Feeding Terri Schiavo

No matter what your views about whether the feeding tube should be kept away from Terri Schiavo (and I think reasonable people can disagree, even vehemently on this topic), everyone in the U.S. should be very concerned about the intervention of the U.S. Congress in this debate. As Dahlia Lithwick said Monday in Slate,

The rule of law in this country holds that this is a federalist system—in which private domestic matters are litigated in state, not federal courts.

The federal courts and the federal Congress have no business even trying to intervene in this case. I hope the various courts declare their attempts unconstitutional.

For the record, my wife and I, reasonable people that we are, have strong and divergent views on how long we would like to be kept alive if we are reduced to a vegetative state; as a consequence we have designated individuals, other than each other, to be the decision-makers should the decision ever need to be made. In essence, we are following the advice in this article, which Jack sent me; I urge others to do the same.