Republican Duplicity vis a vis Terri Schiavo
The duplicity of the radical Republicans regarding the Terri Schiavo matter is appalling. Consider these truths:
While governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed a law that gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes.
Republicans have voted to end the Medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terri Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.
The tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terri Schiavo's care thus far.
The bankruptcy bill, pushed by Republicans at the behest of the credit card companies, will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terri Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.
While proclaiming the virtues of one man-one woman marriage, the Republicans are working day and night to deny one of the most fundamental rights of marriage – the power of attorney that a spouse has to make decisions for an incapacitated partner.
This issue gets to the essence of the difference between the radical right and the majority of mainstream America. The radical right supports allowing the state to interfere in the most personal matters of life, death and health, deferring to a minority radical religious constituency that wants its belief system to override each individual's right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. Note that it isn't the left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.
Terri Schiavo's feeding tube has been removed because the Florida courts have determined that she would not have wanted it. She is not being deliberately killed; she is being allowed to die the death she would have wanted. This is the central issue of the case, despite the purely political grandstanding by radical Republican congressmen to appease the religious right.
(Much of this stolen from two great blogs: Digby and Majikthise.)
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