By now, everybody is locked into their positions and nobody will ever change.

But back when it all started, we had a husband (and by all accounts a loving husband who studied nursing in hopes of bringing his wife back) who said that his wife had wanted to die rather than live in a persistent vegetative state. And we had some parents who said, no, she's alive, she'll get better, she wouldn't have wanted to die.

• EVERY SINGLE COURT*, appeals court, you name it, has said (A) the husband gets to decide and (B) Terri Schiavo has no cerebral function and (C) she told her husband she didn't want to live like this.

If you boil it down to he said, she said, you have to choose between the husband and the parents. Settled case law says that the husband chooses, and I think that's right.

Wow.

Rejecting requests from Republican leaders in Congress, a Florida judge on Friday refused to again delay permission to remove the feeding tube keeping alive Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman at the center of a battle between her husband and her parents.

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No reason why he couldn't, I don't think.

I had kind of assumed he couldn't, because she can't respond or work with an attorney, and did not choose to abandon him. (IOW, I thought divorce had to be mutual, even if one party pursued it much more agressively.) If he can, I don't understand why he hasn't, other than that he feels he can carry out her wishes better than her parents could.

It's sad all around, but I do think her parents should let go.

Wow. Massive x-posting there. Thanks for all the input.

How can the insurance money be gone, though, since she hasn't died yet?

I've seen the videos they show occasionally of her "responding" but I had no idea that her cerebrum had disintegrated. Flowers aren't sentient, but they still turn toward the sun when they need it -- if she opens her eyes or her muscles flex, I can't imagine that proves thought or feeling on her part. I'm assuming they've done brain wave scans (or whatever they're technically called) to prove how little brain activity she has?

I feel horrible for her parents, loving her so much (although, they really need to let go in my opinion), and I feel equally horrible about the idea of her starving to death, but it's also just fucking unbelievable that it came to this. If her husband is truly trying to carry out what he believes were her wishes on this kind of eventuality, then more power to him.

I think the husband and parents have not had much love lost, anyway. Wow, one's brain can be replaced by fluid?! Just, yikes.

Wow, one's brain can be replaced by fluid?! Just, yikes.

Mostly from watching Fox.

My Googling tells me that "brain dead" has a well-agreed-on technical meaning that includes brainstem death. So Ms. Schiavo is not brain-dead.

Here's a good overview of the facts.

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How can the insurance money be gone, though, since she hasn't died yet?

Hostel care ain't cheap.

I will be going to Lush tomorrow.

I have cried at work today in front of my boss.

People are fucking insane.

Guess I should go do some work before I get fired. Though the concept has a certain charm to it right now.

I had kind of assumed he couldn't, because she can't respond or work with an attorney, and did not choose to abandon him.

This was an x-post, but see the answer below.

It always weirds me out to see the pictures of her. A family close to mine had a situation where Mary Lou, the mother, had an aneurism and ended up in basically an infantile state of awareness/comprehension. Her face and expressions were a lot like Terri's when they want to show her smiling at someone.

Her situation was very different though - Mary Lou definitely had actual awareness - she recognized people, and would smile and laugh when you approached, and eventually learned a handful of words. As it happened in their case, her husband ended up divorcing her so that she could get better medical care without him and the children losing their house. He remained her guardian, though, and even after he remarried a few years later, they always visited and brought Mary Lou home from the nursing home for holidays, birthdays, etc, and she ended up living a good ten or twelve years in that state. A wrenching, horrible situation, but a better outcome than anything that this case will bring.