The UmBlog

of course it does...."Still, a videotape showed Terri laughing and trying to speak, while the woman in the Science study reportedly cannot respond to her environment at all. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see that Terri was at least as aware a human being as the young woman making news today all over the world."

Too bad Terri Schiavo wasn't in Iowa.... IOWA CITY (AP) — A Jehovah’s Witness who would not permit blood transfusions for his comatose wife has been barred from making her medical decisions. Tawnya Nissen, 28, of Clinton, who has been in a coma for about two weeks, will be under the guardianship of her father until she can make her own decisions, according to a ruling issued Wednesday by a Johnson County judge...

When to Pull a Feeding Tube - Christianity Today Magazine More refined defense of the ethics of keeping Terri alive.

A Zogby poll finds the contrary when the questions are phrased differently. Thanks to Justin Taylor's blog for pointing this out.

Not that I am making any new insights here, but today’s opinions weave a tangled web. I subscribe to my alma mater’s, UConn , daily newspaper The Daily Campus to keep up on the basketball teams and also to stay informed of the opinions of today’s college students. Here is a letter to the editor questioning the value of the institution of marriage. Marriage: a misguided Tradition His arguments against marriage are less sex (necessary for mental health), poverty from the eventual divorce, fidelity (the author is a male), and puts on paper what’s should only be in the heart. I fear this isn’t an April Fool’s article. I don’t think he is gay since this is the normative gay male lifestyle yet they want to have the right to marry like heterosexuals. Nicholas D. Kristof over at the NY Times also has a problem with marriage. In his March 30th article, When Marriage Kills , he blames the Bush administration for emphasizing Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms in that order in AIDS aid to Africa...

Here is one obituary. http://tinyurl.com/6afea In conversations at work and in letters to the editors of a couple papers I look at, I see similar illogical arguments to defend the starvation of a severely disabled adult. 1) Outsiders should shut up because they don’t know what she really wanted. Then why can’t the benefit of the doubt go to life? Especially since her husband finally recalled what she wanted after he won the lawsuit. 2) The court shouldn’t interfere with his custodial rights. That’s fine but he should be put in jail now for murder. That’s not a logical response, but I don’t understand why the court never doubted his motives. 3) People who want Terri to live are such hypocrites because they support the war in Iraq that has killed multiple thousands of highly functioning adults. Does Jesse Jackson support that war? This highlights a person’s inability to recognize a more complicated approach to life. Pacifism is not the only option to the philosophically consistent person...

If Terry Schiavo was born in this condition our country might have been in a unified uproar if her parents had decided to starve her in her adult years. But she, instead, descended from a functioning bulimic adult to a severely disabled adult. So most of the country judges that the loss of her quality of life disqualifies her protection from intentional starvation by her husband. Christopher Reeve needed a feeding tube but he could speak and think clearly. She can’t, so she gets to die based on her statements not remembered until several years into her handicap. Her family and lawyer claim she can respond and aver to anecdotal evidence, yet by court order they can’t bring in video or audio equipment to document these. Why does the court collude with this murder? Why does this country collude with this murder? Christopher Reeve had hope in stem cell therapy and had much national sympathy. Terry’s husband has no hope for her. But her family does. He stands to profit when she dies. They a...