Let Her Go Already
The legal fight surrounding Terri Schiavo is a strange one. In case you have not been following, fourteen years ago a severe heart attack left Terri brain damaged and in a vegetative state from which she will never recover, her husband instructed doctors to remove the feeding tube and let Terri die as she had requested while still conscious. Terri’s parents, however, had other ideas and sued to keep her alive. The courts ruled that the feeding tube could be removed, and it was
Now this kind of drama plays itself out all the time, but what makes this unique is that Governor Jeb Bush then hastily had legislation passed that gave him the power to prevent doctors from removing the feeding tubes or order them replaced in such circumstances regardless of the patient’s wishes. As expected, there was a lot of moralizing about statements about the sanctity of life.
Today the Florida Supreme Court ruled Bush’s law unconstitutional, and now several more years of legal wrangling are expected.
What I really don’t understand is why the people who are the most vocal opponents of “the right to die” are usually the strongest proponents of the death penalty. Florida, in fact, leads the nation in executions. I simply can’t understand the logic by which killing people who do not wish to die is a good thing, while killing those who do wish to die is wrong.