Well, I am opposed on principle to euthanasia, but I could be a cheerleader for assisted suicide and still favor letting Terri Schiavo stay alive. This isn’t a case in which someone in agony is being prevented from choosing death or where caring for an unresponsive relative is draining a family’s financial and emotional resources. Instead, Mrs. Schiavo’s parents are willing to relieve her husband of whatever burden she represents. He can free himself from any residual responsibility by obtaining a divorce, a step that would also enable him to marry the woman with whom he now lives and with whom he has had two children. But he doesn’t want to gain his freedom that way. He insists that his wife must die.
There’s no need to speculate about Mr. Schiavo’s motives. He suffered a great trauma when his wife was injured and deserves a degree of sympathy – but not such a degree that he should be entitled to order the killing of someone whose continued life will be no inconvenience to him.
That Florida courts are willing to hold that a husband has jus abutendi over his unconscious wife reflects, I fear, the zeal of many judges to give not the slightest ground to pro-life arguments. They seek to erect a fence around the supreme right of abortion. If they would calm down for a moment, it might occur to them that feeding a helpless woman will not lead inexorably to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and that it is possible for support Terri Schiavo for her own sake, not as a proxy for other battles.
Donations toward the legal costs of keeping Terri alive can be made on-line.
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