Friday, April 01, 2005

John Kass: Beware of Letting the Unacceptable Become the Norm

Published April 1, 2005
The Chicago Tribune

Terri Schiavo died of forced starvation and dehydration in a nation that keeps telling itself it protects the helpless.It took almost two weeks to kill her, finally, by denying her food and water.

And make no mistake. She didn't "pass on." She wasn't "taken." She may have "found peace," but these are passive terms. What happened to her was active. She was killed.

She was actively denied food and water for 13 days, her cells dying, until she was pronounced dead at 9:05 a.m. Thursday.

I suppose that no matter which side of this you're on, you'll have questions. Those of you who think she should have died will wonder: When will people like me ever shut up about this?

And those of us on the other side will wonder which disability will next be judged as not affording an adequate quality of life? Whose lives are worthy?

But there is another question that won't let go of me: How did we get to this place, where we've come to accept what was done to Terri Schiavo?

What was once horrible has now become acceptable, familiar the way a landscape becomes familiar. No matter how gruesome or spectacular, over time you become used to it. Eventually, you can walk through it without feeling any need to comment.

And that's what's being urged now, a general consensus forming by those who don't want to hear complaints, that it's time to be silent about Schiavo, that we shouldn't give offense, that we should accept her death as inevitable, perhaps rationalize her death as a blessing.

Just as the announcement came over the radio that Schiavo had died, I was reading a compelling column by John Leo in the current edition of U.S. News and World Report about bioethics and how its practitioners have encouraged us to accept the monstrous.

He quoted Rev. Richard Neuhaus, editor of the religious journal First Things. Here is the Neuhaus quote, and I hope to memorize it:"Thousands of ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable, until it is finally established as the unexceptional."

I'm not a flat-worlder. I don't believe dinosaur bones were left behind by demons to confuse us. Galileo Galilei should never have been forced to recant. But just think of what we've been confronted with and asked to accept in a handful of years:Designer babies. And choosing the sex of the child. The use of human embryos in medical research to benefit and perhaps one day perpetuate the lives of larger, more powerful human beings. And cloning, which will bring questions about mining another being's organs, and who lives, and who dies.

Some of it is here, and some of it is almost here. It is rushing at us. Setting the science aside, our collective attitude toward it all--what we're willing to accept--suggests a profound change in the way we think of our humanity. And what worries me is that I don't think we're ready for it, or that we want to prepare ourselves for what's coming as these attitudes change.

It's easier to have the argument framed for us, as the argument about Schiavo was framed, that it was her right to die, that the federal government should not intrude on such a private family matter, and that families help their terminally ill and suffering loved ones die every day.

Put it that way, and I might agree.

But she was not in pain. She was not suffering from cancer. She was not terminally ill with some other disease. She was not on an artificial respirator. She had severe brain damage, but there were questions as to whether she possessed some brain function.

She had parents and siblings who wanted to care for her and provide the basics, like food and water. She was helpless, like a baby.

And now many accept euthanasia, through the killing of this human being on the grounds that hers wasn't a life worth living, if it was a life, as those who support her husband's right to have her killed believe. In this, we've become the Spartans. They threw their disabled and infirm children on the rocks to die.

I don't wish to anger you, if you're one of those who disagree and think that the brain-damaged woman was a vegetable, although comparing her to a vegetable was a way of dehumanizing her and making her easier to kill. I'm not looking forward to offending you, or to being called arrogant, or intolerant, or ignorant of my own faith.

Still, it is probably best that we've been angry on all sides of this, angry and loud. This is about life and death and the quality of life and who decides what constitutes a life worth living. It would be terrible if we were polite and restrained. The silence would be horrible.

It is the center of what Neuhaus said that has concerned me for years. We've been primed by reasonable argument to accept what was once absolutely unacceptable, like the killing of Terri Schiavo.

jskass@tribune.com
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