According to most news articles this past week, Terri Schiavo's autopsy has determined that she really was in a persistent vegetative state:
An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.
It's taken me a week or so to comment on it, but as it took me weeks to comment on the Terri Schiavo case in the first place, I think the delay is fair. The question being asked is whether those of us who opposed ending Terri's life recant our positions now.
Well, the first question is whether Terri has been proved to be in a vegetative state, and
Serge at Imago Dei, who has actually read the
autopsy report, says no:
Neuropathic examination alone of the decedant's brain - or any brain, for that matter - cannot disprove or prove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state.
The autopsy has confirmed much of what we know and has brought about some new questions. I am personally glad both that Terri did not suffer from an eating disorder and that there is no evidence that Michael Schiavo... [caused] her injury.
For the moment, however, let's say she was in a persistent vegetative state. I still don't regret opposing the removing of her feeding tube, and I think that the best way to demonstrate why is with an analogy.
Let's say that instead of what we are dealing with, we're dealing with a lynching--a man, possibly innocent, being hung by a mob without a trial. Now, suppose I have three reasons to oppose the lynching: first, because the man might be innocent; second, because it is a miscarriage of justice; and third, because I oppose the death penalty in general and don't believe anyone should be put to death no matter what his crime. Now, several months after the lynching, irrefutable proof comes out that the man was guilty of his crimes. I doubt that my liberal friends would now say that I have no reason to oppose the lynching. I might feel
some relief that at least an innocent man wasn't killed, but I still have plenty of reasons to believe that the lynching was wrong, to, in fact, support prosecution of those who carried it out. He wasn't innocent, but he was hung
before we discovered that. That is still a miscarriage of justice, the crime of murder for those who did it and accessory to murder for all the others who participated. And if I oppose the death penalty in general, then it wouldn't have mattered whether he'd been given a trial or not, I'd still think it was wrong.
Now, I think of the Terri Schiavo case in similar, although not identical, terms. I did not think it had been sufficiently demonstrated that she was in a Persistent Vegetative State, and if it's now been established, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't demonstrated
before she was killed. Which brings me to the second reason, the miscarriage of justice. This is, admittedly, the weakest point of the analogy, as according to the courts, the law was followed to the letter. The problem is that I don't entirely trust the courts. They first overturned and then sidestepped the laws passed by the state and then the federal legislatures. I am one of those who think that the courts in this country are operating outside of their authority, and the fact that they're the ones who define their authority is hardly reassuring. Perhaps the lynch mob analogy isn't precise, but sometimes it feels right. Judges and police often stood aside to let lynch mobs do what they wanted, sometimes they even participated--that didn't make it right or legal. Finally, while I don't oppose the death penalty in principle, I do believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I am very reluctant to say that it's okay to end someone's life unless they are a clear and present danger to others. Terri Schiavo was severely brain damaged, but she was not brain dead, and letting her live hurt no one. I don't know whether she would have preferred to live or die as she was, whether she was able to take some limited joy out of the life that she had, or if she couldn't, whether that was sufficient reason to end her life. In a case like this, I prefer to err on the side of life. Her death cannot be undone.
