VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

It's easy to understand the family and ethical anguish on both sides of the Terri Schiavo spectacle in Florida.

But impossible to respect is the political grandstanding that has turned this poor woman into an ideological sideshow while trashing a legal system that has done its job with extraordinary diligence in the case.

Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have waged a seven-year legal battle over discontinuing her life support after 15 years of vegetative living without cognitive brain function.

In the process, a family tragedy that cried for privacy and dignity became a tawdry national melodrama. Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to see unflattering pictures of her broken body broadcast endlessly.

She would not have wanted Congress to threaten to parade her as a political prop before a televised hearing.

She would not have wanted to be treated this way, with her feeding tube forever connected and disconnected as political and religious partisans fight over her fate.

The case has received fair and unusually thorough legal review, considered by nearly two dozen judges of different ideological stripes.

The courts have consistently concluded that Michael Schiavo is Terri's legal guardian and has the right to terminate her medical care in accordance with wishes he says she expressed before a heart malfunction destroyed her brain.

The courts have accepted prevalent medical opinion that Terri's chances of recovery are hopeless, rejecting the parents' unsupported belief that she could improve with treatment.

But the grief-stricken parents refuse to accept the judicial verdict they solicited and have turned the battle political.

They've found eager accomplices among religious activists who advance the dangerous view that our traditional rule of civil law takes a back seat to some higher law of God when things don't go their way.

The problem is, which of the many interpretations of God's law that are practiced in our religiously diverse nation would we apply?

The move by President Bush and Congress to impose their judgment over the Florida courts by mandating a federal judicial review is an unprecedented perversion of power.

Their job is to enact laws to govern all Americans. To enact a law that governs a single family and specifically excludes all other Americans oversteps their authority in frightening ways and breeds contempt for our judiciary.

The U.S. Supreme Court has already refused to hear appeals in the Schiavo case and ruled in other cases that patients with hopeless medical conditions have a constitutional right to discontinue feeding tubes.

House and Senate leaders repeatedly invoked the Almighty to justify their midnight intervention. Their piety would be easier to swallow if there wasn't a memo circulating among GOP lawmakers extolling the political benefits of pandering to religious fundamentalists.

In signing the law, President Bush said "it is wise to always err on the side of life" when there are "serious questions and substantial doubts."

But he didn't err on the side of life as governor of Texas when he fast-tracked a record 152 executions despite serious questions and substantial doubts about how effectively the death penalty reduces crime, the poor mental capacity and legal representation of many defendants, and denial of DNA tests that potentially could have altered verdicts.

This is not to raise extraneous issues, but to point out that the sanctimonious Bush is not above applying situational ethics to advance political goals. It's long past time for politicians to butt out of Terri Schiavo's life, let the courts do their job and enforce rather than undermine the rule of civil law that is the backbone of our free society.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.