I have told myself time after time that I would not write about the Terri Schiavo case. This woman and her entire family have suffered enough, and I want nothing to do with prolonging their pain. Yet the extent of rhetoric and misinformation injected into this case by Republicans has left me no choice but to respond. Moreover, this event has been a lesson in modern American politics and a warning sign of what is to come.
Since the 1960s, America's right has fed the fires of a massive culture war. The issues have been as diverse as abortion, gun rights, gays, crime, drugs and God. They have all been designed to produce fear, anger, hate and, of course, Republican victories. The culture war serves two indispensable functions for the Republican Party: it creates a support base of traditionalist voters who might otherwise follow their economic interests and it distracts from real news and pressing issues.
In the Schiavo case, Republicans were clearly aiming to score points with their pro-life base. Speaking to Christian conservatives at the Family Research Council, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said, One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo
to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America which is, as he expresses it, attacks against the conservative movement against me and against many others. So, God has sent Tom DeLay and the Republicans a woman's life to improve their public relations campaign and cover for DeLay's ethics violations?
Republican politicians have failed miserably to produce significant support from their base or the general public. An ABC News poll from March 21 showed that even among evangelicals, there was 46 percent support for removing Schiavo's feeding tube -versus 44 percent opposed -with support for removing her tube and opposition to federal involvement strong across the political spectrum. A poll from CBS News shows that the congressional approval rating has sunk to 34 percent, the lowest point since 1997, a rating that certainly wasn't helped by unpopular congressional interference in the Schiavo case. One may think that this was a complete loss for the Republicans. However, they have succeeded to distract Congress and the American people from important issues like the budget and DeLay's criminal investigations for two weeks now, a great success.
Right-wing politicization of a woman's life would be scandalous if it wasn't happening to millions every day. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and DeLay were adamant about making sure that Schiavo remained in this world. Unfortunately, both of them want to reduce or eliminate the very resources that helped her to survive for the past 15 years. After the 1990 heart attack that struck the 26-year-old Schiavo, Terri and her husband were awarded $1 million in damages in two medical malpractice cases. Sen. Frist has long sought to cap damages for pain and suffering, as well as eliminate punitive damages in medical malpractice awards. DeLay, who called the removal of the feeding tube an act of medical terrorism
is pushing for at least a $15 billion cut in Medicaid over the next five years. Once health care costs exhausted the amount of the award, Schiavo was dependent on Medicaid for her pills and on the charity of a local hospice providing free care. It's good to know that Frist and DeLay are looking out for her best interests.
Perhaps I am being too hard on DeLay and the Republicans. Maybe they are just very principled people applying standards they themselves live by. For instance, after DeLay's own father was placed in a coma from an accident, the son did everything in his power to keep him alive, didn't he? Actually, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, DeLay decided his father would not want to continue living and denied him dialysis. Charles Ray DeLay died a month after the accident from kidney failure.
For years, Republicans have waged a successful culture war with the help of their pro-life base. But Congressional Republicans' behavior has exposed their political opportunism for all the world to see. How much of the culture of life is politics, not principle? How many Republican politicians are just hypocrites? These are questions that the religious right should have asked itself years ago, and they would be fools not to do so now. The rest of us should wonder how we ever allowed the Republicans to get this far.
-Jess Wilhelm is a sophomore astrophysics major in the Honors Tutorial College. Send him an e-mail at jess.a.wilhelm.1@ohio.edu.
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