Consistent Life News
Issue #5, Fall 2005
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Why should the progressive community
care about Terri Schiavo?
by Lana Jacobs

In March of this year, I witnessed state ordered euthanasia. It is not the first time or the last that we will see this. Most of the euthanasia we see is perpetrated by insurance companies and state funded Medicaid.

The disability community has a lot to teach us about life and its value. Many people are not aware that the death with dignity movement came out of the managed health care movement perpetrated by the corporate insurance companies in the early 1990s.

To many people in the disability liberation movement, death with dignity and assisted suicide are euphemisms for "duty to die" to make it easier on insurance companies and caregivers.

That is the crux of the matter. It is not about us. It is about valuing life and caring for those who cannot care for themselves.

The issue was never about recovery. The issue is valuing people with disabilities. Terri was not dying and she was not brain dead. She was a disabled woman. Even in the disability community, there is often a hierarchy, and women who cannot speak are at the bottom. The reason it took her 13 days to die was that she was healthy.

We also must explore the feminist issue of ownership of Terri. Where else can a man have a common law wife and children and order the execution of his other wife? As a feminist, I am outraged at the concept of Terri's body being owned by her husband . Where were the feminists to speak for a sister who could not speak for herself?

Since we as a society value people for what they produce, rather than their existence, we cannot value people who do not enhance corporate and government structures. The very value of people is reduced to monetary issues. God gave us those to care for as a means for us to learn compassion and skills that we cannot learn from our culture unless we value all life. I contest the concept of burden as it is used in our culture. Rather, the most vulnerable, be they homeless people, disabled people, unborn children, those on death row and those who are victims of war are entrusted to us to value and protect and speak on their behalf when needed. Life choices are not about our comfort. We just are not allowed to take life. It seems simple, but it is layered in culture and euphemism.

Let us strip away the euphemism that clouds our judgment. Father Daniel Berrigan was asked by a student at St. Louis University to comment on the military response to 9-11 as justified. Fr Berrigan simply said we are not allowed to kill. We are not allowed to kill. It really is that simple.

This is why I was arrested for trying to take water to Terri. I did not plan it. There was no press release and no staging of action. I was trying to save a life. It was that simple. Terri was being killed and I could not stand by and allow it to happen. I stood there with my daughter, a disabled woman, and knew that I must act as a mother, as a human rights activist and as a Christian. The only peace I felt through Holy Week was when I was in jail, because I had done what I could to stop state-ordered killing.

On June 6th, I stood before a judge charged with trespassing at the hospice. The judge gave me a day of probation and no fine. I am home with my family at the Catholic Worker caring for homeless mentally ill people once more. I will never forget the effect Terri has had on me and all the others her life has touched. She is a martyr for all of us to examine life and how we respond to the call to choose life, not death.

Lana Jacobs is a Consistent Life activist and part of the Catholic Worker community in Columbia, Missouri.