Terri Schiavo’s Death a Time for Reflection

May Terri Schiavo at last rest in peace. Her case will forever be seen as a turning point in this country’s cultural wars and a profound blow to the religious fanatics (and their opportunistic allies in Congress) who tried to hijack the Constitution and impose their beliefs on the rest of us but failed.

Michael D. Harris

Reseda

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Does the media feeding frenzy in cases such as O.J. Simpson, which we are reminded of with the recent death of attorney Johnnie Cochran, or presently with passionate issues surrounding Terri Schiavo’s death -- both matters having split our nation apart -- contribute to or induce our strong emotions?

Eric R. Ali

Los Angeles

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At age 60, before the Terri Schiavo maelstrom, my wife and I discussed a “do not resuscitate” order should either of us come to that juncture. Somehow, neither we nor our circle can recall discussing at age 26 any end-of-life decisions as, after all, at that age we “knew” we were invincible!

John Greenleaf Witter

Manhattan Beach

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In their haste to use a brain-dead woman to further a political agenda, President Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush have failed in their efforts to forge legitimate legislation that may have saved her life.

This was a good case for setting a precedent using “credible” dissenting medical views to determine the care for a person in a vegetative state. Whereas the views are reasonable but in disagreement, qualified doctors should be appointed to make the final determination. President Bush and Gov. Bush failed in their efforts, and thus an innocent woman died a horrible death.

Brian Stettler

Tampa, Fla.

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After the sixth rejection of the Schindler family’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, a news reporter commented that Schiavo’s parents never quit and fought the good fight.

Their love of their daughter is movingly courageous, but was this the good fight? Would the Schindler family want to be kept artificially alive had they been in their daughter’s condition? Have they made living wills directing their loved one to keep them on artificial life support no matter what?

Had the feeding tube been reinserted into Schiavo a third time, late in the process, would prolonging her (and our) ordeal been the good fight? The good fight does not rely on a miracle to make it good. The good fight ends suffering.

Carl P. Siegman

Los Angeles

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The Schiavo case has not been hindered by activist judges, as some claim, but by activist conservative evangelical organizations and individuals who seek to elevate their idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible above the rule of law in this country.

If freedom-loving Americans do not begin to take personal action against these religious militants, we will one day wake up in a theocracy in which Roe vs. Wade has been overturned, theological obscurantism has replaced scientific discourse in the classroom, stem cell research has been banned, the civil rights of gays have been curtailed, right-to-die laws have been overturned, freedom of speech has been muzzled and the Declaration of Independence has been replaced by the Ten Commandments.

Neal Kelsey

Hesperia