It continues to amaze me how many sound bites that are used routinely and considered to be compelling arguments are complete bunk.  Case in point, this statement by a Florida politician regarding Terri Schiavo:

“There are some decisions that ought to be left to God and family,” Crist said. “Had I have been governor, I would have not done the same thing” as Bush.

(That’s governor Jeb Bush for those forgetting)

OK, how many times have I heard “life decisions should be made by the family” touted in cases like this?  The problem frequently is that the family is not in agreement.  Specifically, Terri’s biological family (parents and siblings) ALL wanted to keep Terri alive while her husband wanted to see her life ended.  So it’s not just about “the family should decide”.  What do you do when they can’t decide amongst themselves?

Furthermore in this case, the case came down NOT to what the family wanted but what Terri wanted.  That was what was in dispute.  So really, the family’s interests were technically irrelevant.  If Terri’s husband had said in court “Terri told me that she would want to stay on life-support if she were in this state but I think it’s time for her to die anyway” (not saying that it is what was indeed the case, I’m just speaking theoretically) then the case would have turned out completely differently.  What was in dispute was that the husband thought she would want to die and her parents thought the opposite and there was nothing but hearsay for either side to present in court.

Finally (and back to the original sound bite), what does “left to God” mean?  Is he arguing that we should never do any medical treatment and let God either heal or not heal everyone?  The question is not whether we have faith in God, it’s whether we choose to follow God by doing His will.  We have to decide whether it is God’s will that a feeding tube be left in or removed.  We can’t just “leave it to God” and turn our backs.  That just doesn’t make any sense.

Obviously everyone who knows me, knows my opinion on the case and I’m sure that opinion colors this post.  However, I tried to be careful in this post NOT to make a specific judgement as to which side was right.  My point is not who is right, but just that the arguments used are completely irrelevant to the case.

Why do we as a public put up with this kind of crud?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 11:03 am and is filed under Catholicism, Catholicism - Morals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.