We've Been Here Before

Last post for awhile on Schiavo. I am growing tired of it. The courts, the law, the doctors, and public opinion are all very much looking like they are for finally allowing this poor woman to die. It's time for religious conservatives to stop the posturing. I know you're true believers, and that's fine, but you don't make the laws.

Here's a snippet. Sound familiar?
"She is oblivious to her surroundings and will remain so. Her body twitches only reflexively, without consciousness.. The areas of her brain that once thought, felt, and experienced sensations have degenerated badly and are continuing to do so. The cavities remaining are filling with cerebrospinal fluid. The "'cerebral cortical atrophy is irreversible, permanent, progressive and ongoing.'" "[She] will never interact meaningfully with her environment again. She will remain in a persistent vegetative state until her death." Because she cannot swallow, her nutrition and hydration are delivered through a tube surgically implanted in her stomach."

That was not about Terri Schiavo. It was about Nancy Cruzan, who was in an identical persistent vegetative state, and was written by Supreme Court Justice Brennan in 1990.

Here's another snippet, also about the Cruzan case.
"While I agree with the Court's analysis today, and therefore join in its opinion, I would have preferred that we announce, clearly and promptly, that the federal courts have no business in this field; that American law has always accorded the State the power to prevent, by force if necessary, suicide -- including suicide by refusing to take appropriate measures necessary to preserve one's life; that the point at which life becomes "worthless," and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become "extraordinary" or "inappropriate," are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory; and hence, that even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve his or her life, it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide, through their elected representatives, whether that wish will be honored. It is quite impossible (because the Constitution says nothing about the matter) that those citizens will decide upon a line less lawful than the one we would choose; and it is unlikely (because we know no more about "life and death" than they do) that they will decide upon a line less reasonable.... "

The author? Justice Antonin Scalia.

The first federal judge already denied the request to replace the feeding tube. This is all but over. All this indignation about her being starved is projection of cognitively functioning people onto her. Time that is days to us is nothing to her. According to most doctors that have seen her, she is feeling no pain. Let her die in peace.