But who really knows how he or she would feel if faced with such a decision, and is it morally responsible to make such a decision far in advance? The news media have been obsessed with advising people to make out "advance medical directives" or "living wills" so that their families will not encounter the agonizing end-of-life debates that Terri Schiavo's family faced. But the ABC poll raises some interesting questions. Assuming the poll itself included a valid, representative sample, nearly 10 percent fewer people would choose death if asked the question at another time. Clearly many people change their minds -- so is it really a good idea to base a decision as momentous as ending a life on what someone thinks they want years earlier?
Of course, we don't know what Terri Schiavo would have wanted. Whether she is in a persistent vegetative state or not -- and there is debate among those physicians who have actually examined her on this issue, notwithstanding the mainstream media's disingenuous attempts to suggest otherwise -- we don't know what Schiavo wanted. We have only her husband's word (corroborated by Michael Schiavo's family, not Terri's) that she once said, after viewing a movie about a comatose patient, that she wouldn't want to live in such a condition.
Under the circumstances, what possible harm could come from keeping Schiavo alive? Her parents and several benefactors have offered to assume the financial burden of doing so. Yet, the courts have, so far, deferred to Michael Schiavo's wishes to withdraw food and water from Terri, despite the compromised nature of his relationship with his wife. Michael Schiavo has been in a decade-long common-law relationship with another woman by whom he's fathered two children, while still tenaciously asserting his spousal rights to determine Terri's fate, and he stands to inherit whatever is left of a million-dollar medical malpractice settlement awarded for Terri Schiavo's care.
If a court can order Terri Schiavo to be slowly starved to death on the wishes of an estranged husband, who will be next?