Folks here haven't tuned into this one yet:

House votes to save Schiavo

This is an extraordinarily painful issue. Terri Schiavo has been in a vegetative state for the past thirteen years - the result of a heart attack which starved her brain of oxygen. While her brain can still react to external stimuli such as sounds, light and touch, her mind is effectively gone. She has been kept alive for the past 13 years with a feeding tube connected to her stomach.

After a five year court battle, her husband, as her legal guardian, has retained the right to remove her feeding tube and let her body pass on. Her parents, though, continue to fight the order in the belief that she can be rehabilitated. After dozens of doctors have examined her and concurred she will never recover, some 19 court decisions have been taken in favor of the husband's right to remove the feeding tube. It has now been disconnected for almost a week.

Now, at the urging of her parents and the solicitation of conservative talk radio shows and internet media, the Florida state legislature has stuck its nose into this intensely personal tragedy. Today the legislature may vote to authorize the governor to reinsert the feeding tube.

There are no easy answers here. However, I tend to favor the husband's position. He has cared for this incapacitated woman for thirteen years and she has shown virtuatlly no sign of recovery. Her parents continue to misinterpret automatic and involuntary body and face movement as a sign she is coherent about her surroundings. Doctors have determined otherwise - that most of her brain is essentially dead. But I fully appreciate her parents' desperate desire to keep her alive.

What I find wrong though is to have the Florida state legislature effectively politicize and socialize what is at its roots a most personal tragedy. I also find unsubstantiated and unfounded allegations in the gossip media that her husband abused her to represent the lowest form of yellow journalism and pandering. Not a single doctor who has examined her over the past thirteen years has ever found any evidence of any such abuse.

My own view is that its time to let Terri go. Her mind left this world a long time ago. Its time to let her body follow her spirit.