Millions of Americans might actually show more support for those demonstrating to keep poor Terry Schiavo alive if her champions backed up their arguments with consistency. But they don't, so they come across as narrow, one-issue zealots who seem more like political cannon fodder than compassionate Samaritans.

Just how could they be more consistent? By broadening their view, by considering Ms. Schiavo's dilemma in the larger context, and so inviting all of us to examine the issues in three-dimensional complexity instead of one-dimensional polemic. They could choose to make this debate truly relevant and important to American society. Instead, it's become propaganda.

They tell us it's barbaric, criminal and immoral to remove the feeding tube and let Terry Schiavo die. And they may well be right. Certainly, we who snatch tidbits of her story from television or the newspaper seem at least pretentious and more likely arrogant as we presume to be armchair medical ethicists.

But if, as her supports say, each human life is precious and must not be wasted, why are these same advocates not shrieking and demonstrating about the 100,000 Iraqi civilians butchered cynically in a fib-inspired war? Why are they not flocking to the Pentagon in their wheel chairs and flopping on the ground with their signs saying, "I'm not dead yet"?

If human life is a gift from God that no one should take for granted, as they remind us, why aren't they outraged that 1,500 of America's sons and daughters for reasons a lot more muddled than the rationale compelling Michael Schiavo, after 15 years, to allow his wife to die?

At least the doctors who believe the woman will never wake up offer their judgment based on a mountain of similar cases and years of watching souls in similar conditions fail to recover. The Iraq war was based on specious intelligence and presidential flim-flam. Picture your son's or daughter's death because of that. Losing a life for a lie and a barrel of oil seem as least as criminal, at least as immoral, as removing the feeding tube from a perpetually comatose woman.

Imagine a nation that could discuss the morality of living and dying and killing in come complex and nuanced ways. Something resembling the old American democracy might return, where citizens who disagreed would actually listen to one another.

Instead, the Associated Press already has reported that the campaign to make Ms. Schiavo a poster girl for far-right-to-life causes was initiated by Republican politicians, in part to give something back to their Christian fundamentalist supporters, and in part to deflect attention from reports of House Speaker Tom Delay's alleged fundraising improprieties that threaten to draw criminal charges.

So, in place of no-easy-answers dialogue about life and death in an increasingly technological world, we end up with legions of Terry Schiavo supporters allying with Rep. Delay, a political opportunist who hypocritically called the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube "medical terrorism" yet participated in "pulling the plug," so to speak, on his own father when the man was left in a vegetative state after a head injury.

Likewise, a lot of Americans are repelled by the inconsistency of Schiavo's supporters rallying in lockstep around President Bush, who made a show of flying from his Texas ranch to sign a bill intended to re-insert Schiavo's feeding tube, when this same politician, as governor, presided over the executions of hundreds of Texans, including minors and the mentally retarded.

Because many Americans don't want to be part of such ham-fisted hypocrisy, it can seem to them natural and prudent to take the side of Michael Schiavo-to reflexively support the macabre act of withholding food and water, so a woman finally can die. Yet this position, whether or not a knee-jerk reaction to the zealots and cynical politicians, may also be dangerously one-dimensional, and perhaps plain wrong. At least in the short term.

Everyone who's reasonably sane wants to support the sanctity of human life. But when Samaritans become dupes or opportunists, constructive discussion or constructive alliances become impossible.

The most compelling argument for keeping Ms. Schiavo alive, at least for a while longer, comes, somewhat surprisingly, from Ralph Nader. The consumer advocate is not a rightist by any means; he's a lawyer by trade. In a column this week, the two-time presidential candidate made a logical case for re-connecting Ms. Schiavo to her feeding tube.

Citing a legal principal known as "equity," the short version of Mr. Nader's argument, borrowed from a dissenting appellate judge in the Schiavo case, is that court-ordered removal of her feeding tube takes away Terry Schiavo's right to her day in federal court-because she'll die first.

As Nader points out, Terry's family loves her and would continue caring for her. And, because of the worldwide publicity, there would be plenty of money to pay for her continued medical care, so this wouldn't be a public burden. Instead of a court-ordered death, both the judge and Nader argue, why not have Michael Schiavo transfer guardianship of his wife to her parents and let them continue to hope for a miracle, or at least a medical breakthrough that might help their daughter?

Like so many of Nader's reasonable ideas, this one likely will be ignored. It already has been squelched by an appellate court in the case. Yet it shows, if nothing else, that there are positions in the creative middle ground, waiting to be taken, if only people find ways to listen, give, take and negotiate.

Terry Schiavo's well-meaning supporters have spent thousands of hours and maybe more than a million dollars waging a campaign on behalf of a solitary woman whose chances for a "normal" life are miniscule. Yet they make not a peep for the continuing deaths in Iraq, or for the genocide occurring daily in Darfur.

If somehow they could recognize the ethical complexity of this case-if they would connect all of the dots necessary to truly discuss such universal Christian values as life, death and compassion-it could inspire meaty debate across a nation nearly starved to death itself by spin doctors and empty sound bites-for many more years than Schiavo has been in her coma.

It would make Terry Schiavo's life not just valuable, but important.

Freelance writer Dean Paton (deanpaton9@yahoo.com) is a screenwriter and Seattle Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor.

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