u2019 it isn\u2019t. You are an embarrassment to the legal profession and a blight on the entire judicial process. I fully intend to thoroughly thrash you and your diabolical agenda in court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, musings like these are as warmly received as exciting the pro-life base and seeking political advantage on important moral issues.<\/p>\n
John Paul II \u2013 on his own deathbed \u2013 condemned the culture of death that is romancing America and compared Terri\u2019s death to capital punishment for someone not so much as charged with a crime.<\/p>\n
About the only bigwig on the scene demonstrating some grit was Jesse Jackson. The Reverend Jackson showed up at the Schindler\u2019s request a few days before Terri breathed her last. He spoke with eloquence and passion against the unfolding evil. He even lobbied elected officials to take a stand against this horrific moral failure. His presence is a rebuke to the dozens of pro-life and pro-family leaders of the religious right who expressed their support for Terri in their fund-raising letters but who couldn\u2019t find the time to get to the scene of the crime and try and save Terri\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Terri\u2019s fight is over. But the fight for life is going full throttle. Schiavo may\u00a0 prove to be the Roe v. Wade of euthanasia. Terri was denied the same legal protection given to occupants of Florida\u2019s death row, though she was neither charged nor convicted of any crime. Her medical condition was deliberately miscast as \u201cvegetative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food and water were mischaracterized as artificial life support; and, Terri\u2019s philandering husband\u2019s blatant conflict of interest maliciously ignored.<\/p>\n
Quality of life has replaced the sanctity\u00a0of life. Improving one\u2019s quality of life is fine. But measuring life\u2019s worth by it and abandoning life\u2019s sanctity only deepens the suffocating embrace of the culture of death.<\/p>\n
The founding fathers had reason to recognize the sanctity of the right to life as the preeminent right to be protected by the new government. Without it, quality of life rights like liberty and the pursuit of happiness are empty, meaningless.<\/p>\n
Simply having \u201cconservatives\u201d elected to office and appointed to the bench is likewise vapid. Republicans have done as much for people of faith as Democrats have for people of color. Each stays in the back of the bus while politicians condescendingly grin knowing that their voting block is secure. If politicians won\u2019t be statesmen, then they need to be unemployed come next election. Hey! But why wait? Avoid the rush and impeach!<\/p>\n
It is axiomatic that we get the government we deserve. Politicians avoid acting like statesmen because their constituency is satisfied with an occasional crumb while they marinate in their own personal peace and affluence. Politicians only see the light when they feel the heat.<\/p>\n
Protecting innocent life is the first duty of statesmen, preachers, and citizens. Apathetic disregard violates that obligation and betrays our own cowardice.<\/p>\n
As a little litigator growing up in the sixties, I often heard a then popular slogan that rhetorically asked: “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” That query is the second to the last line from an old poem. Both lines read:<\/p>\n
“What if they gave a war and nobody came?<\/p>\n
Then the war will come to you.”<\/p>\n
So many labor their whole lives to acquire positions of influence and power. It is so easily forgotten that \u201cto whom much is given, much is expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have suffered over thirty years of legal abortion, an onslaught of litigation and legislation trying to redefine\u00a0 marriage, debating euthanasia, and now forcing death \u2013 intentional killing by starvation and dehydration, the longest execution in the history of the republic. We have become a nation of sophisticated barbarians, what C.S. Lewis called \u201cAdmin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will we \u2013will you, will I \u2013 live courageously? This is not a rhetorical question. It is no hyperbole to say that our rights, our liberties, and perhaps our lives and the lives of our children hang in the balance. As the poet said, the war has come to you.<\/p>\n
Michael Hirsh is a lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia. His email address is mrhirsh@bellsouth.net. \u00a9Copyright 2005, Michael Hirsh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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