How does this make sense? My favorite quote, seen on Good Morning America, was when one of the non-husband family members said, "[Hopefully the courts will now go along with the will of Congress]." Heck, lets just get rid of due process all together. Or more in the spirit of things, lets make all due process so long that no one will ever get to the end of it. What's the functional difference between a path that you can never get to the end of and a path that doesn't exist?
This just feels like a clumsy political stunt such as a clueless libral might use in order to try to convince everyone how he "gets" the sanctity of life thing while simultaneously trampling all over the sanctity of marriage and individual choice (i.e. free will). Someone please tell me why I'm wrong or at least over-reacting... Husband and wife leave their parents and cleave to each other. Hence they each bear the ultimate worldy responsibility for each other. Assuming that Terri indeed does not want to live as a vegetable, what about her wishes? The courts already determined that she is in fact in a vegatative state. I would of course snap my fingers and fix her, but I can't.
Monday, March 21, 2005
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I agree with your sentiment. I believe what we have here is a piss-poor choice for a proxy battle in the culture wars. However, I'm starting to hear that she is in fact not in a "vegetative" state, that she responds to stimuli, and that the only thing she needs to survive is help in eating (hence the feeding tube). So, in that case, I side with the family. But, were she indeed in a vegetative state (defined as needing completely artificial means to survive), I side with the husband. I really haven't read enough about the case to come to a fuller opinion, but that's where mine stands.
Of course, if she is not in a vegetative state then she should be given all possible assistance. However, as I heard the story this morning, the (state) courts have already determined that she is in said vegetative state. Then the Supreme Court rejected an appeal on religious freedom and due process grounds. So now Congress made a law to give federal courts jurisdiction, "For the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo" (see following link). Here are some of the legal documents from the ongoing battle. As best I can tell, Congress decided that it didn't like the outcome of the state courts so it made a law specific to this case. What's even weirder is that the jurisdiction which Congress has handed down to the "United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida" (again, see the link, this is a very specific law) is to determine whether Terri has had her Constitutional rights violated. I.e. basically the same matter which the Supreme Court just declined to even consider, except I guess they could in bring rights other that those in the Supreme Court appeal.
Dude, put in the links! I can't see them.
I really just think this is a bad deal all around. It seems as though Congress might be overstepping its bounds in a very strange way, and I'm a natural skeptic of courts' law-interpretation abilities (finding a 'right' for a husband to murder his wife?)...and through it all, we have the strange behaviour of Michael Schiavo to consider. Why does it matter to him if she still lives? Can't he just get an annulment? And on the heels of a million dollar malpractice settlement? It's like he used her dead body to make a few bucks for himself, and now he's offing the dead weight. If anybody can be deemed reprehensible in this sorry episode, I think it's him.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006450
I didn't hear until this morning that Terri's husbad lives with his girlfriend with whom he has kids and stands to inherit nearly a million dollars if Terri dies. That does kind of make his position less objective. In fact, the obvious adultery should disqualify him from recieving any inheritance based on being Terri's "husband." While I don't really like the way Congress make a "Terri Schiavo" law, I wouldn't mind a law where by if the spouse of a incapacitated person takes actions which would be grounds for divorce, then power of attorney (or whatever the right legal term is in this case) passes to the family.
Here's that link, don't know why it disappeared before.
http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/lit/schiavo/index.html
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