Rescue Terri Schindler?

Two fellow bloggers, for whom I have a great deal of respect, have counselled very strongly against any rescue attempt to save the life of Terri Schindler Schiavo.

Mark Shea, Friday, October 17, 2003, 3:25 PM:

Civil Disobedience, Si! Violence, No!

When people get frustrated by their powerlessness, there is always the temptation to violence or "dramatic action" which (though cathartic) is not necessarily going to do any good. Exhibit A: the idea some people are beginning to voice of essentially attacking Terri's hospice and kidnapping her to save her.

I appreciate the frustration, but this is an extremely bad idea. First of all, because it is absolutely positively *guaranteed* not to achieve the main object: the saving of her life. Assuming her rescuers even made it to the door without dying in a hail of bullets from a SWAT team, there is, frankly nowhere to take her. She needs pretty sophisticated medical technology. That's why she's in a hospice. If you did find someplace that could take her, the cops would be there in a half an hour to arrest everybody involved and to provide "police protection" (Orwell phone your office) so she could be escorted back to the starvation bunker at Auschwitz.

In addition, it is necessary to think about the future. Other channels are being attempted to save her (if the hopes about Jeb Bush have any basis). Politicians like to be associated with helping innocent victims. They don't like to be associated with perceived lawbreakers and rabble rousers.

Finally, there is the real risk of mob violence. We are absolutely forbidden to do evil that good might result. Civil disobedience is called that for a reason. I think civil disobedience and passive resistance are appropriate here (though people had better count the cost before they do it cuz it could mean jail and big legal fees). But violence is simply a sin and will have the opposite effect than the one that is desired.

Chill people. And keep praying!

Pete Vere, 10/17/2003 12:45:14 PM:

Listening to talk radio this morning, I realized just how tense the Terri Schiavo situation has become. Over the past couple of days, more than a few people in private conversations have told me what they would do if this was their daughter. I can understand the anger, so I usually hear them out and then remind them that as a Catholics we are bound to use non-violent means when engaging in legitimate civil disobedience. Basically, the end only justifies the means insofar as the means are consistent with the end. Violence simply is not a means consistent with the non-violent end we are trying to achieve in saving Terri.

That being said, this morning, as I drove Sonya to the doctor in Sarasota (please keep us in prayer as we're expecting in three weeks), we were listening to a local talk radio station. The hosts of the programme, who support Terri's right to life, began talking about the possibility of what I would call non-peaceful means of civil disobedience. I became a little nervous when I heard this. While people are justifiably upset over what's being done to Terri, we need to hold our emotions in check. Resorting to violence would do great damage to our efforts to save Terri (particularly since it would take the focus off of Terri and give the liberal press a feeding frenzy to bash us with). Moreover, violence is inconsistent with the end we seek, namely, non-violence to Terri.

I don't know about anybody else, but I find both of these attempts to discourage a rescue attempt to be thoroughly unconvincing.

I suppose that I should first say that I'm in no position to do anything about this. I'm 1,000 miles away, and I can't really go there: I've been working for a month, true, but that's after having been unemployed for a solid year; and, what I'm making right now is, I should think, the difference between losing my house to foreclosure early next year and losing my house to foreclosure late next year.

Moreover, I obviously don't understand the required practical necessities, nor the necessary logistics.

But I don't see why plans could not be made to spirit her out of the country, or even out of the state. Nor do I understand in the least how the objective of saving an innocent life precludes the use of violence. Indeed, it seems to me that when an innocent life is threatened, then violence may be employed in an attempt to rescue that innocent life; indeed, both justice and charity may require such an attempt.

Sure, those plans might not work. They might fail miserably. I don't see why that means they should not be attempted.

Let's say the nice young woman who lives down the street from you is being assaulted by a gang and about to be raped. You and your friend decide not to help her because you'll both get the crap beaten out of you and she'll still get raped. Moreover, you'll get a really bad reputation amongst people who don't like you already anyway.

That seems, to me, to be the advice dispensed by Mark and Pete.

Look. I don't know if a rescue attempt is warranted in this specific case. But the idea that doing so would be immoral or inadvisable is certainly not evident on the face of things. And Mark's and Pete's attempts to argue otherwise fail, in my estimation, rather miserably.

Philosophically, I'm opposed to a first resort to violence. Mohandas Gandhi is one of my heroes, and he is sort of the modern apostle of non-violence. He's the only person I've ever heard of who led a revolution bringing a nation to independence without fighting a war.

But he had time. He had decades in which to accomplish his goal. In a sense, time was his friend: he could use it to build his following, and try to reach his goal step by step. Which is what he did. In Terri's case, there's no time. In this case, time is Terri's enemy, bringing her more and more weakness day by day, bringing her day by day closer to an unjust death.

If ever there were a case for which civil disobedience is useless, it's one like this. Civil disobedience in the southern USA, protesting Jim Crow, worked wonders; but they employed it over months and years. Given the time frame, civil disobedience cannot accomplish the purpose of saving Terri's life: she doesn't have years or even months. She has only days. Civil disobedience would do nothing more, I think, than show some people that we were mighty upset about this.

I have no children. I'm more Terri's coeval: I have a sister not much older than she is. I wonder what I'd do were it my sister going through this. Frankly, I don't know what I'd do. But I know this much: if I stood by and let my sister die because a judge said it was okay, I wouldn't be able to live with myself for the rest of my days. And I haven't read anything yet that convinces me I'd be required in conscience to do nothing more than hire lawyers, write words, and hold vigils while she slowly dies.

Maybe she would die in my arms because I couldn't keep her alive. Maybe I would go to jail for a long time. Maybe Dan and Peter and Tom would say rotten things about me. At the least, I would have tried to do the right thing, in the face of great evil, instead of letting evil have its way while I summoned all the courage required to stand by and watch.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 10/18/03 04:59:51 PM
Categorized as Most Notable & Religious & Terri Schindler Schiavo.