this *was* your life.
hopping around the blogosphere this week, i've noticed many a post about terri schiavo. one blogger made the stock comment that this is a private tragedy made cruelly political and public. we should all get out of their business.
that's true, i thought. hope that never happens to my family.
then i remembered that it did.
it was the mid-to-late 70s, well before my consciousness, but the l.i.t. family was beginning to feel as tragedy-prone as a clan of Colorado Kennedys. my college-aged uncle had recently died when he and a buddy mixed booze and the icy twists of Monarch Pass. everyone was still in mourning when the news took a turn for the worse, and our family became part of the news.
my father's pregnant cousin had been running errands with her daughter (and my playmate) shannon, in the car. there was an accident. shannon was thrown from the car, but survived. her mother was brain dead, with the baby still alive inside her.
the family was faced with a moral and medical dilemma: should they keep the body alive to save the baby? the baby wasn't yet able to survive on its own, and the mother, absent a miracle, surely never would again. at the time, this crisis also presented an opportunity: if the doctors could save the baby, it would be a medical breakthrough. through no fault of my family's, the story became front-page news.
i don't remember how long it lasted, but the baby survived, for a time. but the pain, and the publicity, were intense. after the lapse of a few days--(or was it weeks? i don't know)--the baby died, and the scrutiny faded. the mother was removed from life support and given a proper, and private, funeral.
the details, for me, are fuzzy because i don't remember any of this first-hand. and it's not exactly lore in the l.i.t. family. i do recall discussing it once in high school with my father. "did they pull the plug themselves, dad?" i asked. "did they let the baby die?"
"i don't know," he said. "no one ever discussed exactly what happened."
politically, one would expect my parents to side with schiavo's parents in a matter like this. after all, they are fiercely anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-right-to-die. "pro-life," as the partisans call it. politically, this seems to them the moral path.
but privately, i know they feel differently. my father's cousin's death was never a political issue. her life, her fertility, her ability to "bear" the child inside her were exclusively family issues. though i will never know, i like to think my family was able to make a *decision* about her death and have it respected in the halls of the hospital and the halls of the law.
to me, there is nothing distinctly moral about prolonging pain. there is nothing absolutely, ethically "right" about keeping schiavo alive. if cain, abel, adam and eve had sets of clear moral choices, every technological advance since exile from eden has created moral ambiguities. advanced medical science leaves us with advanced issues of ethics. issues present choices, and personal choices must be made privately.
the partisans in the fight over my father's cousin were battling for SCIENCE and OPPORTUNITY and, in a way, LIFE. they had no right to be there. because at the end of the day, they were only there for their own egos.
jeb, w, and de lay have no business in the schiavo fight, either. they're attempting to rewrite the law of family (that parents should have more decisional weight over spouse) and of church/state relations (that the church has a role in these intimate decisions). and they're doing it with the most selfish of motives.
so, yeah, i wouldn't wish this most personal of debates upon anyone. and now that i've inserted myself into another family's personal life ... i'm going to get out. right. now.
that's true, i thought. hope that never happens to my family.
then i remembered that it did.
it was the mid-to-late 70s, well before my consciousness, but the l.i.t. family was beginning to feel as tragedy-prone as a clan of Colorado Kennedys. my college-aged uncle had recently died when he and a buddy mixed booze and the icy twists of Monarch Pass. everyone was still in mourning when the news took a turn for the worse, and our family became part of the news.
my father's pregnant cousin had been running errands with her daughter (and my playmate) shannon, in the car. there was an accident. shannon was thrown from the car, but survived. her mother was brain dead, with the baby still alive inside her.
the family was faced with a moral and medical dilemma: should they keep the body alive to save the baby? the baby wasn't yet able to survive on its own, and the mother, absent a miracle, surely never would again. at the time, this crisis also presented an opportunity: if the doctors could save the baby, it would be a medical breakthrough. through no fault of my family's, the story became front-page news.
i don't remember how long it lasted, but the baby survived, for a time. but the pain, and the publicity, were intense. after the lapse of a few days--(or was it weeks? i don't know)--the baby died, and the scrutiny faded. the mother was removed from life support and given a proper, and private, funeral.
the details, for me, are fuzzy because i don't remember any of this first-hand. and it's not exactly lore in the l.i.t. family. i do recall discussing it once in high school with my father. "did they pull the plug themselves, dad?" i asked. "did they let the baby die?"
"i don't know," he said. "no one ever discussed exactly what happened."
politically, one would expect my parents to side with schiavo's parents in a matter like this. after all, they are fiercely anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-right-to-die. "pro-life," as the partisans call it. politically, this seems to them the moral path.
but privately, i know they feel differently. my father's cousin's death was never a political issue. her life, her fertility, her ability to "bear" the child inside her were exclusively family issues. though i will never know, i like to think my family was able to make a *decision* about her death and have it respected in the halls of the hospital and the halls of the law.
to me, there is nothing distinctly moral about prolonging pain. there is nothing absolutely, ethically "right" about keeping schiavo alive. if cain, abel, adam and eve had sets of clear moral choices, every technological advance since exile from eden has created moral ambiguities. advanced medical science leaves us with advanced issues of ethics. issues present choices, and personal choices must be made privately.
the partisans in the fight over my father's cousin were battling for SCIENCE and OPPORTUNITY and, in a way, LIFE. they had no right to be there. because at the end of the day, they were only there for their own egos.
jeb, w, and de lay have no business in the schiavo fight, either. they're attempting to rewrite the law of family (that parents should have more decisional weight over spouse) and of church/state relations (that the church has a role in these intimate decisions). and they're doing it with the most selfish of motives.
so, yeah, i wouldn't wish this most personal of debates upon anyone. and now that i've inserted myself into another family's personal life ... i'm going to get out. right. now.
posted by legally intoxicated at
8:40 AM
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