Still time to send your Senator a Schiavo petition

I'm ambivalent about the whole abortion debate. As a mother, I have a visceral sense that the fetus will one day be a baby, and am loath to interfere with that process, but I can still easily imagine situations in which a woman would reasonably want or need an abortion. Given this ambivalence, it comes as something of a surprise to me that I am linking here to the National Right to Life Committee website, but I am. My problem with the Terri Schiavo situation is that her parents, who manifestly love her and want to care for her, are opposed to the tube-withdrawal, while the husband, who has moved on to a new wife and children, is desperate for her to die. That just makes me uncomfortable. Maybe hubby really is keeping Terri's wishes in mind, but it sounds as if he's trying to clear the decks for a new life. I can actually understand hubby's point of view: after all, he and Terri can't have been together long when she became so profoundly disabled -- she was only 26 when her brain was destroyed. Her life stopped; his has gone on. What's weird is how he clings to her. Her parents want her care, so why doesn't he give it to them? He would claim, I'm sure, that he's acting with Terri's interests at heart and with true love, because she really does want to die. That altruistic stance, though, plays badly against the fact that there is every indication that he hasn't cared well for Terri in the past years, since she's suffering from terrible bed sores, and other fairly preventable problems. Basically, as a mother, the thought that a son-in-law, who cannot possibly love my child as I love my child, is calling the shots, with his new wife at his side, smells bad. I'm also loath to see her death go forward because I distrust judges. I'd prefer to see a lot more medical and judicial review on this subject before letting a single judge call this shot. For more perspectives, see this Andrew McCarthy article about how criminals get more due process than Terri has; and this Rev. Robert Johansen article about the shoddy care and testing Terri has received. All in all, I'm sufficiently uncomfortably with this whole scenario that I think things ought to come to a complete stop before any irrevocable steps are taken. So, back to the top of this post, please, and click on that link.