Terri Shiavo: reflections.

Today is Mercy Sunday. In Vancouver, the sky hangs heavy, grey, troubled, and the cold wind bites. The Holy Father is dead. The radiance of Easter, which will prevail and has prevailed, seems strangely obscured by an unbearably poignant Holy Week, during which Terri Shiavo, the American woman who suffered brain damage as a result of a heart attack some 15 years ago, lay dying of starvation and dehydration. No mercy was shown her by the American courts, despite the unflagging efforts and pleas of her family, the intervention of the President, and of Florida governor, Jeb Bush.

I'm on deadline, I tell my brother. Write about Terri Shiavo, he urges. But I resist. Why? It is too biting, too searing, like the March wind that unsettles the bones. Anything I write will degenerate into an indictment of my own cowardice, an unseemly confessorial piece. What can one say?

How long ago did it happen? We, a strange, unkempt band, embarked on an unlikely rescue mission--to save our unborn brothers and sisters from death by abortion. A few of us blocked the doors of an abortion clinic. My aforementioned brother was one of these, also my mother and father.

I embarked on rescuing, as it was then called, when an abortuary opened in Edmonton, Alberta. I consulted John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe, who began the rescue movement in the United States. He often told this anecdote: if you ask an abortionist about his second abortion, he won't remember. But if you ask him about the first time, he'll tell a story: it was a day in May, the sky was blue, the wind was cool, it was late in the morning, she had long hair, green eyes, a mole on her leg: he will recall the event with precise, microscopic detail.

Because that was the moment he crossed the line. That was the moment his conscience was seared.

Another thing Cavanaugh-O'Keefe said was: one person is infinitely more than no one.

In my own case, the seeming futility of it all prompted my exit. After a year of "rescues", sometimes alone, six months in jail, about 10 arrests, I gave up. I walked away. I have often wondered since: what if I had been faithful? What would have happened? Is practical success necessary, or is it enough to be there, to stand with these most vulnerable children, to say, in the essence of rescue: if you are going to kill them, then kill me. If you are going to discard them, then discard me.

But, ultimately, it was too much. To this day I do not know if my efforts were entirely in vain. I must, in all humility, "leave it as God sees it." God knows the heart; I leave it to Him to penetrate mine.

Fear, too, was involved in my quitting. Jail is no picnic. It's not like I had been tortured in an Iranian prison, or interrogated mercilessly by the KGB. After all, this is Canada, not Afghanistan. But still, it was hardly comfortable. On my first night in jail, neophyte that I was and high on the potential for jailhouse conversions, I was asked, "So what do you think of homosexuality?" "Oh, it's wrong," I said. My interrogator jerked her head toward an obese woman seated beside her. "She's a lesbian," she said, and her companion sneered, "I'm gonna get you for that."

The next day I spent in considerable terror, despite, the injunction to "trust in the Lord." At one point this hefty lesbian pinned me against the wall, gently enough, but with sufficient menace to let me know that, quite possibly, tough times lay ahead.

And yet, at that point, I knew with absolute certainty that I was going back, upon release, to the abortion clinic to block the doors, and consequently, I would be back in jail, and, likely be on the same range in the Remand Centre as our large and perverse friend. The time came when I was arrested again. Fortuitously, it was October 1, the feast of the Little Flower. How fervently I prayed to St. Therese to deliver me from this imminent danger! I don't think I've prayed that fervently since. What if I were assigned a cell with this aggressive lesbian? It would be game over for me. But when I reappeared at the Remand Centre, to and behold: she came over to me and shook my hand. "I really admire you," she said. And, thank God, I was assigned to a cell on another range. I could only sag in relief at the mercy of God.

Why am I writing this? Because in my mind there is an undeniable link between our collective inability, understandable though it is, to save thousands of unborn children from death, and our curious, though understandable, collective inability to save Terri Shiavo from death.

A friend of mine, distressed beyond words at the cruelty of it all, said repeatedly, "We should take to the streets." Yes. No doubt, we should have. Or perhaps, we should have denied ourselves, en masse, food and water. But we didn't, did we? You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

Perhaps, great good will come of Terri Shiavo's death, as God in His extravagant mercy is wont to bring good out of evil. John Zmirak wrote (godspy.com): "... the death of Terri Shiavo may prove a redemptive mercy. One wonders if the Christians of America, having seen the 'justice' of their judges, will ever sit back and allow the appointment of further Pilates to our courts. I think they will not. I think that in God's providence, we have hit bottom--and reached a turning point."

Would that it were so.

Lianne Laurence writes from Burnaby, BC, and is the author of the fascinating book Borowski: A Canadian Paradox.