{"id":1414,"date":"2004-05-07T10:05:32","date_gmt":"2004-05-07T09:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2004\/05\/07\/yet_another_twist_in_schiavo_story"},"modified":"2004-05-07T10:05:32","modified_gmt":"2004-05-07T09:05:32","slug":"yet_another_twist_in_schiavo_story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2004\/05\/07\/yet_another_twist_in_schiavo_story","title":{"rendered":"Yet another twist in Schiavo story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/LAW\/05\/06\/schiavo.case\/index.html\">CNN reports<\/a> that a Florida county circuit court has struck down a law passed by the Florida legislature which prevents the husband having his wife&#8217;s life-support machine turned off.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAccording to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/g2\/story\/0,3604,1077029,00.html\">Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian<\/a>, this law has been &#8220;condemned by civil libertarians, the legal and medical community, and queasy state legislators&#8221;.  What on earth has this got to do with civil liberties?  This woman is <i>not<\/i> in a persistent vegetative state &#8211; she is severely brain damaged, and is able to respond to stimuli even if on a very basic level.  (The family also claim that when Terri Schiavo was told she might die, she very definitely did respond.)  She also has a husband who it seems wants rid of her, because he has a girlfriend and who has had children for him.<\/p>\n<p>If the American left and &#8220;civil libertarians&#8221; really are on Michael Schiavo&#8217;s side, it stands to reason why they lose elections.  Exactly who has their civil liberties are in danger here &#8211; Terri, who is threatened with being starved to death, or Michael Schiavo, who, uh, won&#8217;t be able to marry the girlfriend he has been living with for the past few years?  Maybe he is concerned that he won&#8217;t be able to remarry in a church, but then if he has been living in sin and having children in that state, why does he care?  Why doesn&#8217;t he just get a divorce and turn his wife over to her parents who are willing to care for their daughter?<\/p>\n<p>Apparently Terri Schiavo told her husband in the years before her accident that she would not want to be kept alive artificially, but according to all the reports I&#8217;ve read, there is only the husband&#8217;s word to go by on this.  Goldenberg overwhelmingly takes the side of the husband, alleging that the people who side with Terri&#8217;s natural family are often evangelical Christians, the right-wing media, and other people Goldenberg finds distasteful.  That may be so but should these people not be asking why these media are so popular if the &#8220;left&#8221; have such a dismal record on protecting human life &#8211; both inside and outside of the womb?  This is yet another reason why we should not get too close to the liberals either here or in the USA &#8211; we may agree with them on getting rid of Bush, but there is a world of difference between us and them on, well, just about everything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNN reports that a Florida county circuit court has struck down a law passed by the Florida legislature which prevents the husband having his wife&#8217;s life-support machine turned off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-mO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}