I completely agree with John's interpretation. Personally, I find it very hard to believe that people would be so callous as to allow Terri to die if they believed there was any evidence that she had a brain and consciousness. I realize that there's tremendous bigotry toward the disabled, but you'd have to be one cold, cruel person to look at the evidence here, view videos, and look parents and family in the eyes and make the rulings they made if that video was the end of the story. Similarly, her husband would have to be one total asshole to do what he's doing -- and for nothing. He's basically gotten nothing out of this but grief. To those who think some insurance settlement is what's at issue, please spare me. We have no evidence there is an insurance policy. AND, who cares? He's been paying premiums all these years. He should collect it. And, at any rate, I really doubt that a lousy 100k life insurance policy is going to pay his legal expenses or for any grief he's suffered through all this. Really, you'd have to be a sociopath to go this far with it, especially when millions have been offered the guy to drop it.
Anyway, I don't think looking at the crim justice system is relevant. When it comes to criminals on death row, not only are they black, but they almost invariably have a criminal record and/or some other history that enables the people who comprise the criminal just ass system capable of writing them off. That's just not happening in the Schiavo case.
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"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling