Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the transcripts I've read, her parents even said that they'd go so far as to allow portions of her body to be amputated in the event that she contracted gangrene from bedsores and things, and Michael, who spent the first three or four years of this ordeal trying heroically to find something, anything that would bring Terri out of it, decided that he wasn't simply going to turn Terri over to her parents and let them do things like that to her. His ulterior motive is that he's actually not in denial about Terri's condition. She's been dead for 15 years, which is what he believes, and is what is obvious from looking at the evidence. I direct you to http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html for more information.

The attention-seekers in this case are not Terri and Michael Schiavo; they're Bob and Mary Schindler, who are apparently so control-freaky and such fundamentalist whack-jobs they haven't been able to let go, even though it's been over a decade. The way it seems to me is that Terri was so out of control of everything in her life, all of her life, because her parents were so determined to run it for her, that she developed the eating disorder that killed her simply out of wanting an illusion of control.

You can pretty much tell that someone's in the wrong when (that nutjob) Randall Terry and Jeb Bush are on their side, and the Schindlers come down on exactly that side of the equation. I'm just hoping that Terri's body doesn't die tomorrow, or else we'll never hear the end of the ecstatic squealing from the religious lunatic fringe.

For people who are so concerned about the "sanctity of marriage" on other fronts, they're awfully quick to interfere with the husband-wife privilege when it serves their ends. Then again, this case isn't actually about due process, right-to-die statutes, euthanasia, or any of those things. It's about the state establishing a form of Eminent Domain over the (specifically female) human body. Once the state can tell you and/or your doctors that you must have a certain medical procedure (ie. being intubated and having your life artificially prolonged, such as that life is with 70% of your brain gone and being unable to swallow and all), it's not that much further to mandate that you must not have a medical procedure of which the state doesn't approve, and there goes Roe v. Wade, by the back door.

I'm not certain, but I don't think he can divorce her - she'd have to be mentally competent for the trial in order to be divorced, wouldn't she?