There are no clear, good or easy answers or solutions in the Terri Schindler Schiavo situation. But here's what I want to know: why is Michael Schiavo still his wife's guardian? I always understood that even the least bit of personal benefit disqualifies someone from being a guardian. In this case it would seem far simpler and in everyone's less contentious and more productive interest to remove the husband and appoint a neutral guardian or her parents or siblings instead. Aside from whether he is or is not complicit in any way in the accident that caused his wife's condition, and aside from any other contentious issues, the following are facts about him:
-He moved on matrimonially-speaking several years ago, taking a new partner and having two children with her and, quite understandably, he wants to marry her.
-He has vested interests in Terri's death in that he could marry his partner as well as receive money from the long-ago (and unpublic) malpractice medical settlement.
-He fails to show kindness, compassion or even common understanding about his wife's parents' feelings, to such an extent that he barred them from seeing her on several occasions.
-His attorney has aggressively represented several right-to-die clients from which one can infer that he has an 'agenda' rather than a desire to resolve issues in a peaceful and loving way or to keep her alive.
-Perhaps most sadly, Mr Schiavo has categorically refused to permit his wife's parents to take her home to die, even though he insists that he is motivated solely by his personal understanding of his wife's feelings and best interests.

Here's the summary and point: (a) no one knows what she thinks or wants - as opposed to saying that they know, (b) she is cognitively unresponsive but not comatose or dead in any medically defined way, (c) family members are willing - eager - to care for her as long as she lives, (d) her current guardian wants to end her life and has vested interest in her death (remarriage at minimum, more pay-off from the malpractice suit at maximum), (e) starvation is a gruesome way to die and is not done to capital criminals or terminally ill animals and should not be done to human beings regardless of how sentient (or not) or vegetative they may be, (f) courts should not decide intensely personal matters but (g) courts should also not permit vested-interested guardians to make decisions for people so (h) Mr Schiavo should be removed as guardian and a neutral person or other family member appointed and then they - and the rest of us - can regroup thoughts and complex emotions, and perhaps heal a bit as we move on.
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Some interesting reading on this from various and differing writers at Townhall, Slate, blogs, etc.: Matt Towery, Thomas Sowell, Donald May, Cal Thomas, Dahlia Lithwick, William Saletan, Alan Sullivan, Charles Krauthammer (more to come).

Labels: reflections