Congress oversteps with Schiavo case

Terri Schiavo's heart stopped beating when she was 26 years old. Revived by doctors, her brain was severely damaged. She was not much older than we are.

Today, Terri Schiavo is 41, and the fight over whether to keep her alive is dominating public debate. Her husband has been fighting for years to have her feeding tube removed, insisting that his wife would not want to live in a vegetative state. Her parents have denounced their son-in-law and enlisted the help of right to life advocates and congressmen to keep their daughter alive. In the midst of this struggle, our politicians have embraced hypocrisy, contorting the legal system and endorsing a simplistic, 30 second spot kind of morality. They have abused their powers and done a disservice to us all.

The legal case surrounding Schiavo's life or death has become almost absurd. Her husband has availed himself of the process to which he, as his wife's guardian, is entitled. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Schiavo's favor, both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused requests from his in-laws to hear the case. Schiavo's case should have been closed.

But congressmen know a winning issue when they see one, and nothing sells better than being anti-death. Representatives rushed back from vacation to pass a bill granting the federal courts jurisdiction over Schiavo's case, and President Bush, abandoning his advocacy of states' rights, returned from his ranch in Texas to sign the bill into law. The legislation makes clear that it does not intend to set a precedent. It is designed only to move Schiavo's case into the federal court system, where, it is hoped, a different outcome will be reached.

This bill makes a mockery of the legal system. It says that we are not all equal under the law, that those with whom the majority political party agrees will be provided extra protection. It says that jurisdiction and procedural fairness are irrelevant if they produce an outcome Congress does not like. It says that justice is whatever Congress decides it is.

The constitutionality of our legislature's action is questionable at best, and a federal judge has already refused to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted. What is almost as offensive as Congress' lack of respect for the division of powers is the simplistic stance its members have taken on the Schiavo case. American politicians often sell the public short, assuming we can not or will not understand nuanced issues of policy or morality. The argument to keep Terri Schiavo alive is simple. Life is sacred. We must preserve it. But there is a more nuanced argument to be made about what constitutes a life worth living and who should make that decision. I do not know that I would want to remain alive if I could not speak or think or survive without a feeding tube. I do not know that I would want to be remembered that way. I believe in the value of life. I believe that what happens to my life is a decision that I and those closest to me should make.

It is easy to paint Michael Schiavo as a villain. He wants to remove his wife's feeding tube; he lives with another woman. Our president and his brother, the governor of Schiavo's home state, have declared him unfit to be his wife's guardian. Yet no one has been able to answer a crucial question: if this man is so cruel, why would he not abandon his wife's cause, leaving her to her family? Perhaps, for once, the cynical view is not the right one. Perhaps Michael Schiavo wants to carry out the wishes he says his wife expressed to him before her heart stopped beating; perhaps he is merely doing the best he can in the face of tragedy.

I do not know Michael Schiavo, nor do the congressmen who rushed to pass legislation aiding his wife's family. I do not know whether he has his wife's best interests at heart. What I do know is that our country has a system designed to make just that determination, to weigh the merits of his guardianship and to hear testimony from doctors about his wife's condition. I do know that no matter how many times the President talks about a "culture of life," no matter how many videotapes of this woman are released on the Internet, the decision between life and death is not a simple one. I only wish Congress knew this much. Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.