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It
wasn’t that many years ago when I happened to be in Raleigh
at a gathering of literary folk who were quite full of their
own superiority. They started talking about people who (gasp!)
let years go by without reading a single book.
“Why
do they even bother being alive?” asked one of them. Almost
everyone laughed.
They
went on and on about the worthlessness of the lives of non-intellectuals.
Shopping in malls. Eating
at McDonald’s. Driving their gas-guzzling
cars.
I
did ask where they shopped, and which of them had arrived
at the party by balloon. I have not been invited to such
gatherings since.
It’s
so easy to decide that someone else’s life is not worth living.
Lacking something that we regard as essential, we cannot fathom
how they get through a day.
The
nattering of intellectuals about the valuelessness
of the “unexamined life” might be taken as hyperbole, if it
weren’t for the fact that it is precisely our intellectual
elite that has decided to set itself up as champions of the
right to murder people “for their own good.”
*
We
saw how intellectuals treat the issue in this year’s Oscar-winning
deathwish movie, Million Dollar
Baby. By now everyone knows that at the end, Hilary Swank
lies in a bed, paralyzed from the neck down. Because of bedsores,
one leg is amputated.
So,
in despair, she begs Clint Eastwood to kill her.
And
when he won’t, she tries to kill herself by biting off her
own tongue.
At
last he succumbs, becomes a murderer for her sake, and walks
away as the audience weeps at the nobility of his sacrifice.
Sacrifice?
Hardly. Just think — now he won’t have to visit her every
day in the hospital. No more time spent trying to talk her
into staying alive.
Let’s
see ...
What
was her character suffering that Christopher Reeve didn’t
suffer?
How
dare I make such a comparison! Christopher Reeve didn’t ask
people to kill him. He was a different person and made a
different choice!
No, he wasn’t merely a different person.
The difference is that he was a person, and she wasn't.
Hillary
Swank’s character was made up.
She did what the author decided she should do. So after we
see her grimly determined to overcome all obstacles, unwilling
to be discouraged, adapting to whatever circumstances try
to thwart her, suddenly the author decides that this time
she’ll give up and start demanding that the people who love
her most surrender their sense of decency and goodness in
order to indulge her despair.
Do
you think Christopher Reeve didn’t feel despair? He said
so, in various interviews; there were even times he wished
he were dead; but the love and encouragement of his family
and friends gave him new purpose.
*
Plus,
there’s that little thing called “adaptation.”
People
get used to things.
In
one experiment, people were fitted with lenses that turned
everything upside down while shutting out any view of the
right-side-up world.
In
a surprisingly short time, their brains did a flip-flop and
turned the upside-down-image right side up again.
In
concentration camps, some people do indeed despair. It’s
a well-known phenomenon: They turn their faces to the wall
and take no interest in the world around them until they die
— often very quickly.
Unloved,
untouched babies also wither, losing brain function, becoming
engulfed by lethargy, and sometimes simply dying.
But
most people, given anything to hold on to, adapt and try.
They find new purpose. They find work-arounds.
The
quadriplegics who learn to paint with a brush held between
their teeth.
Helen
Keller.
Stephen
Hawking.
I
suppose, though, that we should have simply killed them as
soon as the incurability of their problems became obvious.
After all, what “quality of life” could they possibly have?
*
People
make their own quality of life. There are people who are
desperately unhappy in the midst of freedom and plenty, and
people who are quite cheerful despite devastating deprivation
and loss.
My
wife was once at a gathering of church women, when one of
them started complaining about how desperately hard it was
to choose just the right dining room set for her new home.
She
seemed genuinely distressed. And the other ladies commiserated.
But my wife knew that one of the women was suffering through
the breakup of her marriage, and another was worried because
her husband was probably going to be laid off. Every one
of them had problems that made choosing a dining room set
almost laughably trivial.
But
to that one woman, the dining room problem was the worst
thing in her life. It’s as if she had a certain amount
of misery she was determined to feel, and settled on whatever
came to hand to be miserable about.
While
other women in that same room turned their problems and suffering
outward, and took their mind off their problems by either
working to overcome them or, if they were insuperable, simply
doing whatever was within their power to make the people
around them a little happier.
The
result was that they were happier themselves.
So
whose quality of life was better?
Whose
life was more worth living?
Nobody
would suggest euthanizing a person because she’s suffering so terribly about
choosing a table and chairs.
No,
we’re still slightly careful about whom we can kill
and then feel noble about it.
*
For
instance, we now live in a country where you can kill your
wife, as long as she’s tragically brain-damaged, lying in
a hospital bed, unable to speak.
She
does open her eyes, though. And she can track objects that
move across her field of vision. She isn’t in a coma.
She
even has people who want to take care of her. Her
parents, her siblings.
And
pay no attention to the “experts” who say that these apparent
signs of intelligent life aren’t real. We once had an “expert”
make the same sort of declaration about our son Charlie, after
a mere half hour of observation, completely discounting the
experience of Charlie’s parents and other caretakers who knew
perfectly well that he really communicated with us.
The
expert’s assumption was that anything seen through the eyes
of people who loved Charlie was to be discounted completely.
Ironically, though, it is precisely the people whose attention
is concentrated by love who are best equipped to judge
whether communication is happening — since it is happening
with them.
The
people who love Terri Schiavo apparently do not include her husband, who seems awfully
impatient to get rid of her.
And
under our bizarre laws, he has the only vote, and her parents
and brothers and sisters are completely disregarded.
What
is the husband’s case for killing her?
It
couldn’t possibly be because he wants to be able to marry
the woman he’s living with now. After all, to accomplish
that he need only divorce the brain-damaged woman in
a hospital bed.
Oh,
but wait. If he divorces her, then he won’t get as much of
that million-dollar settlement that’s paying for her care
right now. Only if she dies will he get any of that.
No,
his motive is completely noble and unselfish. He wants to
shut off her feeding tube because she “wouldn’t have wanted
to live like this.”
Hmmmm. Convenient that she can’t
speak, isn’t it?
The
incredible thing — to me, at least, and yet I have to believe
it, don’t I — is that he was able to find a judge who would
give him the right to kill this woman.
Despite
the fact that she has loved ones who are desperate to keep
her alive and take responsibility for her care.
Despite the fact that the husband’s motives
are suspect at best. Somehow, judges in Florida keep
finding a “right to kill” hidden somewhere in the law.
Well,
we have a precedent for that, don’t we.
When it comes to legalized killing, our judges are way ahead
of our legislatures ...
*
Once
you plunge out onto that slippery slope of allowing the killing
of another human organism for no better reason than personal
convenience, it’s so hard to find a handhold to let you climb
back up.
Yet
it’s the proponents of legalized killing who whine about the
“slippery slope.”
Are
there times when it is justified to take a human life?
I
believe so — and so do most people. Self-defense, defense
of the helpless and innocent, aborting a baby to save the
life of the mother; there’s almost always a trade-off, choosing
one life over another.
In
fact, under traditional law, there is more of a case for killing
Terry Schiavo’s husband in order
to save her from him than there is for killing the
brain-damaged woman in the first place.
*
Whenever
somebody wants to kill someone else, he will find excuses
to justify the act. Most often, he will claim that his would-be
victim is “not really human,” not a person.
It
is precisely because of this human tendency that a decent
society must go to extra effort, must draw the line firmly
at a much earlier point, in order to prevent the killing of
innocents. Especially those who are utterly
incapable of speaking for themselves.
Inability
to plead for your life should not be sufficient grounds for
killing you.
If
this woman can be murdered, with the active help of the courts
that granted permission and blocked legislators from changing
the law, then who is safe?
I
suppose that my son Charlie Ben, who spoke very few words
in his life and could not sit or stand or feed himself for
all seventeen of his years — I suppose that under this new
system of killing “for their own good,” I, as his parent,
could have decided to stop feeding him and let him die.
But
no. Isn’t this odd? Just because we were able to use
a spoon and a tippy-cup to get food
into his body, it would have been criminal negligence and
I would have been convicted — rightly — of murder.
Fortunately,
such an act never crossed my mind during his lifetime, and,
if it had, would have been met with shame and loathing. So
he had all seventeen of the years his body gave him. He was
often happy, but sometimes sad and frustrated. He was cut
off from certain kinds of relationships, yet he managed to
bring joy and understanding to many people whose lives he
touched.
Most
emphatically, it was a life worth living.
And
this poor woman — even if the only thing
she can “do” is receive the loving service of her family,
who is to say that this is not sufficient reason for her life
to continue?
Even
if her survival is only a testament to the importance of life
in our society, is that not a good reason for her to
stay alive?
*
We
cannot get inside the head of someone else even when they
can speak. So to take the life of someone based on
speculation about what they “would have wanted” is arrogant
at best, monstrous at worst.
So
what if she might have said at one time, “I wouldn’t want
to live like that”? She was only speculating herself at that
time, guessing at how she would feel.
How
many times have you ever said, “If that ever happens
to me, then I hope you’ll just kill me”?
Even
people suffering from such dark depression that they say they
want to die — who is to say that at some later time they might
have a completely different desire? But once they’re dead,
they can’t change their mind.
We
can’t prevent death indefinitely — it comes to everyone in
the end. Sometimes it comes to those who are tragically young,
as a murderer steals them from their beds, or a tsunami sweeps
them out of their homes, or some enemy hacks them to death
because they’re of the wrong tribe ... terrible things happen.
But
when we can preserve a life, how dare we not do our
best to do so?
Not
just for the sake of that particular life, but for the sake
of all the others who will be murdered once we open the floodgates
and allow selfish people to kill those helpless ones who inconvenience
them.
Once
we accept the premise that it’s permissible — or even noble
— to kill the helpless, then where do we draw the line?
If
a civilization ceases protecting the weak and innocent from
the strong and selfish, then what, precisely, is civilization
for?
Imagine
a woman who had an abortion but also had a couple of children
who lived. What would we think of her if she ever said —
or thought — “I only wish I’d aborted the others”?
We
know exactly what we think of people who murder children —
their own or other people’s.
How
is Terry Schiavo not eligible for the special protection we
give to children? Just because it’s an injury that makes
her as helpless as a newborn; just because she doesn’t seem
to have the potential of “growing out of it”; how dare we
let her be murdered — and call ourselves civilized?
And
if the judiciary actively conspires in the murder of such
innocents, who will protect them then?
*
There
are people whose lives are not worth living — or at least
do not justify to society at large the trouble of keeping
them alive. The murderers and torturers and ravishers of
children, for instance — to protect innocents from
them, a decent society might well choose to save all their
future victims by killing the conscienceless perpetrator.
Yet
because life is so precious, decent people are loath to use
the death penalty, because it’s possible for the prosecutors
to be wrong. Better to keep a thousand perpetrators of evil
alive than to suffer one to be executed innocently.
But
those who have harmed no one, whose only offense is to remain
alive while being helpless, we can kill them.
We
have forgotten how to be appropriately outraged. We can see
people frothing at the mouth both for and against a promiscuous
President, we can see people furious that others eat meat
or wear fur or drill for oil in frozen wastelands — but starve
a lone and helpless woman in the hospital, and ... where is
the rage at such a wrong?
We
talk about how terrible it is, and then shrug and say, “But
what can I do?”
Why
do we let the hypothetical trump the real?
We
do it with our current abortion law: In order to save hypothetical
women who might die from illegal back-alley abortions,
we allow the killing of millions of separate human organisms
for no better reason than their erstwhile parents’ convenience.
Likewise,
because Terry Schiavo might hypothetically prefer death to her current
state, we seem poised to allow the very real woman
to be starved to death despite the desperate concern of her
family who want her to be kept alive.
It
is death that trumps life in this twisted, sick, upside down
version of America we live in now.
Thus
evil wins over and corrupts a whole society, because by our
silence or inaction, our selfishness or laziness, we conspire
in the slaughter of the innocents.
What
is our quality of life, as a civilization, when this
is what we tolerate?
Miss
Liberty’s promise is false after all. Send us no more “huddled
masses yearning to breathe.” There is no such right in our
country anymore, and no one left to protect it.
We
have nothing to teach the world if we let this murder be carried
out before our eyes, with the consent of our judges.
If
only Terry Schiavo had been convicted
of some crime. Then the governor could stay her execution.
If
she starves to death, something dies in all of us; and not
a small thing, either, unless we have made it small by our
lack of compassion for the helpless.
Let’s
act on an old slogan that promotes life: “Love conquers all.”
It
is not love of any kind that arrogantly says, “Better to be
dead than live like that.”
My
answer is, Better to be stupid than to be so “smart” you think
you have the right to judge innocent lives as not worth living,
just because you wouldn’t wish to live it yourself.
Originally
published in the Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC
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