I know everyone must’ve read and heard so much more about Terri Schiavo that surely the subject is all talked out. I agree with that, but I find that I can’t quite move on, so I’ll just say the things I’m mulling over:

• I’m disappointed in some of the Christian right-to-life responses to the fact — surely predictable from the start — that this was a battle that might not be won. I’ve heard one man, whose work in anti-abortion activisim I admire, go on a rant against Governor Jeb Bush because he didn’t order state troopers into the hospice to take Terri by force. This is ridiculous. We lost. We weren’t able to commend the common sense solution to the justice system at any level, even given extreme measures by Congress.
• In admitting defeat, I don’t think we succumb to despair or just get embittered and sullen. Terri Schiavo’s life is forfeit to an unbelievable lack of respect for life in our courts, but did we not know there was a war on? Perhaps some victories in the conservative camp might have made us a little cocky. We lost a battle. What do we have to do now not to lose the next one?
• I think we’ve already missed an opportunity to focus on the bigger issue: the American dialogue over the ethics of life and death in this complex and dangerously godless time. Given how much coverage this case has gotten, I wish there had been Christian commentators willing to try to explain that we are not trying to play God. And it is possible in our zeal that we overstated the simplicity of this case. Terri does not appear to be someone who would return to what she was. But neither does she appear to me to be significantly less fit to live than many, many people who are being fed and cared for elsewhere. I would think that those who are on fire to do something for Terri would be doing the best thing to realize that this is the time for sober reflection and carefully chosen words.
• I also think that it’s time to stand down from the kind of civil disobedience that has given the last few weeks such an ugly tinge. If this fight could be won, I would’ve thought people were doing the right thing to obstruct the process and take the heat for it. But we need to look unblinkingly at what happened: the courts consistently and vehemently voted for her death. The next stage of this war has to take place in the arena of ideas. But to continue to borrow pages from the playbook of disruptive and disrespectful people just leaves a foul taste in my mouth. A story today reported that the protestors at Terri’s hospice were goose-stepping to provoke the police. That kind of action has nothing to do with the issue of this woman’s life.
• Having said that, I think that it’s becoming more obvious that the idealogical fight that conservative Christians fought and won (at least for now) with the American public is nothing compared with the fight we’ll have with judicial activism, because there are no safeguards in the system against that. Right now there are no weapons against judges who take it on themselves to force an agenda on the country, and cases like Terri Schiavo’s show that there is a strain of pure liberal elitism that resides there without the slightest fear of public opinion or redress.
• To turn away from all this polemic for a minute, I think that it is time for compassionate Christians everywhere to pray for a Christian end to her life: painless, blameless and peaceful. She has become someone who was fought over with bitterness and many angry words. Let’s pray for her peaceful repose.

Well, enough for now. It’s wearying to continue to wait for the report of her demise, but it’s what the actions of the last fifteen years have brought us to. May God have mercy on her soul, and ours.