The Schiavo Case and the Right to Life-

The overly publicized case of Terri Schiavo has become the new face/case to truly highlight the extent to which right to life religious fundies will go to prove a point. We get the message(albeit wack), Ms. Schiavo should be granted the right to life, but at what cost. This woman has been suffering for fifteen years and for the purposes of some inequitable political agenda or the “culture of life,” must suffer more.
It is important to note that her parents have been spearheading this issue and as reported in the NYT yesterday,
[They] have been backed by an ad hoc coalition of Catholic and evangelical lobbyists, street organizers and legal advisers like the Rev. Frank Pavone, the Catholic priest who runs a group called Priests for Life and evangelical Protestants like Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Pat Mahoney of the National Clergy Council.This is a pretty scary alliance. The article goes on to talk of how this alliance has extended to “promoting sexual abstinence education and opposing stem-cell research and euthanasia.“ Hello, SCARY!
This case has been voted down by Congress and is back in State courts, but as said in another NYT article,
At times this week, it almost seemed as if the Bush brothers were working in tandem; the governor’s decision to re-enter the case once the White House had dropped it in the face of repeated judicial rebuffs may have saved the president criticism from the right.
Shocker. I know this issue has been going on for a while and getting way too much publicity, but we gotta pay attention. Many folks have argued that this is not in fact a political move on behalf of Jeb Bush, but that he actually cares. Sorry, the evidence is pretty clear.
Also check out this column about it in NYT by Maureen Dowd. She points out how awesome it is that we are warring in Iraq with fear of religious fundamentalists detering democracy, when, well…you get it!