A Different Terri Schiavo Perspective

From Attention Span, regarding his first love from Kindergarden, who spent 22 years in a coma before dying:

I often wonder what my friend was going through in those 22 years. Would she have preferred death? Should it matter if she did? Is it God's decision to take life or ours? I pray that God was able to do some incredible things for her during that time. I am positive he did not desert her.

A friend asked me about the Terri Schiavo case. He wanted to know why people wanted her to be starved to death, or why they wanted her dead, period. My best guess is that we see ourselves in the face of the less fortunate. In our limited understanding, all we see is a body driven by very little mind. We see that someone like Terri is not in control of anything; she is at the mercy of others. When many people see themselves in that situation, their reaction is fear. They fear living in a debilitated state. They fear not having control. They fear it so much that death seems preferable. And what an interesting choice that becomes for the non-believer. They would rather take the uncertainty of death over the observed certainty of living a life out of their control. Isn't that an amazing statement about the incredibly strong drive of self? But if a decision to remove a feeding tube becomes a personal fight to be able to retain control of one's life, it ceases to be about life itself. . . only about self. [emphasis added]

I've long found it odd that euthanasia is such a polarized conservative/liberal issue. I suppose that we cannot legalize it without the ugly ramifications that we see in the Netherlands, and other countries. But I am very sympathetic to the permanently severely disabled, such as complete paralegics, who might wish to end their lives. Without a doubt, if I were paralyzed from the neck down, without reasonable hope of recovery, or otherwise inflicted with an unameliorable disability such as Schiavo's, I would want to die, rather than simply exist without living. The total certaintly that many moral conservatives have on this issue -- the complete incomprehension of the opposing argument -- is baffling.

All of which is not to take any position on the Terri Schiavo case. As Bill Hobbs put it:

I have not written about the Terri Schiavo case because it is too complex, too multilayered, and too steeped in unknown or unknowable facts for me - indeed for most people - to have a fully informed opinion.

I don't know - and neither do you - if Michael Schiavo is trying to murder his wife or trying to fulfill her stated wishes for just such a scenario. I don't know what Terri Schiavo would want - and neither do you - because she didn't tell us via a living will. We have only the word of her husband who assures us that his wife once said she wouldn't want to be kept alive this way, and we have her parents, who love their daughter and desire only to care for her.

I do know that the Congress did the wrong thing, intervened where it had no Constitutional right, and solved nothing. [Hat tip: Instapundit]

Or better put, to follow the advice of Eugene Volokh: "I know nothing about the Schiavo matter, and despite that have no opinion."