Left Field
by Patricia Nell Warren

Terri Schiavo’s spirit has finally crossed all the way over the Great Divide, from that twilight canyon where she was trapped for years. She leaves behind an America that is more and more bitterly polarized on two questions. How much real ownership should people have over their own lives? How much ownership should a government presume to have over the lives of its citizens, that it can intervene as it did in Schiavo’s case?

I haven’t seen much media comment on the long, painful history of this issue in Western civilization. And I haven’t seen a peep from the AIDS media, about how Schiavo’s case might affect the fates of terminally ill people living with AIDS who decide to end their lives. 

We can look back over 2,000 years to a point in time when the arguments started.  In ancient Rome, the head of any family (pater familias) was obligated by the Twelve Tables of Law to put to death any newborn child of his that had visible deformities. This may seem harsh to us. But the Romans lacked the extreme medical resources that we have; in their view, such children would not have a life worth living.  Romans had a similar attitude towards suicide. Adults who wanted to end their own lives for any reason, including not wishing to linger in serious illness, were not discouraged from doing so—in fact, they were supported in their final hour. Romans saw suicide as an act of free will that protected a person’s personal dignity.

When Catholicism captured the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the first theologians went to war on old pagan practices. Infanticide was outlawed in 374 A.D.  Suicide and mercy killing of any kind were condemned. In the church’s view, God alone held the ownership of life. It was the individual’s duty (the church said) to persevere in life as long as God wished, even if that meant long years of suffering from deformity or disease. When the Protestant Reformation hit Catholicism in the sixteenth century, Protestants didn’t break fellowship with Catholics on this issue. 

Today, with the nightmare scenarios created by medicine’s extreme power to keep people alive, this ancient issue has come back to haunt us. Even devout believers often find it hard to hold the line when they’re compelled to watch the sufferings of their own loved ones. Some years ago, the family of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay made the decision not to let their sick father linger on a ventilator. Yet DeLay, a Protestant, had no problem taking a high profile on the Schiavo case, siding with the Catholic parents of Terri Schiavo who insisted that she be kept alive. DeLay doesn’t consider himself a hypocrite, though he was party to pulling the plug on his own father. Indeed, ultraconservative Catholics and Protestants join forces on the issue, using Schiavo’s case to strengthen the position of the so-called “right-to-life” movement.

For the AIDS world, the Schiavo case brings the haunting reminder that some people living with AIDS may find themselves in this situation. In the epidemic’s earlier days, when there was virtually no legal support for the “right to die,” we heard a lot about the underground mercy network that quietly helped patients obtain the necessary drugs to end their own lives, because they didn’t want to linger in physical circumstances that they found insupportable. In the early 1990s, one gay man I knew was put back in the hospital several times by his family and kept going with extreme means, until in desperation he finally evaded their control and died “by his own hand,” as the Romans would say.  

In the last ten years, some United States judges and state legislatures have made progress on creating wiggle room for free will and personal dignity. After Schiavo’s death, thousands of Americans rushed to record their living wills, so their final wishes are legally on record. But the political forces who would deny ownership of life to the individual are gearing up to roll back this progress. 

The media are fond of reminding us that people with AIDS live longer today. But let’s not forget that around 15,000 Americans still die of AIDS every year. The issue is a gut-wrenching one, and it hasn’t gone away.

Author of fiction bestsellers and provocative commentary, Patricia Nell Warren has her writings archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by e-mail at patriciawarren@aol.com.

May 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved.