Terri Schiavo

Atlantic Blog provides links to some bloggers and the Corner has been very busy reporting on this terrible case. What kind of society allows a husband decide to starve his wife of water and food, depsite her parents wish to care for her? Where are the campaigners on violence against women?
Slate has an excellent article by Harriet McBryde Johnson, a disability rights lawyer who has a neuromuscular disease. Well worth a read.
"I watch nourishment flowing into a slim tube that runs through a neat, round, surgically created orifice in Ms. Schiavo's abdomen, and I'm almost envious. What effortless intake! Due to a congenital neuromuscular disease, I am having trouble swallowing, and it's a constant struggle to get by mouth the calories my skinny body needs. For whatever reason, I'm still trying, but I know a tube is in my future. So, possibly, is speechlessness. That's a scary thought. If I couldn't speak for myself, would I want to die? If I become uncommunicative, a passive object of other people's care, should I hope my brain goes soft and leaves me in peace?
My emotional response is powerful, but at bottom it's not important. It's no more important than anyone else's, not what matters"