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Thursday, February 12, 2009 A Terry Schiavo Case in Italy By Gina Liggett @ 12:01 AM Remember in 2005 when then-President Bush rushed back to Washington to get the Republican-dominated Congress to intervene directly in the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case? Terry Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, alive only because she was receiving nutrition through a feeding tube. Her husband and legal guardian--who knew she would never want to live like that--fought Terry's staunchly Catholic family in the court system for years over her right to die in such a circumstance. A Florida state appeals court agreed with Terry's husband and allowed the feeding tube to be removed in spring of 2005. Out of all legal options, the family went to the top of the political ladder, and got President Bush and his religious-right powerhouse in Congress to counteract that ruling. Congress passed, and Bush signed, emergency legislation, sending the case back to the federal court. But wisely, the federal court did not overrule the previous decision. The feeding tube was not reinserted, and Terry was allowed to die. The case was a sickening display of not only the breach of the separation of powers as well as the separation of church and state, but also of how quickly and deeply one's personal life can be penetrated by a government. A federal appeals court judge in Atlanta quite eloquently admonished Congress and the White House for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.” Fast forward to 2009, and there is an eerily similar kind of family nightmare in Italy. A 37-year old woman, Eluana Englaro, has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992. Her father, who claims that her daughter would not want to live in such a vegetative state, has spent years petitioning the Italian court system to allow her to die. Finally, doctors were allowed to implement a medical protocol for withdrawing Eluana's artificial nutrition--that is, until Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, after consulting with the Vatican, issued an emergency decree stating nutrition cannot be withdrawn. Magnifying the absurdity of the Italian government's and Vatican's interference in the private lives of these citizens is the Prime Minister's justification for his decree: physically at least, Eluana was "in the condition to have babies." Allow me to elucidate. Irregardless of the comatose woman's inability to consent to anything, the Italian Prime Minister and the Vatican are in effect saying that it would be acceptable for someone to impregnate this woman, have her body incubate a fetus, then deliver it; but to allow her to die a natural and dignified death by withdrawing artificial nutrition would be immoral, despite what Eluana would have wanted. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who pleaded with Berlusconi to not permit Eluana to die, told him "We have to stop this crime against humanity." (I must say, I find it ludicrous and ironic that the religious institution responsible for the horrific crimes of the medieval Crusades and the systematic enabling of pedophilia in the priesthood has the audacity to say anything about crimes against humanity.) In these two right-to-die cases, Terry and Eluana were young when they suffered their irreversible brain damage and had not made their wishes explicitly known in writing. But those closest to them and legally responsible for making decisions on their behalf have a better idea than the government or the Church about whether or not they would want to linger for decades in an unconscious state. Even more fundamentally important than the ethics of proxy medical decision-making is the right to die. I think this right is a corollary of Ayn Rand's concept of the right to life: "There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life." In their quest to take away the right-to-die, the Vatican and America's Religious Right are basically taking away the right to life, claiming your life belongs to God, not to you. This religious view is the reason the Schiavo family fought Terry's right to die; this was the reason they took their case to a President who actively promulgated religious initiatives; and this is what the Italian father is fighting. Your right to life includes your right to end your life according to your values. If you would not want to be kept alive for decades in a comatose state--and your proxy decision makers know that--then they have the ethical and legal obligation to carry out your wishes. And any governmental or church interference with that right is an immoral and egregious offense to the citizens of a society obligated to uphold their Constitutional rights. Update: Eluana died Monday Feb 9 as legislators debated her case. The Italian government intends to push for an anti-right-to-die law. Labels: Politics, Religion Share |    E-mail Gina Liggett     PermaLink ()    Comments (New Page)   Subscribe to NoodleFood Blog Posts via Feed Reader   via E-mail Subscribe to NoodleCast Podcasts M4A via iTunes (MP3)   via Feed Reader   via E-mail

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	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 8:21:30 mst Comment ID: #1 Name: Vic P Ironically the Vatican allows abortion in the event of rape or incest, however the mother has no right under catholic teaching to choose abortion if the child is severely deformed etc. The real "crime against humanity" which the cardinal laments would be to let this person die and deny the fanatics these endless circuses in the media; while the world burns from all of the problems of overpopulation.
	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:00:21 mst Comment ID: #2 Name: Daniel URL: http://thenearbypen.blogspot.com Wow. I like this article so much because it nails the fundamental political issue: the right to die is a corollary of the right to life. Note that in any choice between the potentially alive and the actual living, the religionists do not seem to pause for a second before demanding that the latter be sacrificed to the former. In so doing--whether in the case of a pregnant teenager or the people who must pay for a comotose patient--they reveal that it is not life or happiness they hold in esteem, but suffering and death. As it happens, the idea that the living should be sacrificed for the basically dead though potentially alive, is intricately tied in with the plot-theme of the first short-story I've written--that is worth sharing. It will probably be up at my blog within a month or two...
	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:25:40 mst Comment ID: #3 Name: A-non-emous Is "irregardless" proper usage?
	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 13:13:56 mst Comment ID: #4 Name: Gina Liggett E-mail: GLiggett(at)comcast.net Yes, irregardless is a word in the Oxford American dictionary. Interesting points by Daniel and Vic.
	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 15:41:59 mst Comment ID: #5 Name: SarahG E-mail: sarah.gelberg(at)att.net I'm going to quibble with the correctness of "irregardless" as it's one of my personal pet peeves. It may be in the dictionary because it's in common usage, but it's really a conflation of "irrespective" and "regardless" and it's not considered standard usage. Adding the "ir" to the beginning of "regardless" doesn't add any clarity to the word--"regardless" would serve just as well. This quibble doesn't affect the timeliness or value of the post, BTW. :-)
	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 20:50:58 mst Comment ID: #6 Name: Richard Watts E-mail: rw1963(at)earthlink.net "(I must say, I find it ludicrous and ironic that the religious institution responsible for the horrific crimes of the medieval Crusades and the systematic enabling of pedophilia in the priesthood has the audacity to say anything about crimes against humanity.)" Well said, Gina. "In their quest to take away the right-to-die, the Vatican and America's Religious Right are basically taking away the right to life, claiming your life belongs to God, not to you." The attitude that one's life belongs to something or someone other than oneself, was the cause of the Crusades, the inquisitions, the burnings of heretics (dissenters) and "witches", and the hundreds of years of similar treatment of human beings by totalitarian Christians. It was the cause of mass slaughter by Communist dictatorships. It's the cause, today, of people being slaughtered like cattle by Muslims. When general populations are willing to submit to totalitarianism, it happens. When people accept the notion that they have no right to their own lives, they submit. I, too, find it bitterly ironic that Catholic Church officials are now posturing about the sanctity of human lives while, in effect, asserting that the individual belongs to the church and the state. Just like old times...
	Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 20:52:46 mst Comment ID: #7 Name: Richard Watts E-mail: rw1963(at)earthlink.net You're right, Daniel.
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