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I think it is fine to be pro-life and pro-rights. It's too bad pro-rights doesn't include supporting women's reproductive rights. It's too bad pro-life does not include opposing the death penalty (70% of Americans favor the death penalty, and I assume a goodly proportion of those folks are Catholic).

The Terri Schiavo case, when examined with the clarity of perfect hindsight, demonstrates clearly that those with a religious axe to grind are all too willing to interfere with sound medical judgment, and in the process deny the designated next-of-kin the RIGHT to decide, along with the doctors, an appropriate course of treatment for those who are vegetative with no hope of recovery. In the case of Schiavo, the parents were claiming responsiveness right before her death, yet autopsy showed dramatic and devastating brain degeneration which would have made such a thing completely impossible. Yet, the impassioned pleas of "right to lifers" across America prolonged this poor man's agony in a peculiarly selfish and self-aggrandizing way.

In this case, the medical board has concluded that further care is a waste of time and resources. I don't think doctors, especially a whole panel of doctors, would so conclude unless they were very certain of their medical facts. The poor parents deserve our sympathy, but I for one cannot condone nor approve of the continuing abuse in the name of "right to life".