...unless you're Terri Schiavo. She's no longer able to tell anybody what she wants. So her husband, her family and the courts have decided they will speak for her.
It's clear her husband has a very serious conflict of interest and yet he is her husband, if only in the legal sense of the word, and by all rights, should be the one to communicate her wishes. I just have a hard time trusting this man's motives. It's quite clear he'd like to move on with his life. His two children with a woman NOT Terri more than suggests that.
It's also clear there are merited claims that Terri hasn't fully "checked out" but because he has permitted very little medical testing in the recent years, we are left to take his word for it. Does anybody else have a problem with this? At what point do we decide a life is no longer valuable? When we can no longer measure it through scientifically/medically approved methods? When the term "valuable" changes? God help every retarded child, every Down's Syndrome child, every stroke victim. God help us all.
I cannot begin to imagine the agony Terri's family is facing. Here are people who love her, who are prepared to care for her til her "natural and unforced" end comes because they still see "Terri" behind those eyes and this man refuses it with some twisted logic that "this is what Terri wanted". I don't believe she "wanted" him to have children with a woman while they were still married but that didn't seem to matter. I don't believe she "wanted" him to callously disregard her family and their suffering and yet he has. Somehow, what Terri "wanted" only seems to matter if it benefits him. She really should be ashamed of herself for living so damn long. And her parents should be chastised swiftly and brutally for so selfishly wanting to dedicate their entire lives to her care just so they can have the pleasure of her company. Curse the doctors who kept her alive through medicines and machines! They're all selfish bastards! Every last one of them!
I won't even begin to conjecture as to whether the government has overstepped its proper boundaries. I'll leave that to the professionals. I will, however, state that the fact that it got this far makes me shudder with fear.
The bottom line is that this isn't about Terri because there's no possible way to know what she--in the state she is in this very moment-wants. All we know is her husband wants her dead, her family wants her to live, and the courts have now decided they'll make the decision for her. It is disturbing, repulsive and tragic for every possible reason.
Edit: I have a friend whose wife suffered an aneurysm about 7 years ago. I've watched him faithfully care for their 3 young children by himself. I've watched him lovingly tend to his wife who is in a nursing facility. I've seen him go without the love and tenderness of a partner not because he couldn't but because he chose to honor and love his wife "until death do us part". One day, his children will be old enough to know how worthy of respect their dad is. Until then, they just know that every Saturday, Daddy takes Mommy out on a date and even if she doesn't know he's there he dotes on her and cherishes her for the woman she was because that's the woman he still sees. This is the definition of a hero and I am honored to call him my friend.