I don’t know Terry Schiavo. Chances are, neither do you. And neither do the Bush brothers or any of the myriad members of Congress who are now trying to take control of her life.

I somehow doubt that Terry would have wanted to become the Pro-Choice poster child, but as I said, I don’t know her. What surprises me though, is no one in the media seems to be pointing out that this is exactly what she has become. The argument over whether or not Terry Schiavo’s life should be allowed to pass is exactly the Pro-Choice / Pro-Life debate which has engaged the same folks on both sides of this fence in the past.

After all, the debate is not over whether Terry would have wanted to live in her current vegetative state. She didn’t leave a living will, so officially we don’t know. Her husband claims he represents her wishes when he argues to have life support removed. Her parents disagree, although they are not making counter-claims based on what they think Terry would have wanted. Their claims that her life should be artificially sustained indefinitely are unabashedly rooted in their devout Catholic faith. And strict Catholic doctrine forbids suicide, assisted or otherwise. But no one is debating what Terry would have wanted. No one is even debating whether her legal guardianship should be stripped from the husband and awarded to the parents based on the husband’s inability to act in her best interest. The debate is about whether or not she should be allowed to die. Period.

Assuming that the government orders that her life be sustained, how long will it be before living wills and DNRs become moot points. After all, if the assertion is that only God can take life and that humans must do everything in their power to sustain that life until God plays his trump card, then do any mortal’s wishes really matter?

At the root of this matter is the right to choose. Whether that involves the right to choose what to eat, when and if to be pregnant, or when to die. Slightly removed from that, is the right to assign (implicitly or explicitly) that right to someone else whom you trust to act in your best interest. While legal living wills and medical proxies assign that trust explicitly, certain relationships assign that trust implicitly. Parental relationships and marriage are among those implicit trust bonds.

Government certainly has a right to, and in fact may exist entirely for the purpose to, protect each of us from exercising a right to choose actions which may injure or impinge upon another’s right to the same. In this way, I can’t choose to rob my neighbor, nor embezzle from my company, and as a group we can’t raid the next town no matter how painful it is that we are out of beer.

The line gets a little grey when we ask if drugs should be illegal. By themselves, they arguably only hurt the user, and that should be their choice. But use typically results in behaviors and medical problems which are ultimately a problem to or a burden on the larger society. Therefore, we allow those decisions to come under the purview of the government as well.

But in the case of Terry Schiavo, does her dying impact anyone outside her immediate family and friends? Arguably, doesn’t her living and the expense required to keep her artificially sustained, ultimately impose a greater burden on society? Why then, does this fall under the purview of government?

The government feels it is right to step in here because it knows best. It is acting, not in the best interest of Ms. Schiavo or her family, but for what it sees as a morally higher position. The government is asserting that it is the best judge of what’s best for you. And assuming this is still a democracy of sorts, that is a very odd position indeed. It amounts to a precedent that a plurality of others should be able to decide things in your life based on the premise that they have a morally superior point of view.

This is a very slippery slope my friends. The precedents set in the Schiavo case are vitally important as they lay the groundwork for the future. Should the federal government succeed in keeping her alive, it is only a matter of time before they can insist you stay pregnant, insist you exercise regularly… and just why are Big Macs still legal anyway?