Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Yeah, what Bernay said ...

Excerpt from a Yahoo! Groups post:

"[U]nder the Fourteenth Amendment, every citizen in every state is accorded equal protection under the law. The law, in this case, is Florida Statute 744.3215 (Rights of Persons Determined Incapacitated), which states that incapacitated persons cannot be deprived of necessary services including food and water. Absent a clear advanced directive -- not something based on hearsay from a person with conflict of interest, but a clear, written, advanced [sic] directive -- this Florida law must apply to Terri Schiavo."

The rest is here.

Bernay has the federalist angle exactly right. That doesn't mean there won't be negative consequences accompanying federal intervention in the Schiavo case, of course. The best thing would have been for the Florida courts to abide by Florida law, or for Michael Schiavo not to have petitioned them to do otherwise.

Scratch that. The best thing would have been for Terri Schiavo to have never undergone whatever accident, incident, illness or injury put her in this situation in the first place.

Pangloss was stupid and abnormal.

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