[Diamond]

Your thoughtful comments deserve a response.

But none of this has anything to do with Terri Schiavo, who left no instructions as to her wishes, and who is unable to clearly express her wishes now. That's where the focus needs to be -- on what constitutes legally valid evidence of a patient's choice not to continue life-sustaining treatment. And the much-belated "memory" of a husband who has both personal and financial interests in ending his brain-damaged wife's life should most certainly be found NOT to constitute such legally valid evidence, especially in the face of conflicting testimony and wishes of other close family members.

First, let me agree with your very well-reasoned, and very accurate statement here. I have one question about one aspect of it, but more about that in a minute.

Religious conservatives are hurting Terri's case by injecting this sort of ideological zealotry into the discussion. This argument is not about Terri, it's about the personal religious ideology of those making it. Most Americans, and particularly most well-educated Americans such as those who are involved in making the decisions in this and similar cases, do not question the premise that people should be allowed to choose not to continue life-sustaining treatments, when they believe their quality of life no longer justifies it. Many of us are horrified at the thought that these religious zealots may one day manage to take over our own lives, and force us to stay alive well beyond when we want to, using huge amounts of personal, taxpayer, and insurer funds that we don't think should be expended on unwilling patients.

Here is where I have a first question. Why the invective directed against religious conservatives? I would doubt that any reasoned religious conservative would think it moral to attempt to extend a dying person's life from extraordinary medical treatment. [Unlike purely medical treatment, when food and water is withdrawn, the cause of death is not the terminal or underlying condition but rather starvation or lack of hydration. The crazy circular reasoning underlying the food and water as 'medical treatment' crowd is that ANY condition could be termed 'terminal' because any human being would die within a certain number of days if food and water were withdrawn.] There is a difference between allowing a dying person to die, against which there is no moral prohibition, and conversely, killing a person who is not dying.

However, one of the central points of the statements quoted in the article from Father Frank Pavone is that that though significant, even the fact that Schiavo is trying to cause Terri's death by dehydration is not the key factor because "that happens routinely, and he says that "Terri's case is a test of whether we will wake up and realize that letting patients decide they want to be killed means that some patients will be killed against their will."

You say that none of this has anything to do with Terri's case, and in an ideal world, you would be right. However, no matter what "safegaurds" or "precautionary procedures" you seek to invoke, it is indisputable that the lack of respect for the lives of certain individuals has historically led to the involuntary (on the part of the victims) active killing of many innocent people. How do you address this question, that is, beyond a rant against religious conservatives?

You can have a written directive if you want, (I always wonder what one is supposed to do if one has executed a written directive, but has changed his mind and cannot presently communicate that change of mind) but what do you propose as a "safeguard" for those who do not, so that those who are merely disabled or young and not termianlly ill cannot simply be killed at the whim of others?

Cordially,

[GovernmentShrinker]

A large and loud contingent of religious conservatives are out to hijack our nation's legal system, to prevent anyone from choosing to die when they want to. They are trampling on the most basic of individual freedoms, and I regard them as very dangerous.

A person who has clearly expressed a wish to die, due to a medical condition which they determine to make their life not worth living, should be free to make that choice without interference from those whose religious beliefs don't agree with such choices. They should have the option to employ assisted suicide, rather than starve and dehyrate themselves slowly and miserably, as some patients have been documented to have done when denied euthanasia.

But again, none of this has anything to do with Terri Schiavo. The religious zealots are just using her highly publicized case to promote their agenda. Her case has exposed serious shortcomings in Florida legal system, as it relates to end-of-life options. There is no structure providing for impartial review of medical diagnosis and prognosis, and no clear rule about what constitutes legally effective instructions from the patient in question. Both of these things are desperately needed, but the religious don't want either. They want no one to ever have their life ended, if continued tube feeding could keep them alive (and many advocate even more extreme measures on a routine basis), and they don't care a whit whether someone has left clear, written, notarized instructions about the circumstances under which they would want to be helped to die, or not helped to stay alive.

There is no perfect system, in which no one will ever be euthanized against their will, just as we will never have a system that completely eliminates murder on the streets. The unfettered right to bear arms is essential to a free society, even though it necessarily entails some deaths of innocents due to carelessness and misuse. With medical science increasingly able to keep people technically alive long past where nature would allow it, and at colossal economic cost, free people need to be free to make individual choices about how to deal with this issue, and we need a legal system that supports and protects those choices, while providing reasonable safeguards against abuse.