When the Law is Wrong

There was a time when the law of this land said that one must return a man who had escaped into a free state to the man in a slave state that claimed to own him. That was the law then, and many people obeyed that law because, well, it was the law.

There was a time when the law of this land said orphanages and parents could send little children to labor in coal mines and factories and aboard ships. That was the law then, and many people obeyed that law because, well, it was the law.

There was a time when the law of this land said that little black Americans had to go to one school and little white Americans had to go to another. That was the law then, and many people obeyed that law because, well, it was the law.

I could cite example after example of times in our history when the law, as it stood, was simply wrong. The reason these laws no longer stand is because ordinary good people stood. They stood against the law. Fugitive slaves were sheltered by ordinary folks who found human subjugation disgusting.  It wasn't famous self-proclaimed leaders or elected politicians who sat at the neighborhood lunch counter or at the front of the bus in defiance of unjust laws. It was ordinary Americans exercising the tradition of American dissent that goes all the way back to those who unloaded a cargo of tea into Boston Harbor.

Ordinary people spoke out, too. They debated and petitioned and appealed. They challenged other ordinary Americans to look beyond the law and into their consciences to see what is right and what is wrong.

As these ordinary people stood, and as they spoke out, the politicians and judges had to take notice and they had to consider whether or not these ordinary people had a point. It took time, and at times as the judges ruled against them, and as hearts seemed unchanged, they must have been discouraged, yet they continued to stand and continued to speak. As a result generations of Americans are more free and treated more justly.

Right now the law says a disabled woman can be ordered by a court to be starved and dehydrated until she dies. The law says that even if she is able to take oral sustenance, it is illegal to give it to her. The law says a mother, a father, a sister, and a brother, as they sit beside their dying loved one, cannot offer her relief. This is the law now, and many people say we should obey the law because, well, it's the law.

But the law in this case is wrong.

As I write this, ordinary Americans are standing and speaking for Terri Schiavo. I do not know if it will do Terri any good. I pray that God will preserve her and send her relief. But whether or not Terri survives this assault on her life, we must continue to stand and continue to speak out, because Terri is but one of many defenseless people who face unjust treatment, even unjust death, because of laws that not only fail to protect them, but also act against them.

We go to great effort and great expense to add ramps and accessible rest rooms and other accessibility aids out of respect for the disabled who have challenges in mobility, hearing, and sight, but Terri Schiavo suffers from a category of disability we still refuse to accommodate. She is challenged in her intelligence and her communication. To those who define humanity by potential for productivity--by what a person can do--poor Terri fails the test. So for years she has been banished to her room. Now she must be banished from the earth, while the judges of our land drop their gavels in approval.

The law is wrong. What will you do?

Thanks to reader Baille for sharing the image of the document that accompanies this post. You can read Baillie's blog here. You can click on the image for a larger, more readable view.

Comments

[Raquel]

One correction to your otherwise great piece of perspective writing:

You state; "The law says that even if she is able to take oral sustenance, it is illegal to give it to her."

No - nowhere in the law does it state this. This was Judge Greer's illegal order which he "created" (illegally).

[M. E.]

Dory, excellent post. I've linked it. You didn't mention abortion, however, which is the most egregious example of a wrongful ruling. The slaughter of over 30,000,000 innocent children has led us directly to this point: the court-ordered starvation of a disabled woman, while the entire world watches.

How many more will there be? How many more innocents slaughtered, how many more disabled women starved to death? And then - how many elderly will be "euthanized", how many unwanted or imperfect newborns or other young will be quietly done away with? How many more before we wake up from this nightmare?

Thank you for all the good blogging you've done and continue to do on Terri Schiavo. We can just keep blogging, keeping repeating the truth, keep praying.

[Jennifer Thornton]

The article "When the Law is Wrong," is the best statement that I have read yet relating to the Schiavo case. It is written in the same way a high school speech teacher would require of a student, and this is exaclty why it gets the point across, clearly, and stands as a great debate angle. I am printing this artcle to save for future reference because it is very inspiring! WELL SAID!!

[ajmac]

What you express is the great Natural Law tradition of the Church universal, which most of the legal community has (sadly) now abandoned. Martin Luther King Jr., writing from the infamous Birmingham Jail about racial segregation, wrote this eloquent statement of the same principle:

One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful.

[Baillie]

"March 17, 2005
The New Pantagruel on Terry Schiavo
The editors of the intelligent, unafraid, kaleidoscopic, and ever-fascinating web-only magazine, The New Pantagruel, have issued a brief, to-the-point statement on the pending murder of Terry Schiavo that can be read here. Many of our readers will be sympathetic with its moral posture."

http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/03/ithe_new_pantag.html

[Baillie]

I had a feeling that link was too long. Try this one:

http://tinyurl.com/3ruay

[Joe Runyon]

It seems to me that the issue that is being overlooked by so many who are hell-bent to kill this woman is that she is just a mentally handicapped person.
Is she really more or less than that?
And if she is a mentally handicapped person isn't the core issue the simple fact that she is an inconvience to her husband and his new "family"?
How do we as a society justify the killing of those who would inconvience us?
Well....we have been doing it for 3 decades under Roe-V-Wade.
In the process of abortion the liberal leaning politcal party that is known as the Democratic Party has aborted itself out of power. Most abortions are done on women who would vote for that party, and teach their children to follow them. They have simply aborted a few million of their voters.
And how far is the leap from killing an inconvient baby to an inconvient wife?

[Carol Taylor]

Thank you, Dory, for your astutely focused commentary. I have posted this article as a Guest Article on my main page. Full credit and linkbacks have been included.

I hope that this helps to spread your wise perspective more and more. We need to create a groundswell of national conscience and protest to protect and value human life. God bless your efforts and God protect Terri.

[Michael]

I found you through Stand in the Trenches. Happy to find a kindred spirit fighting the same good fight. Terrific article; I'll be back. I have to, you're on my blogroll now. :P

[jimbob]

The problem I see with your post is this you state that people stood up because the law was wrong, right? Why was the law wrong in these cases? Because the constitution ruled by the courts does not allow for such laws, right? The question here is should the goverment interject itself into a horrible medical decsion? Medical technology allowed for this situation to occur originally, she did not arrive at this point by any natural process. Fifty years ago her original treatment would not have even been tried. I'm sorry her parents can't let go, but if we are going to use medical treatment we must also accept it's limitations.

[Milton Stanley]

I don't know what I'm going to do, other than weep and pray for a miracle. I praise God for you and the work you've done to keep attention on what's really going on with Terri Schiavo.

[Plato]

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

[bb]

i dont think that terri should have died it is so sad!