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Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Here's why there are no hard and fast rules about tough questions
Posted by Jill | 6:35 AM

As the dozen or so regular readers of this blog know, I was appalled at the efforts of opportunistic politicians to inject themselves into the Terri Schiavo case. When it's not our immediate family, and all we know is what we see in press accounts, we tend to rely on both the available information and on our "gut" to sort out how we feel about such high-profile life-and-death situations.

I also happen to believe that there should NEVER be any time in a woman's life when she ceases to be a human being and becomes simply a vessel for a fetus. Laws that would take away a woman's autonomy over her own body just because she's pregnant would do exactly that, and that's why I oppose such laws with every fiber of my being.

But every now and then, you read about a case that would seem to fly in the face of everything you believe, and yet you think, "Well, I think this is OK."

The case of Susan Torres is such a case.

For the pro-life movement, the center of gravity these days isn't the Supreme Court, but the Virginia Hospital Center just across the Potomac River from the Capitol. That is where 26-year-old Susan Torres lies, brain-dead, her body fighting melanoma. The hope is that she will stay alive until her unborn daughter, Cecilia, can be delivered in August.

[snip]

Torres was 15 weeks pregnant when she collapsed from a brain tumor May 7. Her family was never torn about what to do. Everyone understood that Susan was already gone. The Roman Catholic church they attend has no quarrel with the family's decision to remove Torres from life support once the child is born. And no one is threatening to sue to keep her alive.

[snip]

Jason quit his job as a salesman to be with his wife and their 2-year-old son, Peter. Doctors say his little sister has a good chance of survival now that she's beyond 26 weeks. People from Baghdad to New Zealand have sent thousands of letters and more than $400,000 to help pay the medical bills.


Now, if there was ever a case of a woman's body being used as simply a vessel, here it is. And yet, this seems OK to me. First of all, it's clear that this was a wanted pregnancy, which makes all the difference in the world. In 2003, Jeb Bush (it's always Jeb Bush, isn't it?) attempted to have a guardian appointed for the fetus in a case in which a severely retarded 22-year-old woman was pregnant as the result of a rape. The woman's guardian wanted an abortion to be performed (which was the guardian's prerogative in that role), and just as he did repeatedly in the Schiavo case, Jebbie stepped in.

The Torres case is completely different. Here we have a woman with a WANTED pregnancy, who tragically collapsed in her 17th week of pregnancy with metastasized stage four melanoma. The family is under no illusions about whether she's brain-dead, and plans to remove life support after the baby is born -- something with which not even the Catholic Church has a problem. "Susan Torres" is no longer inhabiting that body any more than "Terri Schiavo" was inhabiting hers. Yes, the body IS being used as a vessel, but if it no longer houses the person, and when the person DID inhabit the body, said person wanted said baby.

My "gut" tells me that even though on the surface, this flies in the face of everything I believe, this is OK...not that anyone asked me.

But what both the Torres and Schiavo cases -- and the thousands of different situations Americans face every day in dealing with life and death issues -- have in common is their own individuality. Both are further proof that with Big Issues and Decisions such as abortion and life-or-death issues, the place to deal with them is in the family, NOT in the halls of Congress.
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