Live strong

For a man and a party with so single-minded a crusade to eliminate nuance and shading from politics, the president and the larger Republican party sure have a convoluted “right to life” policy. On one hand you have the case of Terry Schiavo, a woman who, for the last 15 years, has been kept alive in a comatose state by an intravenous feeding tube. This despite the efforts of her husband to stop the feeding and let his wife die. The governor of Florida and its state legislature have made special efforts to ensure this does not happen. When the courts determined that Schiavo’s husband has the right, as her guardian, to end her long coma, the federal congress in the form of Tom DeLay, et al. stepped in with custom legislation to keep her alive. On the other hand you have a set of policies that either contradict or support this unequivocal call to sustain life at all costs.

• as governor of Texas, George Bush refused to stay the execution of one single condemned inmate, despite Texas’s rank as the number one executioner in the Union
• President Bush refuses to support the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research that could save the lives of hundred or thousands because it would constitute ending a potential life, despite the fact that this material is frozen and will end up being destroyed
• Congress and the president refuse to support late-term abortions in the case of danger to the life of the mother, despite knowing that in many cases the mother will die and the child will likely too
• groups claiming to be pro-life and more often than not Republican (not to mention Christian) bomb abortion and health planning clinics or murder physicians that perform abortions, despite the fact that this results in a net loss of life

These policies do not work, they do not make sense, they do no follow the traditional values of Republicans. Why not rationalize this stuff — intercede where it can benefit the country as a whole (stem cells) and back off when it is clearly no business of the government (the Schiavo case)? The answer is because President Bush and much of the Republican party aren’t interested in helping people, so much as using issues to scare, cajole, or manipulate the country.