Am I the only person in the United States getting
fed up with moral exhibitionism?
And no, I’m not really talking about the Terri
Schiavo spectacle playing out 24/7 on
the cable news channels. Turning the poor woman’s
tragedy into a carnival sideshow
became inevitable once Congress and the brothers
Bush decided there was political
advantage in taking sides in a grave and intimate
family quarrel. Most politicians’
commitment to "err on the side of life" waned
as quickly as polls showing widespread
public resentment were released. But apparently
not, the Miami Herald reports, before
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush considered dispatching
state troopers to take Schiavo into his
custody in defiance of state and federal courts,
a plan abandoned only after local police
indicated they’d resist.
In Texas, meanwhile, they do things differently.
On March 14, doctors at Texas Children’s
Hospital withdrew life support from Sun Hudson,
a 6-month-old infant with a fatal and
untreatable form of dwarfism, over his family’s
protests. The baby died quickly. Under a
1999 law signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush,
hospitals may discontinue artificial life
support, including feeding tubes, even if a patient’s
family members disagree. A doctor’s
recommendation must be approved by a hospital’s
ethics committee and the family must
be given 10 days’ advance notice of the decision
to try and locate another facility for the patient.
The president’s hypocrisy aside, that’s how it
should be. I’ve had enough personal experience
with how seriously the medical profession takes
such decisions to entrust them to hospital
ethics committees. So when I hear Pat Robertson,
the well-known TV faith healer, observe,
as he did on FOX News’ "Hannity and Colmes,"
last week, "Why, you wouldn’t treat a dog
or horse the way they’re treating Terri," I’m
inclined to say: No, Pat, you’d allow an animal
more mercy and dignity.
Medically speaking, brain death is death. All the rest is made-for-TV melodrama.
Meanwhile, the latest trend in moral exhibitionism
is pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions
they suspect might be used sinfully. According
to a March 28 article in The Washington Post,
a growing number are not only refusing to dispense
birth control or "morning-after" pills that
offend their personal religious beliefs, but
delivering impromptu sermons to the sinners who
come to pick them up.
One joker in Wisconsin cross-examined a college
girl about why she needed birth control pills
(which have medical uses unrelated to sex), condemned
her sinfulness, then refused to transfer
the prescription elsewhere so she could get it
filled by a pharmacist who didn’t have himself
confused with a TV evangelist.
Actually, make that the pope. A lawyer with the
Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and
Religious Freedom explains that his client is
"a devout Roman Catholic [who] believes participating
in any action that inhibits or prohibits human
life is a sin."
The Post story also told about a married mother
of four denied a "morning-after" pill by a
conscience-stricken pharmacist. "I couldn’t believe
it," said the 44-year-old woman, who’d made
love with her husband, but didn’t want a fifth
child. "How can they make that decision for us?
I was outraged.... But I was scared. I didn’t
know what we were going to do."
I think all this has less to do with real faith
than with the growing number of "devout," self-dramatizing
narcissists among us. I’m on firm scriptural
grounds too. "Be careful not to do your ‘acts of
righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them,"
Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. "If you do,
you will have no reward from your Father in Heaven."
Only hypocrites, Christ added, make a public spectacle
of their religiosity. Apart from Old
Testament admonitions about selling daughters
into slavery or stoning Bevis and Butthead to
death, it’s getting to be the least observed
doctrine in the Bible.
But I’d put it differently to Pharmacists for
Life and other holier-than-thou groups that feel the
need to put their agonized consciences on public
display. (So far, they’ve gotten four states
—South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia—to
pass laws saying they don’t have to
dispense medications they wouldn’t themselves
take. Several others—California, Missouri and
New Jersey—are considering laws requiring pharmacists
to fill all legal prescriptions.) My advice
would be simpler: Get over yourself or get a
new job. This is a fairly straightforward piece of
moral reasoning: The rights that matter here
aren’t yours, they’re the patient’s, whose sexual
and reproductive practices come under the heading
of None of Your Business. If that’s not
good enough, hire some kid to serve as your shabbas
goy—what Orthodox Jews call somebody
who does grunt work on the Sabbath. After all,
anybody who can count to 10 can take pills
from the big bottle, put them in the little bottle
and ring up the sale while you look prayerfully on.
Meanwhile, any pharmacy that advertises "We Fill
All Legal Prescriptions" will get my trade.
•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little
Rock author and
recipient of the National Magazine Award.