Life Is Not Purgatory
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Rest in Peace
In the early hours of this morning, Theresa Marie Schiavo died after thirteen passionate, protest-filled days of media and political spectacle in a medical, legal and deeply personal drama.
As many of my friends can attest, I have followed the legal case with significant interest ever since the Florida government intervened with bill HB 35-E, giving the governor, Jeb Bush, the authority to issue a one-time stay to prevent the withholding of nutrition and hydration from a patient (with a list of conditions that applied only to the case of Terri Schiavo). Such intrusion by the government into a very private matter that had been litigated since 1998 - and had exhausted every legal option available to them all the way to the United States Supreme Court – was a shocking and terrifying violation of the separation of powers provisions of the both the state and federal Constitutions.
I have read nearly every judicial decision related to the case, and watch in horror as the media and activist groups distort established (even agreed upon by both the Schindler’s and Michael Schiavo) facts for their own agendas.
I feel deep sympathy for her husband, parents, siblings and friends whose private grief has been opened to the intense media scrutiny of the information age. Hope is a powerful thing – and the family clung with all their strength to the infinitesimal hope provided to them by ‘snake-oil salesman’ doctors who promised miracles. They look at the face of their daughter or sister and see what they want to see: a glimmer of life.
By all accounts, Michael Schiavo was a caring and loving husband for the first several years of her incapacitation. He and the Schindler’s lived in the same home and all worked themselves to the bone to rehabilitate their loved one. Every standard treatment, and a few experimental one were attempted but eventually her husband started listening to the doctors – and lost hope for her recovery… this started the feud that prevented both the family and Michael Schiavo from being at her bedside together at her death… the acrimony between the two is palpable.
But this case is no longer about this private matter, it has been hijacked by the anti-abortion movement, religious fundamentalists, euthanasia advocates and every other special interest group that can possibly tie themselves into this incident… and it’s despicable.
With all the backlash in the southern states, like Florida, against the possibility of gay marriage using the rallying cry of ‘protecting the sanctity of marriage’, having these same fundamentalists rally around the ‘sanctity of life’ by inserting themselves in a between a husband and wife, bound in holy matrimony – is a hypocrisy I cannot stand.
Rest in Peace Theresa. It is my sincere hope that the fundamentalist Christians who denied your release from your mortal shell fo so long realize they were denying your just rewards in the afterlife, the Kingdom of Heaven of their own faith.
She deserved better than to die as a pawn of special interests, and as a media spectacle.
In the early hours of this morning, Theresa Marie Schiavo died after thirteen passionate, protest-filled days of media and political spectacle in a medical, legal and deeply personal drama.
As many of my friends can attest, I have followed the legal case with significant interest ever since the Florida government intervened with bill HB 35-E, giving the governor, Jeb Bush, the authority to issue a one-time stay to prevent the withholding of nutrition and hydration from a patient (with a list of conditions that applied only to the case of Terri Schiavo). Such intrusion by the government into a very private matter that had been litigated since 1998 - and had exhausted every legal option available to them all the way to the United States Supreme Court – was a shocking and terrifying violation of the separation of powers provisions of the both the state and federal Constitutions.
I have read nearly every judicial decision related to the case, and watch in horror as the media and activist groups distort established (even agreed upon by both the Schindler’s and Michael Schiavo) facts for their own agendas.
I feel deep sympathy for her husband, parents, siblings and friends whose private grief has been opened to the intense media scrutiny of the information age. Hope is a powerful thing – and the family clung with all their strength to the infinitesimal hope provided to them by ‘snake-oil salesman’ doctors who promised miracles. They look at the face of their daughter or sister and see what they want to see: a glimmer of life.
By all accounts, Michael Schiavo was a caring and loving husband for the first several years of her incapacitation. He and the Schindler’s lived in the same home and all worked themselves to the bone to rehabilitate their loved one. Every standard treatment, and a few experimental one were attempted but eventually her husband started listening to the doctors – and lost hope for her recovery… this started the feud that prevented both the family and Michael Schiavo from being at her bedside together at her death… the acrimony between the two is palpable.
But this case is no longer about this private matter, it has been hijacked by the anti-abortion movement, religious fundamentalists, euthanasia advocates and every other special interest group that can possibly tie themselves into this incident… and it’s despicable.
With all the backlash in the southern states, like Florida, against the possibility of gay marriage using the rallying cry of ‘protecting the sanctity of marriage’, having these same fundamentalists rally around the ‘sanctity of life’ by inserting themselves in a between a husband and wife, bound in holy matrimony – is a hypocrisy I cannot stand.
Rest in Peace Theresa. It is my sincere hope that the fundamentalist Christians who denied your release from your mortal shell fo so long realize they were denying your just rewards in the afterlife, the Kingdom of Heaven of their own faith.
She deserved better than to die as a pawn of special interests, and as a media spectacle.
