If you’ve been watching the news channels at all recently you’ll have noticed that since Sunday (March 20th) round-the-clock coverage has been given to the issue of whether a Florida woman named Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die, or kept alive through artificial means indefinitely.
Indeed, like Elian Gonzales (what IS it with Florida anyway?) this one has become a Republican cause celebre. For 2 days now we have heard the likes of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay wax eloquent about their love and admiration for, well, someone they don’t know, have never met, and whose condition they are altogether unfamiliar with. But they’re going all out to keep her alive no matter what the expense or trouble. They even had a special session of Congress Sunday night in order to push through a bill allowing a federal court to review the case — never mind that the case has already been in the courts for 7 years and that so far the Florida state courts have pretty much all agreed that Ms. Schiavo’s husband was the one person allowed to decide whether his wife’s extraordinary life-sustaining measures should be continued or not.
Republicans would like one to believe that they are merely acting according to their pro-life principles, and that this fight is a heroic stand for the “culture of life” which they’ve always taken… or have they?
Look at George W. Bush’s signature of the Texas Futile Care Law in 1999… that law specifically instructs the state to stop extraordinary life-sustaining treatment, including the maintenance of a feeding tube, when that care is considered “futile” and the patient or his family are unable to pay for treatment. Just last week a 6-month-old infant, who was possibly conscious, was left to die according to this law which was signed by the Commander-in-Chief.
That’s the thing about a stand made on principle. It’s not supposed to shift with time and political realities. Yet it does, for some unexplainable reason. And it’s not the only shift one may notice in Republican positions regarding the issue of life and death.
Take, for example, President Bush’s ill-fated attempt, with the backing of GOP Senators, to cut the Medicaid budget in 2005. Fortunately Democrats refused to stand for this, and Medicaid will remain as it is. You see, Medicaid is the American state-run health insurance program for those people who cannot be adequately covered by the American health-care “system” — those in catastrophic care (such as Ms. Schiavo), or unable to pay because they have little or no income. Seriously, if you’re going to mandate that people be kept alive indefinitely, does it not behoove you to assume the cost of those extraordinary measures? Apparently not. Evidently people who enact special laws to focus on one individual consider state-run health care too much of an invasion into one’s personal life.
OK, let’s ignore the first 2 points — what about the so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”? Over 100,000 perfectly fit Americans have been sent to serve as cannon fodder in America’s War for Oil. Over 1500 haven’t come back at all. If one includes America’s coalition partners (don’t forget Poland!) the numbers rise to 1700. Were their lives not important enough to bother with? They died for a Halliburton pet project. Where is their special session of Congress? Wouldn’t the House’s time be better spent trying to figure out why no one’s managed to find Saddam’s famous stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, you know, so as to find out who must be held accountable for those deaths?
OK, let’s even ignore the war. Why is America looking for moral guidance from a former Texas governor whose propensity for executions got him dubbed “Texas’s biggest serial killer”? 152 executions took place during George W. Bush’s 6 years as Texas governor. That’s over 25 a year, or roughly one every two weeks. When asked about a particular execution by a journalist — and one beholden to the right wing, at that (Tucker Carlson) — then-Governor Bush went on to mock the executee’s plea for mercy. Now that’s some genuine moral fiber displayed by the Frat-Boy-in-Chief.
You know, one may dismiss every single one of those points if one so chooses. One may decide to cheer the GOP’s efforts through many means, including outright lies on the basic facts of the case. But I’m sick and tired — and I’m not the only one — of having that “culture of life” bullshit rammed down my throat when it’s more than obvious that in the current fight over Terri Schiavo Republicans are looking for no more than a story to tell their constituents come election time to show that they “care about life.” You GOPpies want to show the world you care about life? End your death penalty. Stop warmongering. Don’t go around signing bills that expressly allow the state to discontinue someone’s medical treatment when it’s against the wishes of his or her family. Until you start doing that your special sessions are nothing but cynical, cold and calculated attempts at public relations.