Terri Schiavo Case Headed to U.S. Supreme Court

The Terri Schiavo case headed to the Supreme Court early today as two lesser federal courts ruled against restoring the feeding tube to her as her parents had wanted.

The Supreme Court may not even take the case, or if it does, may not issue a ruling until it is too late. But then again, the conservative-leaning court may intervene quickly. It's hard to tell.

Terri's case appears doomed. This is a major setback for the extended pro-life movement and only goes to show that everyone needs living wills so that if they become too sick to communicate that the person's wishes will be followed.

Most judges are not medical doctors and cannot personally examine the patient and form a medical opinion. How many MDs are in Congress? A handful?

Congress got involved for all the wrong reasons and passed faulty legislation. This is a way of saying "See? See what we did? We did good, voters. But the evil courts ruled the wrong way!!" It just smells of politics all around; that stupid memo that circulated through the GOP Congressional ranks stating that this act would play well with their conservative base is the proof of it. The ugliness of American politics really came out on this.

If Congress wanted to do this correctly, then they should have passed a law banning the removal of feeding tubes from the terminally ill until a group of doctors and the person's family agreed that there was no hope of recovery or something along those lines.

Then the Congress would have been challenged in the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the law. The key would have been to keep this between the family and the doctors who were providing care and keep it out of the courts.

Instead Congress ordered the higher courts to examine this one case. Can one branch of government order another to do something like this? The checks and balances system has been weakened by Congress and only the Supreme Court can fix it now.

Constitutional scholars seem to agree that Congress overstepped its bounds by doing what it did in the way that it did. Follow that?

Terri should be kept alive. This is no ordinary case of a comatose woman; she was clearly responding to her parents; her mental capacity may have been diminished a great deal, but mere mental incapacitation is not grounds for starving her to death.

Put the tube back in and allow her to die in her own good (natural) time. And the Supreme Court should put Congress into its place by slapping down this law.