Thoughts about a thoughtful comment…

I posted a piece on the 23rd titled “Well, this is good enough for me.” In it I excerpted an article from Salon about a priest named John Paris from Boston University. The article’s headline read: "This has nothing to do with the sanctity of life:” The Rev. John Paris, professor of bioethics, says Terri Schiavo has the moral and legal right to die, and only the Christian right is keeping her alive.”

A reader named “Boston” commented on my post and I thought the comments are worth discussing. Here’s what Boston said:

"Interestingly, you and much of the world polarize this outcome as the Christian rightists' defeat. I don't.

I'm neither (I'm a way-left-o'-center Wiccan) and I take this case and its outcome as an enormous civil liberty violation.

Please know, it's frustrating the hell outta me that I'm on the side of an issue with the catholic pope and Jethro Bush. That's so uncharacteristic...I'm a Bushwhacker through and through...except this one time we agree on something for vastly differing reasons.

If an adult with compromised intellectual competence can swallow and a spouse elects to withhold all nutritional sustenance in an attempt to end their life, the spouse would be facing criminal abuse and neglect charges in the Health and Human Services Adult Protection Services arena and the dependent adult would be placed under surrogacy - adult "foster care."

There is doubt about the veracity of the husband, there is doubt about the validity of the family's observations and interpretations ... and in my mind, it's not up to any of us to determine where we benchmark "a life worth living" for another.

So many say, "I wouldn't want to live like that, impose that on my family." Don't count me out of that. But that's no rationale to support permitting a severely brain damaged human from being starved to death because she cannot speak and swallow."

I would sympathize with Boston’s comments except that I understand how far the Florida courts have gone to protect Mrs. Schaivo. The most important protection is probably the designation of something called a “Guardian Ad Litem.” A GAL is an independent person assigned by the courts to represent the interests of a person. Normally the protectee is an abused child or the like. Mrs. Schaivo, who has had two GALs at different times, is certainly the subject of some tug of war here, and a disinterested party, appointed by the courts to protect her seems like a good idea.

Both GALs supported the husband. Nineteen or so courts support the husband. The doctors who actually examined her, as opposed to the ones who looked at the parent’s video tapes, found that her cerebral cortex has mostly been replaced with spinal fluid. She has no, repeat, no higher brain function, she will never get better, she will only get worse. She expressed a wish to her husband to not be kept alive artifically. That was confirmed, under oath, by others - her husband’s sister and one other person, as I recall, but nonetheless, under oath.

Mrs. Schaivo is not someone who is developmentally disabled; she is not brain damaged with trouble swallowing. In essence, Mrs. Schaivo has no brain, her brain is destroyed - it’s shrunken and useless. Her brain stem keeps her motor functions alive, her soul - I’d like to think we have them, has been gone for 15 years. It’s time to let her body go.

Rebuttals? Keeping in mind that I've had a couple of days to think about this and Boston was doing some "real time" response to a post on a blog. Not fair, really.