Power Line brought my attention to "The Politics of the Schiavo Case" by Jeffrey Bell & Frank Cannon in the latest edition of The Weekly Standard.

Bell and Cannon make some very interesting points:

"It was a substantive policy victory for forces opposed to the right to life (it doesn't seem accurate, in this instance, to describe these forces as "pro-choice"), but it may be a victory they come to regret. For one thing, in content it was far more an extension of the implications of legalized abortion than of assisted suicide.

"Of the whole array of anti-life agenda items, assisted suicide receives the greatest level of support in public opinion polling, undoubtedly because it is seen as the least coercive. But in the end game of the Terri Schiavo case, the longstanding assertion by her husband that Terri would welcome what was being done to her seemed at most a formality. The courts all but made explicit that the killing was not really about her wishes but only about those of her husband and legal guardian. The implication that Terri's fate was to be the choice of the husband, and of him alone, followed the form of abortion law, which puts the choice in the hands of the mother, and of no one else.

"This matters because abortion, not assisted suicide, is the mother of all American social issues. We say American, and not Russian or Chinese or British, because it is the American founding document that guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and asserts as its only authority that of the Creator--the authority of Nature and of Nature's God. If you had to pick one reason that there is a pro-life movement in America and not Europe, it is the nature of our founding."

This observation of course is based on the Declaration.

Bell and Cannon then conclude by showing how this impacts the upcoming battles in the US Senate over President Bush's judicial nominations:

"For President Bush and the social conservatives who comprise the central rampart of his base, the courts' naked assertion of judicial supremacy in deciding the fate of Terri Schiavo represents an important moment. This is because the premise of the Democratic filibuster of the president's conservative judicial nominees is that the Roe v. Wade decision must never again be called into question.

"The judicial confirmation debate will now unavoidably be about whether democratic decision-making on abortion should continue to be prohibited by our courts and (effectively) by the American legal profession. From the beginning, those who believed Roe would corrupt the rule of law feared that state sanction of private killing would put all public order and all private restraint in doubt. The fate of Terri Schiavo makes clear that those fears were utterly on target."

As the death of Terri Schiavo grows near, let us not only continue to pray for Terri, her family, and our country, but also vow to do whatever it takes to reform the judicial system in our country.