For me as a liberal european it’s interesting as well, as well as scary. In Norway, and I think in most countries that have a comprehensive public health care system, the decision to continue or abandon medical treatment is taken by medical professionals, not relatives (although they have a say) and certainly not judges. In either case, giving nourishment is not considered medical treatment.

I suppose this shows a difference between “liberal” and “social” varieties of left. In leftist Norway, we use large sums of goverment money to keep the severely, permanently handicapped as happy as they can reasonably be in their state.

Some here and elsewhere have raised the issue that the testimony at the trial regarding Mrs. Schiavo’s wishes were merely “hearsay”. The site that I pointed to has a post that discusses it.

One thing that is fairly evident is that organizations that are aligned with the “religious right” are using the Schiavo case in their fund-raising. In other words, they’re trying to make money off it. The longer that they can keep some machinery of her body functioning, the richer they’ll be. That’s the long and the short of it. For them, it’s all about money.

At least that’s the story as we know from outside and that’s what’s been recognised by all judges, speculations aside.

So clearly the two parties don’t see it as a simple decision over “a thing”, otherwise they’d have found an agreement long before… They are both saying they’re speaking in her best interests as a human being. But, blunt as it is, only one has that legal right, so it really shouldn’t matter what his motivations are, just like it shouldn’t really matter what her parents motivations are to fight his decision.

That scalpel was handed to the judges when the whole court saga started. They must have known bringing in the courts was only going to make it more painful for everyone.

It goes both ways. We may also wonder why her parents won’t let him take responsibility, why won’t they accept he is the legal guardian, why won’t they accept he may have no ulterior motives for his position except carry out her own wishes. I cannot know if it’s like that, but then I cannot know if her parents’ wishes to keep her in that state forever are completely devoid of any other motives.

We may think the worst or best of either parties here, it doesn’t change the situation one bit.

Why should it be less of a problem to grant the parents the final say in the matter? Because she’s now “a thing” so keeping her alive looks less problematic? But the point is, that person that now has become a thing maybe wouldn’t have wanted to be reduced to a thing for years and years… So both decisions are going to be blunt. None of them is as easy as tossing around “a thing”.

Yes, the law is a blunt instrument, it always is when there is litigation. Even without a will, it would have been better if the husband and parents had never gone to court and simply found themselves in agreement on one or the other option. They didn’t, and that’s what is so difficult here. I don’t understand why the assumption that the husband should just give up is any less blunt than the judges’ decisions so far.

It strikes me more and more that it’s those whom Brain Leiter would call say have specialized knowledge who do not understand the issues. Specialization is a filtering device. It seems to me a formal one.

This entire “discussion” grows more surreal by the day.

My understanding is that they’re arresting people who apparently believe that they can feed her orally. Given the fact that she is unable to swallow, the bread & water that said people wanted to feed to her would probably kill her. Which leads me to believe that arresting said people makes perfect sense. But I could be wrong about that.

How about what Terry herself needs, what she would have wanted for herself, her own life, her own body? The border between life and death is not just about a lump of flesh to be kept alive or left to die, it’s also about things like dignity and respect for the person that is in that situation. She’s not anybody’s property. She wasn’t a child when she fell ill, she was a grown woman.

If they cared for her and respected her as a person before she fell ill, then it’s possible both her husband and her parents are in equal good faith, and that they both think they are expressing what would have been her wishes, they just happen to have the opposite idea of those wishes, so it’s hard to tell her wishes from theirs. That is the big problem in “taking sides” here. How do we know for sure what she would have wanted. You can’t say that is irrelevant, it’s exactly the heart of the matter.

Focusing on what the parents want and what the husband wants, as if she wasn’t there, only someone the husband is supposed to forget about and the parents allowed to ‘own’, as if she was an object and the controversy about property of that object, that I don’t understand. I don’t see what’s religious and respectful about framing it like that really.

And I am not saying I don’t sympathise with the parents, however their wishes have been exploited politically. I do. I cannot imagine what it is like, to have to give up all hope of recovery and accept your daughter is gone. I can see why they don’t want to do that. But I don’t think it does them any justice either, to speak of their desire to keep her alive as a matter of ownership.

Not feeding her: An omission.

Arresting anybody who tries to feed her: Definately an act.

So, quite aside from the merits of the case, (Based on what I’ve heard, I’d probably pull the plug, too.) your distinction fails. The only reason it fails to be an “execution” is that there’s no person there to execute.

Yes, Kieran, I’ve heard of Elian. Trying to save a life, making sure a kid gets shipped off to chop sugar cane in a police state… Yes, yes, I see the obvious parallels, who could miss them?

This is a fight over whether or not a woman’s wishes are valid about what she wanted to happen to her over what her parents want. This is about who ultimately ‘owns’ your body.

The parents want the body of their daughter to continue to exist without her animating it, in contradiction to her stated wishes. How is that a cold issue about logic?

Or maybe they could just move to Nevada and pimp her out at the Mustang Ranch.

A life’s work may live on, but for a secular humanist one’s ass does not, and is not therefore a very important part of a legacy. Michael Schiavo may be right as a matter of law and principle but for many people defending him is defending his metaphysical argument.

He needs to get this ghost out of his life. His late wife’s parents want the ghost to stay in theirs. In the name of principle and of logic you have chosen sides in a religious argument.

And I’m still surprised that this argument is about wheter or not to starve the body rather than stop it from functioning. The reliance on the passive voice and act is grotesque.