At the End

It is my belief that Terri Schiavo, who she was, what distinguished her from the rest of us, died fifteen years ago. I'd like to state here, as many people have expressed in the last two weeks, that I would not want to be kept alive for fifteen years while my skull slowly filled with spinal fluid and I vegetated. Who am I apart from who I love? And if I cannot express that love, if I can't recognize who I love and the world I love, then isn't my purpose as I understand it over? Furthermore, though I may be of little faith much of the time, I do have faith that this is not all there is, and that if I'm in that situation, I want to jump into the mystery.

Mystical part of blog post over: here's the political part. When Jeb Bush threatened to have DCF take custody of her, I thought: this is it. This is the justification for seizing women who are pregnant in order to protect the "life" of the fetus. Then I thought that this was such a paternalistic move, to ride in on their 7 Horses of Hypocrisy and "save" this poor woman. So much for the sanctity of marriage! I wondered if we would have this same circus if it was a man who was lying in that bed for fifteen years, and I thought not. Men are active, first of all; their lives are defined by what they do, not by what they don't do. Secondly, the sight of men galloping in to save another man is an entirely different spectacle, kind of embarassing: men should protect themselves. It occurred to me that the "permanent vegetative state" is not very far, after all, from the vision the Cons have of women in general: passive, needing protection, unable to express opinion or direct their own lives. It's different in degree, but not in kind.