It's ironic that observers like Maureen Dowd associate the attempts to spare Terri Schiavo's life with Christian fundamentalism. Ms Dowd insinuates, though she doesn't intend to, that only Christians would think it barbaric and heinous to starve and dehydrate an innocent woman until her organs cease to function. Dowd evidently wants us to believe that sophisticated secularists such as herself consider slowly dessicating someone to be perfectly acceptable as long as the victim is in such a state that she can't raise an objection to it. The tacit admission here is astonishing: Christianity is a philosophy of life, secular materialism is a philosophy of death.
Indeed, we suspect that at least some of the media and judicial support for Michael Schiavo over the last month derives from the fact that most of the chief advocates of keeping Terri alive have been Christians. As irrational as it may be, it is altogether possible that hatred for Christianity (and for Republicans who have also been prominent in this struggle) has driven some people to the position of defending a judicial homicide just to avoid being on the same side of the issue as the Christians and conservatives they despise.
In point of fact, it isn't only the "religious right" or devout Jews like Senator Leiberman who took up the fight for Terri Schiavo. A smattering of atheists, deists, agnostics, and denizens of the religious left also joined in decrying this horrific perversion of justice. Ralph Nader, Nat Hentoff, and Jesse Jackson have all condemned the decision to pull the feeding and water tubes from Terri Schiavo, and none of these men are very often identified with the religious right.
Deroy Murdock explains why defending Terri's right to life should not have been an exclusively religious cause in an article which could be read with profit by anyone who also wants insight into why so many people are suspicious of Terri's husband, Michael.