Losing Our Rights to the Religious Right
While Terri Schiavo lies in a vegetative state in a Florida hospital bed, I can't help but wonder how the founding fathers must be spinning in their graves. Congress, the legislative body responsible for creating laws designed to protect and serve all Americans, is instead focusing on a segment of society that is more concerned with religious beliefs than individual rights.
Since September 11, 2001, we have seen a consistent erosion of our personal rights in the name of democracy. Congress has become the ruling religious party of the United States. Civil marriage of same-sex couples has replaced civil rights as a congressional concern.
Before her unfortunate accident, Terri Schiavo had expressed her personal belief that a life in which she would be kept alive by artificial means was not a life that she would want to continue. In their grief, her parents have fought to sustain Schiavo’s life at any cost. It is incredibly difficult for any parent to lose a child but, after 15 years of life support, it may finally be time to let go.
They say that love is blind. As they blindly reach out for allies in their struggle to keep their daughter alive, Schiavo’s parents have turned a personal belief into a political firestorm. Congress is working overtime to write a bill that would then be signed into law by a very sympathetic president. The law will keep Schiavo on life support. In addition, it will also give an incredibly conservative Congress and the Religious Right, new ammunition in the right-to-life controversy.
Once again, something very personal has become something very political. The quality of an individual's life has become a political football. Unfortunately, when this battle finally comes to an end, there will be no winners.
Religious Right
Since September 11, 2001, we have seen a consistent erosion of our personal rights in the name of democracy. Congress has become the ruling religious party of the United States. Civil marriage of same-sex couples has replaced civil rights as a congressional concern.
Before her unfortunate accident, Terri Schiavo had expressed her personal belief that a life in which she would be kept alive by artificial means was not a life that she would want to continue. In their grief, her parents have fought to sustain Schiavo’s life at any cost. It is incredibly difficult for any parent to lose a child but, after 15 years of life support, it may finally be time to let go.
They say that love is blind. As they blindly reach out for allies in their struggle to keep their daughter alive, Schiavo’s parents have turned a personal belief into a political firestorm. Congress is working overtime to write a bill that would then be signed into law by a very sympathetic president. The law will keep Schiavo on life support. In addition, it will also give an incredibly conservative Congress and the Religious Right, new ammunition in the right-to-life controversy.
Once again, something very personal has become something very political. The quality of an individual's life has become a political football. Unfortunately, when this battle finally comes to an end, there will be no winners.
Religious Right
posted by Mark Jacobson at 3/18/2005 07:54:00 PM
3 Comments:
And something very personal that has been made political is being directed by a few who are fanatically religious.
I like your idea of uncommon sense. You may be interested in reading my blog at
http://tiabuilder.blogspot.com/
or its home site at
www.billallin.com
There is more available there than you could imagine.
Cheers
Bill
You neglect to notice that the Schiavo case hasn't been and isn't an issue of individual rights or personal rights. Terri Schiavo is not making an individual choice, but Michael, her husband, is.
The main issue surrounds who was or is correct in their understanding of Terri's desire to live or die if incapacitated to the extent she is, as there were no instructions legal, or even written, to go by. All evidence is what others say she said, or not. Your indication that she had expressed this is, in fact, not correct but only based your preference of who to believe.
And, without also going into all the secondary issues surrounding the case which goes towards substantiating, or not, this prmary contention, if compared to the appeal process of a death sentence for a criminal conviction where all avenues are taken to taken to address a person's individual rights, in what regard should this be less so?
That said, nice blog and good luck. I hope to see provocative posts like this often.
As a parent, my heart goes out to Terri's parents. As a human being, my heart goes out to her husband for all he must be going through. This is indeed a private tragedy that has been made far too public. But everything has its purpose, and the purpose of this must be that each of us has a living will so that our loved ones will never be put through this kind of turmoil.
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