I think the glee shown by the left at Terri’s death is driven by their deep revulsion with all things religious. Since they (correctly) see the pro-lift folks as driven by their religious beliefs, they delight in seeing them defeated regardless of their feelings about what should be done with Terri. As a practical matter I think they fear a pro-life victory for Terri would potentially result in more restrictions on abortion which they cannot tolerate.

I must say I am repulsed by some of the tactics of the pro-life folks as well such as equating what Florida is doing to Nazi Germany or excoriating Jeb Bush to abuse his power and send the national guard in to “rescue” Terri. If the pro-life folks want to avoid another Terri, they should work to repeal the living will laws, if that’s what they want, not shop for judges who will overturn the existing law (that’s what leftists do when they can’t get their way).

It is not religion but basic principle that argues for the life of Terri Schiavo.

It is instead the ideological, liberal activist court that has erased established black-letter law to end the life of a human being, however impaired that life may be.

The issue before us is whether this or that person, having legal standing in a court of law, can end another person's life on the basis of hearsay, which is currently inadmissable as evidence in U.S. courts.

"He said she said" is not proof in any court EXCEPT Terri Schiavo's, where she is on trial for her life and unable to communicate. On the basis of no other evidence than her husband's unprovable assertion, the Florida court has upheld the taking of human life not in accord with established law and the rules of evidence, but because of her husband's unsubstantiated claim that she once told him she didn't want to be an invalid.

Is this really the precedent we want to set? In America today, starving a dog can get you 90 days. So where does it leave us now that the court has ordered the starving death of a living human being --on the basis of hearsay?

With the undocumented, unsubstantiated claims of this or that individual, shall we all now then just take a vote on who should live and who should die?

We just did. And we did so in violation of the laws specifically designed to protect the weakest and most innocent among us.

Who can help us now?

Eracus,

I think it is difficult to argue that the vast majority of the activists fighting to save Terri are not driven by their religious beliefs.

You disagreement isn’t with a “liberal activist court” it is with the Florida law which allows living wills or absent those, if family members disagree, a procedure for the courts to resolve the dispute using “clear and convincing” standards.

While the appellate courts would not dispute the findings of facts in the case, it the rules of evidence were violated as you allude, the lower court ruling would be overturned on appeal and it was not.

Go to the legislature and get them to repeal their “right to die” laws if you don’t like them. You look foolish trying to blame the courts.

I consider myself to be conservative, I don't recall ever voting for a Democrat. I am both pro-choice and support the idea of promoting life when in doubt. (Parental notification before minors can have an abortion is to me a no-brainer good idea.)

However, the difference for me between an unborn life and Terri Schiavo is that the unborn have untold potential. Terri Schiavo has literally no hope of ever /not/ being a vegetable.

In her place, I would scream if I could to be put out of my misery. Regardless of what other people think, what my parents think, what the state thinks. The last thing I want is the 'collective good' to trap me in a fleshy cell for forty years. Anyone would go insane.

This woman is not in a coma, where she'll sleep off any time until she gets better. She's awake and a vegetable.

I don't presume that starvation and dehydration is pleasant or not-uncomfortable. But for me, it'd be preferable to live as Terri Schiavo for the same amount of time. (If I were to be in her position, I'd ask to be sent to Oregon and have someone mercifully put me out of my misery like a horse.)

I hate the hijinks on both sides. Both sides treat her as an object of contention rather than as a person. I am personally more interested in knowing who authorized that stupid 'GOP talking points' memo. The Democrats have to be called to the carpet for going out of the system.

Aodhan,

I don’t think the decision has any effect on Terri one way or the other. I think the evidence is overwhelming that she is unaware of being alive and is not cognizant of any pain or discomfort.

I also am disgusted by the hateful rhetoric spewing from the Left over this issue; disgusted, but not surprised.

With regard to poor Terri Shiavo, as I wrote in a recent post, it beggers belief that five courts are in collusion to allow her to die if there isn't convincing evidence that that is her wish.

There's a difference between life and existence. Brain measurements show cortex activity (which is consciousness) flatlined. CT scans show the cortical tissue is destroyed. Her body is there - and was being kept going with the feeding tube.

Then some wackjob has put a hit out on Michael Schiavo and one of the Judges on the case.

TV news in Kansas City had a story on last night about a local man who was in a coma for several years, and who just recently came out of it. They showed him sitting up in a wheelchair. He is unable to speak but can write on a whiteboard on a lap. When the reporter asked him if he was happy to be alive he wrote yes. Like Terri Schiavo, his doctors never expected him to come out of the coma.

A comma is different than a persistant vegitative state.

A vegEtative state and a coMa are indeed different - and neither is in and of themselves termimal, especially in Terri Schiavo's case.

She is not being kept alive through any extraordinary means.

Elizabeth-
It's been 15 years now. How long do you propose her husband wait before fulfilling what he believes was would be her wishes?

Question: Why does an estranged husband have custody over his wife?

Strikes me as an absurd precedent.

"it beggers belief that five courts are in collusion to allow her to die if there isn't convincing evidence that that is her wish."

What are courts if not collusive in the law? And, as Mr. Brown correctly points out, Florida law is the antecedent in this case. Hence the dispute, since the law does not protect the weak and infirm when the "clear and convincing" standard is whatever "he said she said." Nevermind the disparity in representation or the facts a priori.

It is the liberal, activist court that supported popular opinion asserting "the boy belonged with his father" so a Federal S.W.A.T. team, in violation of U.S. immigration policy, could put a machinegun to the head of a 6-year-old Cuban refugee. It is this same liberal, activist court that now says the woman must die in defiance of a bi-partisan law passed by Congress to obtain a de novo review. Recall this same Florida court, beggering belief, also ruled against its own State constitution in the 2000 Florida recount. Is there a pattern here?

Is it not clear that the liberal Left, having been soundly rejected in the majority of legislatures and executive branches throughout these United States, has taken refuge in the judiciary? And is it not the issue, really, that Terri Schiavo must die to ensure the supremacy of the judiciary over the legislative and executive branches of government, that this or that "interpretation" of the law should be assured in accord with the personal or political preferences of some unelected, unaccountable court? Is this not in fact the reason why, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, we now have a supermajority rule in the U.S. Senate allowing the minority Left to obstruct the will of the people in the confirmation of its own judges?

The suggestion that the issue before us is religious in nature is a canard. And while it may be true that some in deed are motivated by religion, it is as irrelevant as it is ineffective. What matters is the precedent being set that the weak and defenseless are expendable, in the eyes of a liberal, activist court, if they are weak and defenseless.

The irony, of course, is the same liberal, activist courts that upheld a woman's "right to choose," have now denied that right to Terri Schiavo based not on any material facts in evidence, but on the basis of what her husband said she said.

Where is Gloria Steinem now? Where is Hillary? Where are the great champions of the moral imperative for human rights, gender equality, and stem cell research?

Hiding behind the courts, of course, impaled upon their own moral contradiction that the innocent must die just so the judge remains supreme.

Behold the brave new world.

Mitch, I looked at this question too. Terri's been brain dead for fifteen years, about as long if not longer than your kids have been alive. For half that time, this case has dragged on. Just because the husband may have moved on romantically, does not mean he's acting out her wishes and doesn't feel compelled to do so.

I asked myself this question. My wife knows my wishes, but really, my parents and friends don't. I haven't made a living will so there is no record of my wish. I still hope my wife to move heaven and earth to bring me the release she and I both know I would want if I were like Terri Schiavo.

Just because, fifteen years later, after fighting my parent's potential desire to keep me alive in a cell of living flesh, and she had found a new man, doesn't mean my wishes would have changed or it would necessarily be less important that she secure my release.

I don't welcome death. I fear twilight.

With a coma, there is always the possibility that the sufferer will come up, not really aware of the past. With coma patients there is the hope they will wake up as good as before.

With brain death, awakening is not possible. This is the precise diagnosis for Terri Schiavo: she will /never/ get better. Instead, Terri is awake, brain dead. She is the closest human equivalent of a sea anemone. She has some automatic response, so she probably feels and experiences, but no independent thought or feelings. Or at least none that could be communicated ever to the outside world. Simply to feel or experience is not to be alive in the human sense.

Yeah, "comma" and "vegitative"....and Bush and the rest of the knuckle-dragging red-state types are the "stupid" ones.

When you "know everything" (as they seem to in this case as every other), you'd think it would be an easy "thing" to know how to spell correctly. Liberals.

Mitch,

You're absolutely right. People in support of removing Terri's feeding tube love death.

It's not at all that in the midst of this tragedy, we take solace that Terri's repeatedly determined wishes are finally being carried out after almost a decade of obstructionism and last minute interference by a bunch of political buffoons.

Nope. We just love death.

Death! Death! Yummy Death!
/jc

Slash,

Have you actually READ any portion of what I've written?

To me, this is way past being about Terri Schiavo. It's about crappy law.

You seem to have a hard time seeing that I'm *agreeing* with your interpretation of the *court cases*.

As re your little jape this morning on T5C - well, more in a bit.

And to anyone who actually wants to understand the law regarding the hearsay argument some Shindler supporters are tossing around, please read this:

http://snipurl.com/dp87

It's long and detailed, but that's the law for you folks.

If you want to be a nation of laws, you gotta abide by them.
/jc

"If you want to be a nation of laws, you gotta abide by them."

Or change them.

By the way, Slash - since you trotted our your little "reality-based community" conceit this morning:

Didja ever find that Doug Brinkley article "proving" that Kerry was *in* (not near) Cambodia? Dates, times, places?

And we need to revisit that list of testable criteria re Iraq one of these days.

Because alla you in the fantasy-based community need to think about these things...

And to anyone who actually wants to understand the law regarding the hearsay argument... It's long and detailed, but that's the law...
____________________

....and it's pure casuistry.

All it means is that "oral statements" are within the law as an expression of intent, which no thinking person disputes. It's how and why witnesses testify in court.

Meanwhile, the source cited is a former law clerk in the Florida 5th District Court now in private practice before the Florida appellate court, here defending the Florida appellate court. Gee whiz.

All of which would explain why he framed this particular discussion without remarking on the fact the entire testimony before the court in Schiavo was hearsay, wherein the judge's decision contradicted the appellate court's own ruling in Browning that "the surrogate would bear the burden of proof if a decision based on purely oral evidence is challenged."

Clearly, the surrogate's burden of proof has not been met else there would be no debate. Instead, the lower court's order to starve Terri Schiavo to death, while based entirely on the surrogate's repeated assertion of hearsay evidence, has been upheld. But the fact remains whether 5 witnesses testify or 5 million witnesses testify, "he said she said" is STILL hearsay, and does not meet the burden of proof under Florida's own laws.

The reason the appellate courts have denied the appeals is, obviously, to uphold the original ruling. In the alternative, Terri Schiavo's life would be sustained and the opportunity for new law to be established to lower the standard for evidence in euthanasia killings would be lost.

The intent in Browning was to protect the right of a parent or other surrogate in the decision to discontinue life support for a permanent vegetative state. For it to apply in Schiavo, the legal standing of a wife in Florida must be as ward to her surrogate husband, much as a pet would be to its owner, so as to permit euthanasia killings without the requirement of legal documentation.

THAT'S the issue, and as much as we might sympathize with the husband, killing a living human being to establish new law is not just morally repugnant, it is insane.

It's how the Nazis arrived at the Final Solution, a fact our illustrious media and plethora of "expert" legal analyses conveniently neglect to mention, and which their liberal-minded, emotionally enslaved followers swallow without thought or hesitation.

More's the pity, because by the standard herein being attempted, it would become legal to "euthanize" people who become a burden to society with a court order based on oral statements presented by anyone to whom the court itself has granted legal standing.

The question then becomes who is a burden to society, and who among us shall decide?

Mitch's last comment hits the point about which Florida and the rest of us should be arguing about. Eracus frames it in more detail.

I don't see a legal way to interfere with the current situation with Terri Schiavo. I personally don't agree that she she be forced to live that way.

I think we all agree that it would be better if Terri's intentions and desires had been in writing and not merely mentioned to her husband. By making it law that such intentions must be legally recorded in order to be honored, we might avoid this kind of silly circus in the future. Such a law would also protect the interests of those who would rather have the tube pulled on themselves.

We might even be able to have a meaningful debate on the topic in such circumstances instead of the bizarre threats, rumors, and character assassinations we're seeing currently.

In case you missed it - Tom DeLay's family pulled the plug on his dad in a coma. A difficult decision I'm sure. And a personal decision. Obviously many differences in circumstance, but also some core similarities:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,0,5710023.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Let's not repeat here the predictable slanders of the L.A. Times. The DeLay family did not starve their father to death. He was in a coma, on a respirator, and died in trauma following a severe head injury. The family simply let him go instead of using extraordinary means to keep him artificially alive.

Any comparison to the Schiavo case is utterly ridiculous. The L.A. Times is just selling the lunatics another sheet of fishwrap.