the precedent

see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.



The Terry Schiavo case has kept my attention, I'll give it that. The pictures of the slack-jawed woman, looking up into her mother's eyes, tell me life is present there. How much, I have no idea. I have not sat down next to her bedside and looked her in the face. I don't know if her eyes are dull or bright. I don't know if she would even know that I am there.

What I do know is that our President signed a bill today. Our entire legislative body, Congress, has decided something lawfully needed to be done. I wasn't aware a bill could be originated for a single person. This is the part I begin to find bone-chilling, not the fact that someone removed an incapacitated woman's feeding tube.

Looking at the big picture here, all I can see is that we have set a precedent. Not about life, but about the extensionary power that the entire government can have into one life, one family. Whether or not Michael Schiavo is attempting to kill his alert, cognisant wife or allow his friend and companion to slip away as she would have wished, I am unaware. I do know that these situations can get incredibly complicated. Now, this complication is compounded beyond belief in the direct involvement of our federal government. What I wonder is, what does this mean for society down the road? What if laws change, but this precedent remains? Vague ideas of slipping away begin to loom in the back of my mind. And it's an altogether different type than Mrs. Schiavo is expereincing.

Back to this actual case. I've got several different angles of thought on the matter, but I don't think I have any conclusive answers on anything. I have also watched with a detached amusement (as is my favorite form of observation with this group of people) the involvement of the religious right. I leave you all with the following quote from an Associated Press article I found on Yahoo! News, by AP writer Vickie Chachere.

"...A crowd of about 50 people prayed and sang outside the hospice on Sunday. One man played "Amazing Grace" on a trumpet, as a pickup truck pulled a trailer bearing 10-foot-high replicas of the stone Ten Commandments tablets and a huge working version of the Liberty Bell. "

Way to go, guys. Way to go. Let's take it to Congress and turn it into a parade.