The Terry Schiavo cas has certainly stirred up many emotional reactions in people. I know that I was deeply troubled by what has happened.  Even though I consider myself militantly pro-choice on issues such as abortion and believe that Assisted Suicide should be the law of the land, these things still have one thing in common - individual choice.

Terry Schiavo has been severely mentally disabled for over a decade. How disabled she is is a matter of debate. The law states that if a person is considered to be in a permanent vegetative state that they may be taken off of life support (including feeding tubes) IF it was the will of that person.

The courts ruled that two things were true:

A) That Terry was in a persistent vegatative state.

That she would want to be taken off of support.

That's where the controvery comes in.  To me, the evidence to support she was a vegetable was poor, at best. Anyone who has ever worked in a group home for the mentally retarded can tell you that there's a lot of people who appear much like how Terry does in the videos that were released.  In addition, there was no written evidence that Terry would want to be taken off of support. We have only the word of her husband that she would want that.

I somehow doubt that most people would want to be starved to death over a two-week period. It will be interesting if any photos of Terry's last days get leaked out onto the net so that people can see just what happens to the body from such a trauma.

The courts, correctly IMO, ruled that the various courts were following the law.  The problem, and I have no idea whose fault it is, is that there was little effort to actually determine the two key points.  When people talk about how all the courts already heard the arguments, they are only hearing whether the courts were right to rule in they did provided that A and B were true. 

What many of the protesters argued was that points A and B were not anywhere near certain enough to justify starving this young woman to death.  I don't see how any reasonable person could argue that points A and B were proven.

The woman never had an MRI, for example.  The video footage seen by millions was never seen in a court room.  The primary witness claiming Terry would have wanted to be taken off a feed tube had long since moved on and had two children with another woman. His testimony with regarding her will was iffy at best.

So what are the lingering consequences? Millions of people around the world just witnessed the United States intentionally starving to death one of its citizens based on pretty shakey evidence.  The issue has certainly energized millions of conservatives -- including pro-abortion rights ones such as myself.  The left comes across as looking hypocritical and ghoulish (in talking to friends and neighbors, the joke "They should have said she was a member of Al Qaeda, then the liberals would have protested to keep her alive!). 

For better or worse, at least this whole ordeal will slowly fade -- I hope.