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The right-thinking response to the Terri Schiavo case reminds me of my own actions on some warm afternoons when I sat on the swing on our front porch. I'd be reading a magazine or just gazing off at Tenderfoot Hill when our dog would start barking and running up and down the fence in response to a pedestrian on the sidewalk.
Naturally, I'd yell at the dog to shut up. This was not
for the dog's benefit. It was for the ears of the
pedestrian. It was my way of saying Yes, I know my dog
is annoying you. I care about this, and as you can tell by
my shouting, I am trying to do something about it.
Even
so, I didn't actually get up and do anything about the dog,
like put her in the back yard, or spend time trying to
teach her not to bark at pedestrians.
Similarly, the blustering about Terri Schiavo was not
for her benefit, but for a public facade. It was a way for
politicians to say I care about life,
without
actually doing anything to make sure more Americans
lived.
As you may recall, Schiavo was a Florida woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990, with no meaningful brain activity and no prospect of recovery known to medical science. Her husband, Michael, said she would not have wanted to live this way, and he requested that her feeding tube be removed so that nature could take its course. Her parents and siblings said she was not really in a persistent vegetative state and sought legal guardianship so that the feeding tube could remain.
Florida courts found in favor of the husband who, in 1998, filed a petition to discontinue her life support. This went through various appeals, upholding the husband. In 2003, the Florida legislature passed a special law so that Gov. Jeb Bush could intervene. Last fall, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the state constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused a hearing because it had no authority over a state matter.
To get this before the federal courts, our Republican Congress went into special session last month and passed a special law that allowed the Schiavo case into the federal courts -- which ruled just the same way as the Florida courts. Her feeding tube was removed on March 18, and she died March 31.
How did the Washington frenzy -- a special session of Congress during its Easter recess, along with President George W. Bush flying back to the Capitol from Texas -- indicate a regard for human life?
Simply put, it didn't. Air Force One costs about $60,000 an hour to operate. Figure at least two hours for the special trip, and there's $120,000 for political grandstanding that would have purchased immunizations for 8,000 children to protect them against measles, tetanus, whooping cough, tuberculosis, polio and diphtheria.
The vaccinations would save dozens of lives, and improve hundreds. But what's that compared to the contrived drama of jetting from Crawford to Washington to be able to sign the Schiavo bill the instant it arrived at the White House?
As for Congress, there's the cost of the travel for the two days of special session for the Schiavo bill. But let's consider just the two days, which is two days more than this Congress has devoted to giving America a health-care system that is at least as good as, say, Spain's. Our infant mortality rate is 6.8 (number of deaths of children under 1 year old per 1,000 live births), Spain's is 4.9.
In 2000 (the most recent year for which statistics are at hand), there were 4,058,814 live births in the United States. With our infant mortality rate, that means 27,600 of those babies perished before their first birthday. With Spain's lower rate, only 19,888 would have died during their first year. The difference is 7,712.
That's about 21 babies dying each day in this country, babies who wouldn't have died in a country that has one of those horrible socialized health-care systems so despised by our Republican Congress. To put it another way, 42 babies died needlessly while our representatives were posturing about Terri Schiavo.
There is a difference between actually caring about human life, and making noises about caring for human life. The blustering of Congress and the President to show their support for life meant just as much as my shouting at the dog for the benefit of pedestrians -- that is, absolutely nothing.
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