The court decided to die

This can happen any day, it can happen today, even this minute, at any moment. We don't know. But we know for sure that this will happen.

For 15 years, a simple American woman, Terry Schiavo, has been in a coma, and no one cared about it except her loved ones. Now the whole world knows about her, all of America only talks about her.

The Florida and US Supreme Courts, congressmen and President Bush are deciding whether to keep her body alive without hope of recovery or allow her to die. My husband is for it, my parents are against it. The branches of power, apparently, finally sided with the husband.

Probably, the country is still happy if the main news is the fate of a seemingly inconspicuous person. When everyone cares not about the abstract, but about a concrete citizen with a first and last name. And this is a case that is interesting to anyone, whether he lives in America or Russia, simply because we all walk under God.

To be absolutely clear, I will say right away: I am for euthanasia, but I do not believe that Terri Schiavo's case is euthanasia. Man has an inalienable right to life. But, in my deepest conviction, life and physical existence are not the same thing.

Why is a person doomed to this torment? Why is a terrible end worse than horror without end? You can understand Terry's parents. Parents are parents. Hope for a miracle is the last hope to die. And such miracles sometimes happen, one in a million, but they happen. Books are then written about them and films are made. But 999,999 cases end in death after unimaginable suffering. Humanism is not about dooming a person to this suffering at any cost, forcing a virtually lifeless organism to work mechanically.

It’s cruel to put the question this way, but imagine yourself or your loved ones in a similar situation. I ask for forgiveness, and God forbid. But this happens every day. No one would like to be chained forever to a bed and apparatus and live like a plant.

When a person who has been seriously ill for a long time dies, we say “he suffered,” and then we add: “And everyone suffered.” Right. Because the husband of the same Terri Schiavo was still a young and full of energy man when this misfortune happened to his wife. And all these years he carried this burden on himself. He is no longer young, he is full of despair, he does not have the strength to fight further, he does not know why. It may not sound entirely appropriate, somewhere cynical, but Michael could start life anew, could create another family, be happy and make another person happy, have children. The suffering of those who are close to hopeless patients is even greater than the suffering of the patients themselves. This is both physical devastation and moral burden, a sense of duty, which is more like a curse imposed on a person.

True, there is one BUT here. I say “hopeless,” but I myself admit that miracles happen. And opponents of euthanasia say the same thing as opponents of the death penalty: what if it’s a mistake? You can't bring the person back. That's true. But it is also true that in court evidence is largely subjective, and so is the interpretation of facts. Medicine in this sense is a much more precise science.

And, of course, euthanasia should be an exceptional measure, used only in cases where several authoritative and independent experts come to the conclusion that the struggle for life is futile. At the same time, euthanasia can be resorted to only at the request and with the full consent of the closest relatives. The procedure itself should be as fast as possible and minimally painful, and the person who directly carries it out must remain incognito so as not to be in danger from opponents of euthanasia and the same relatives, whose moods may suddenly change after some time. Based on all these considerations, I do not consider the case of Terri Schiavo to be an example of euthanasia. If the parents are against it, you probably still shouldn’t kill the person. Yes, in my opinion, they are wrong, they mock their own daughter, but they are parents. And, of course, you cannot force a person to die for weeks by simply stopping giving him food and drugs. This is not euthanasia, but some kind of sadism.

And one last thing. I am for euthanasia, but I am against its legalization in Russia. Our doctors are wonderful, golden specialists. But the weak point of our medicine is diagnostics. When we know exactly what, we treat perfectly. But we don’t always know. As that wonderful joke said: “What we mistook for an orgasm turned out to be bronchial asthma.”