I also disagree with you on your opinion of bad faith, in regards to Michael finding another woman and having children with her.

For one thing, once he finds another woman, he has created a conflict of interest. From the GAL reports, it was made clear by Schiavo that he intended to marry his live in girl friend, once Terri was dead (that to me is a conflict), also the fact that he did not decide to pull the tube until after he decided he wanted to marry his fiance.

The timing is just backwards. Had he decided to pull the tube, and then while still in the legal proccess met his fiance I could almost agree with you, but the fact that he met her first then decided it was tube pulling time, makes me wonder whether his position as guardian and decision make wasn't compromised.

I will be honest, once my husband moves on and finds another woman he wants to marry and make babies with, I personally would not want him in the position to make life and death decisions for me-because his interests lie in two different directions.

Second of all, and as part of the point of Terri's humanity, is she is not Michael's to dispose of. As a human being, she doesn't belong to anyone. This is why I would not "default to the husband," as you put it.

James, I already commented on the hearsay post, but just wanted to say here that what you are describing is hearsay within hearsay.

Hearsay really is "testimony as to what some person told you," if it is offered to prove the matter which the person told you, such as "X said the light was green."

Stupid way to try an make a point. Maybe the writer should check to see if he might also be brain-dead.

Same with the draft or other "public service" requirements -- someone decides that their "utility measurements" of your life somehow exceed your own.

As to changing the law, I'd really hate to get into a system where husbands would have to divorce their wives in order to get on with things merely because some hysterical relatives want to keep the body "alive" via tubes when there is no medical hope for recovery.

Say my uncle had wanted my cousin to play a video in which he said all the nasty things that he'd stored up for his family, but been too cowardly to say in life. Should my cousin have enlivened the funeral with it because that's what my uncle would have wanted? (This is, needless to say, entirely fictional; my uncle was a lovely man). If you're an atheist, and assume the person won't, in some sense, "know", what kind of a savage would intentionally inflict gross pain on the living in order to carry out the wishes of someone who has no further wishes?

I agree with the Schiavo decision on the legal side; the law is the law, and it should be carried out. I simply think that the law should be changed, for future cases, to allow, in the absence of a specific directive (not the hazy recollections of interested parties) family members who want to keep the impaired alive, to do so.

I don't like the way either side in this case has behaved: the conservatives calling their opponents Nazis and accusing Schiavo of abuse, the liberals acting as if the only possible reason to disagree with the Florida court were sheer meanness, total stupidity, or the political desire to pander to the mean and stupid.

But I do think there is a contradiction in the side of those arguing that pulling the plug on Schiavo is not only legal, but obviously right: if Schiavo is indeed as inanimate as she needs to be in order to justify pulling the plug, then she is too inanimate to be treated, in any meaningful sense, as a person. Pulling the plug is not being done "for" her; it's being done (or not) for the survivors.

He did this years after Terri's consciousness was gone and after having spend those years taking every reasonable means to revive her. She is only alive because her parents have managed to litigate this for years.

My position on Terri Schiavo would be identical if we had no information on what her wishes would be, as I'd then default to the husband. I've maintained from the beginning that the parents and/or siblings of a married person have zero standing as juxtaposed against a spouse, absent some compelling show of bad faith on the spouse's part.

http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/03/28/landsburg-on-schiavo/

If she's not a person, her wishes have much less force. Not no force; after all, it makes people happy to think that their wishes will be respected after their death. But less force than the wishes of a living person: my uncle's legally expressed desire for cremation was overruled by my cousin (his executor), who decided that giving my uncle the treatment he wanted would break my uncle's father's heart, which was set on a big Catholic funeral. Most people would allow that this was utterly respectable.

We also honor reasonable economic wishes, as specified in wills, trusts, and so forth.

As to Terri's wishes, we generally presume that the spouse is the person who makes that call even absent evidence as to what they might have wanted.

Further, testimony as to what some person told you is not hearsay. Most eyewitness testimony is based on what the witness saw or heard. Hearsay is reporting on what someone told you that someone said--i.e., third hand information. It's impermissible under most circumstances because one can't cross examine the witness.