Just when you make up your mind about something...

So, I like everyone else had been subjected to the nonstop coverage of the Terry Shiavo case and I figured, let the poor woman die already. 15 years of suffering is enough and you see old pictures of her and she looks so beautiful and so full of life in contrast to the other pictures you see of her - which are actually three years old!

Then, I get a chance to read Nat Hentoff’s column and since I respect Nat Hentoff a great deal I wonder if I wasn’t mistaken:

For all the world to see, a 41-year-old woman, who has committed no crime, will die of dehydration and starvation in the longest public execution in American history.

She is not brain-dead or comatose, and breathes naturally on her own. Although brain-damaged, she is not in a persistent vegetative state, according to an increasing number of radiologists and neurologists.

Among many other violations of her due process rights, Terri Schiavo has never been allowed by the primary judge in her case—Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, whose conclusions have been robotically upheld by all the courts above him—to have her own lawyer represent her.

Greer has declared Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state, but he has never gone to see her. His eyesight is very poor, but surely he could have visited her along with another member of his staff. Unlike people in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo is indeed responsive beyond mere reflexes.

...but, there are two sides to every story and the Voice ran the opposing views in a facing spread:

Taking on the Schiavo case was supposed to give the Bushes an opportunity to appease the religious conservatives who put them into office. The problem for the stop-at-nothing brothers, though, is that the conservative Catholics and evangelicals fixated on Schiavo are even further out of the mainstream when it comes to the right to die than they are on abortion. While some people are truly torn about what restrictions should apply when dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, few think anyone should be forced to hover on the edges of existence if they don’t want to and have no chance of recovery. Nearly 80 percent of Americans wouldn’t want to be kept alive in Terri’s situation, according to an ABC News poll. Even more opposed federal intervention in the Schiavo case, including 72 percent of Republicans, according to a CBS News poll. Meanwhile, the president’s approval rating is falling, having just hit 43 percent, down from 49 last month.

Talk about a great political issue! A clear winner finally landed in the Democrats’ lap. Unfortunately, few seemed to recognize it. No senator, Democrat or Republican, stopped the legislation giving Schiavo’s parents the opportunity to take the case to federal court. Forty-seven Democrats supported the bill in the House. And even Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, seemed to roll over, offering no comment when asked about Bush’s support of the law.