SCHIAVO QUESTION
All too often events, while important in themselves, trigger the massive change which mark an era.
The current concern for retaining a comatose patient on life support
systems in spite of her husband's insistent that she would have wanted it to be disconnected. However, however, think otherwise and they have supported keeping her alive artificially since suffered a stroke fifteen years ago. They insist she has a chance for recovery. Far too many facts about this case which has taken it before countless judges in Florida - some say eighteen – and caused it to become a topic for discussion for the nation. I hear constant reference to one point - cost. One news source suggested that it was too expensive to keep her alive in the manner which is now sustaining her. They mentioned a cost of “thousands of dollars per month's “ and lamented the fact that her husband could ill afford to have such expense for another fifteen years or more. One such account I heard simple let it be thought that the parents are absorbing the cost. One newscast bluntly said we cannot afford to keep her alive and longer “at public expense”.
In spite of recently oft-stated political desires “to protect the sanctity of marriage”, I have heard no one question the right of the parents of this young lady to go against her husband's to withdraw life support because that was what she would have wanted. What about parent's “rights” at such a time? When, in the marriage ceremony it is said the bride leaves her parental home and “cleaves unto her husband” doesn't that transfer responsibility for the young bride to the husband? Until such time when we can answer that question with straightforward honesty, the entire sequence of cruel actions brought upon the victim and her friends and family are moot.
Let's save the First and Fourteenth amendments for other uses . Go to any accepted version of the marriage ceremony, and it will hand you a key to the solution of the problem. Read that ceremony. Think about it. Is it not made clear that, at the time of marriage, a women is clearly told to leave her mother and father and then , to cleave ever unto the man chosen to be her husband? Had the plain directive been respected, we would not have this social blot on our memory, a time of our ignorance causing uncalled for suffering an distress.
A.L.M. March 22, 2005 [415wds]
