Reason Free from Passion

There’s been a story in the news lately about a local mother whose baby is on life support, and the hospital wants to pull the plug. According to Texas law, hospitals have the right to terminate care for terminally ill patients at their discretion. Resources are limited and valuable, and the logical argument is that prolonging death is an egregious mismanagement of precious resources when there are lives that might be jeopardized by the extended care of the terminally ill.

“What do you think?” a friend asked me as he forward me the original link to the story.

I sighed. “I think this confirms that I could never be a lawmaker. All I see are edge cases.”

A good friend of mine, whose interest in politics is genuine, whereas I avoid politics at all costs, tends to label me an Anarchist, claiming that my distaste for government can be capturedunder no other title. But the comment (accusation?) make me nervous in its simplicity: it isn’t that I don’t care for government. It’s that I lack the sight to understand how the rights of “the people” should interact with the rights of “each individual”. My problem with government is complex: of course I want there to be a representative body that protects my rights and oversees the way different people with different worldviews and pritorities interact. But I have a very difficult time making sweeping statements about what we “must do in all cases”, because I don’t look with such broad eyes.

I read this story and I am moved by the logical argument. I, who do not know this grieving mother, I, who do not even know her name, I, who have two, healthy children and have never experienced such grief find it somewhat easy to say that the hospital should be, by right of self-determination, able to decide at what point it must dedicate its resources elsewhere.

But when I lean my heart towards this woman, when I see myself hovering over the bed of my own dying child, I feel very strongly that each family should be, by right of self-determination, able to decide how, or if, it will live. I can’t imagine having the right to determine the course of my child’s life or death given to some doctor whom I’ve never met, who has no vested interest in me or my well-being, in my sanity, my happiness, or my ability to carry on after death has washed over my family.

But the law is “reason free from passion”. The law does not, by its nature, lean its heart to the individuals. The law is for the benefit of the faceless “people”. That’s probably is as it should be. I can’t imagine a legal system that disregarded the well-being of “the people”.

But where does law stop being merely “free from passion” and begin to be “free from compassion” as well? In our culture, which is built on a system of rights-based ethics, is there room for governance by right relationships? (Read this. It’s wonderful. Don’t just read the abstract.) Is there room for compassion, for the personal relationships and interactions that, in fact, form the very basis of “the people”? Isn’t that one of the greatest problems that we face as a State today, that we aren’t able to see past our agendas and look at each other not with judgment but with compassion? Are we so inflexible that we can’t, when the scenario warrants it, make determinations with the seat of our hearts?

Tags: right relationships, lawmaking, legal policy, natural justice, ethics of law

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