Defending Terri Schiavo and conservative principles

Andrew McCarthy has a magnificent article in NRO which addresses the charge that conservatives are acting inconsistently when they ask the federal courts to intervene in the Terri Shiavo case.

Here's a sample:

The facts of the Schiavo case are repugnant. — Notwithstanding the Post’s insistence, it is not clear that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state (merely watching the video footage strongly suggests otherwise, and even the Post’s editorial does not endeavor to defend the manifestly inadequate medical examinations that purport to underpin the PVS diagnosis); nor is there convincing evidence that Terri, when she was stricken at 26 years of age, had even given much thought to whether she’d want to continue living in her current condition, much less expressly asserted that she would not. Still, it is far from obvious that the facts of this case will establish a violation of federal law. If there hasn’t been such a violation, the Schiavo bills being debated would not permit the federal court to reverse the state courts, even if the federal judge disagrees with how the state courts handled the matter.

Finally, as for the alleged inconsistency, there is, of course, no greater iniquity than treating two unequal things as if they were the same. The Washington Post’s editorial board should find another line of work if it cannot discern the difference between, on the one hand, a murderer who stands convicted despite having had had rich resort to various state and federal tribunals — including a jury of his peers — with the advantage of every legal and factual presumption our system can offer, and, on the other hand, an innocent woman who is alive and responsive to stimuli, who has parents ready and willing to care for her, and who is about to be subjected to two weeks of torture — starving and dehydration — that the Washington Post would have a cow over if it were applied, say, to interrogate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The right of the innocent to live isn’t contingent on the good will of governments and courts. — It derives from a higher law, as does the obligation to defend it. That there is such a higher law is not just an American principle (see the Declaration of Independence), a conservative principle, or a Judeo-Christian principle. When those defending Terri Schiavo’s right to live reject the state of Florida’s antinomian determination that she may be slowly starved to death, they echo Sophocles’ Antigone, facing down King Creon, across the millennia. . .

Read the whole thing.