Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

More on Terri Schiavo

Salon.com | The panderers: “Americans embody Kantian reasoning in the often-cited dictum that we are a government of laws, not of men. The Schiavo case reminds us why that dictum matters. In a case as conflict-ridden and morally wrenching as this one, the courts have reached a decision: Michael Schiavo’s claim that Terri would not have wanted to live this way has been upheld.”

Okay…so I suppose it can be argued that I pretty much missed the point with my last post about Terri Schiavo.

Maybe it doesn’t matter whether she can feel pain or pleasure in any way. If she clearly never wanted to be kept alive in this condition, then….

BUT. Almost no one will, in casual conversation, get so specific about what conditions they’d consider acceptable reasons for ongoing life support. Did Terri really say, at some point, ‘I don’t want to be kept alive if I’m still breathing on my own and can feel some variety of pleasure in life [assuming she can feel some variety of pleasure] but need to be tube-fed’? I haven’t read anywhere that she ever got that specific.

See? Now I’m pretty much back where I started.

Salon.com writer Alan Wolfe does make an excellent point, though:

“…a sane society would try to put cases such as Terri Schiavo’s outside the realm of politics. Let us by all means have a national debate over persistent vegetative states, living wills and conflicts between husbands and parents. But let us hold that debate over general principles. Our laws must be designed for unnamed individuals in the future, not on behalf of specific people in the here-and-now.”