The Amer­i­can Street offers the Guardian ad Litem’s find­ings about Ter­ry Schi­avo’s parents:

Tes­ti­mo­ny pro­vid­ed by mem­bers of the Schindler fam­i­ly includ­ed very per­son­al state­ments about their desire and inten­tion to ensure that There­sa remain alive. Through­out the course of the lit­i­ga­tion, depo­si­tion, and trail tes­ti­mo­ny by mem­bers of the Schindler fam­i­ly voiced the dis­turb­ing belief that they would keep There­sa alive at any and all costs. Near­ly grue­some exam­ples were giv­en, elic­it­ing agree­ment by fam­i­ly mem­bers that in the event There­sa should con­tract dia­betes and sub­se­quent gan­grene in each of her limbs, they would agree to ampu­tate each limb, and would then, were she to be diag­nosed with heart dis­ease, per­form open heart surgery. There was addi­tion­al, dif­fi­cult tes­ti­mo­ny that appeared to estab­lish that despite the sad and unde­sir­able con­di­tion of There­sa, the par­ents still derived joy from hav­ing her alive, even if There­sa might not be at all aware of her envi­ron­ment giv­en the per­sis­tent veg­e­ta­tive state. With­in the tes­ti­mo­ny, as part of the hypo­thet­i­cals pre­sent­ed, Schindler fam­i­ly mem­bers stat­ed that even if There­sa had told them of her inten­tion to have arti­fi­cial nutri­tion with­drawn, they would not do it. Through­out this painful and dif­fi­cult tri­al, the fam­i­ly acknowl­edged that There­sa was in a diag­nosed per­sis­tent veg­e­ta­tive state.

(My empha­sis.)

They don’t want to keep her on life sup­port because of her life, they want to keep her as warm ted­dy bear. I would­n’t want them car­ing for me. I would­n’t want to be chopped up to keep blood flow­ing through some small piece of me. 

Else­where at TAS, the point is made that the Repub­li­cans are mak­ing a broad point while pro­gres­sives make nar­row, almost seman­tic points. I agree, and think that more atten­tion should be paid to the issue of indi­vid­ual liberties.

The divi­sion between author­i­tar­i­ans and lib­er­als (in the most clas­si­cal sense) is that author­i­tar­i­ans think that some selec­torate should make com­plex moral choic­es on behalf of indi­vid­u­als. Clas­sic lib­er­al­ism, the ide­ol­o­gy that found­ed Amer­i­can pol­i­tics (and has a con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al wing), holds that indi­vid­u­als should make their choic­es unless those choic­es will harm oth­er peo­ple. Under the Amer­i­can sys­tem, indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties rule until the exer­cise of those lib­er­ties inter­feres with oth­er liberties.

As it hap­pens, this is where the divide between the pro-choice and anti-abor­tion move­ments falls. Pro-choice means that you don’t think the gov­ern­ment should be mak­ing com­plex moral bal­anc­ing acts, and should leave that to indi­vid­u­als until those actions affect anoth­er per­son. Roe v. Wade estab­lish­es a high­er lev­el of state inter­est as preg­nan­cies progress; the fetus becomes a greater lev­el of con­cern for the state as it devel­ops. The begin­ning and end of life are not hard boundaries.

I’ve watched some­one die, so I know that a nat­ur­al death hap­pens in stages. I’ll blog that event lat­er; this isn’t the time or place. It was­n’t a polit­i­cal event. But I will say that the life left him slow­ly and peace­ful­ly over sev­er­al days. There was a sharp change at the last instant, but any­one could tell that he was dimin­ished in the day before the end. I can’t say what was dimin­ished, but there was some­thing that changed over a long time, fol­lowed by an instant of final­i­ty. I’ve nev­er been preg­nant, but I under­stand that there’s a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence at the begin­ning of life. 

Where and how you draw the edges of life is a per­son­al, moral deci­sion, and it isn’t any­one else’s busi­ness. A per­son with ter­mi­nal ill­ness who wants to end their suf­fer­ing should have the option. A per­son who is uncon­scious should be able to leave instruc­tions for fam­i­ly, and the gov­ern­ment should­n’t interfere.

The author­i­tar­i­ans dis­agree. They think the gov­ern­ment knows best about the most com­pli­cat­ed moral issues of the day. 

As David­NYC puts it at Dai­lyKos puts it:

If only these guys demand­ed such cer­tain­ty in death penal­ty cas­es, I might almost believe them. In any event, this effort is almost cer­tain to fail, as is any appeal to the Supreme Court. I pray that this cir­cus soon draws to a close, so that the Schi­avos might actu­al­ly be afford­ed a lit­tle pri­va­cy and dig­ni­ty at a very try­ing time.

A man was con­vict­ed of mur­der today for starv­ing, dehy­drat­ing, and over­heat­ing 19 ille­gal immi­grants in his truck. Why do those 19 hor­rif­ic deaths deserve less atten­tion than the death Ter­ry Schi­a­vo had asked for?

Why do the dai­ly star­va­tion deaths in Sudan deserve less Con­gres­sion­al atten­tion, let alone the tor­ture and mur­der by Amer­i­can sol­diers in Afghan and Iraqi pris­ons? A Lex­is-Nex­is search on the Con­gres­sion­al Record turns up 43 doc­u­ments con­tain­ing: “abu ghraib” w/10 tor­ture. A broad­er search turns up 130 for: (abu ghraib) w/10 (abuse or tor­ture). There are 91 hits for: Schi­a­vo. Is Ter­ry Schi­a­vo almost as impor­tant as the mur­der of chil­dren in our prisons? 

There are 182 hits for a search on: death penal­ty w/10 inno­cent. Is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Con­gress may be respon­si­ble for the exe­cu­tion of inno­cent peo­ple only twice as impor­tant as a woman choos­ing to die with dig­ni­ty, rather than being hacked up to the small­est func­tion­ing part?

When we restrict the search to the cur­rent ses­sion of con­gress, the death penal­ty search returns 3 results, while there are 54 hits for Schi­a­vo. This isn’t 18 times more impor­tant than the state bear­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for inno­cent deaths. Sudan was men­tioned in 64 parts of the CR for this ses­sion. Sure­ly geno­cide is more than equal to this one woman.

I guess that’s why I’m not an author­i­tar­i­an conservative.