From a reader who understands the issue better than Amy Welborn:
On a personal note, living in Florida, this Shiavo situation is really a tough one. My mother lost her battle to Alzheimer’s just shy of her 86th. from 80 on it was obvious that she was failing little by little. First it was her memory started to get holes in it, then halting speech, wandering away from her caregivers…eventually into a nursing home where she deteriorated over a couple of years until she lost the ability to swallow. Feeding tube recommended by the doctors were refused by my sister who along with me had the final say, due, thank God to my mom’s living will. She passed peacefully, I hope, in about a week after contracting pneumonia, due in part to her weakened condition. She was a vibrant, self educated person, full of spunk all her life, and one of the first people I can remember to be a real woman’s libber, long before it was at all fashionable, a real progressive who never backed down from anyone, or anything. I know she would have pulled the plug herself if she had been able to at the end. My heart goes out to all those affected by this. I’m not sure there is a right and wrong so much as there is an inevitability that we all must live with ourselves and the decisions we make in these situations. I agree with you that I’m not so sure it is humane to not let nature take it’s course.
More feedback on the Letters Page.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “Some say let’s choose another route and give gay folks some legal rights but call it something other than marriage. We have been down that road before in this country. Separate is not equal. The rights to liberty and happiness belong to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation.
Some say they are uncomfortable with the thought of gays and lesbians marrying. But our rights as Americans do not depend on the approval of others. Our rights depend on us being Americans.
Sometimes it takes courts to remind us of these basic principles.
In 1948, when I was 8 years old, 30 states had bans on interracial marriage, courts had upheld the bans many times, and 90 percent of the public disapproved of those marriages, saying they were against the definition of marriage, against God’s law. But that year, the California Supreme Court became the first court in America to strike down such a ban. Thank goodness some court finally had the courage to say that equal means equal, and others rightly followed, including the US Supreme Court 19 years later.
Some stand on the ground of religion, either demonizing gay people or suggesting that civil marriage is beyond the Constitution. But religious rites and civil rights are two separate entities. What’s at stake here is legal marriage, not the freedom of every religion to decide on its own religious views and ceremonies.” – John Lewis, civil rights giant, standing up in today’s great civil rights battle.
The Dish 