LA Daily News: The Schiavo saga make for bad politics

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Los Angeles Daily News

The Schiavo saga make for bad politics

Monday, March 21, 2005 - BAD cases make bad law. That well-established principle has never been truer than in the tragic case of Terri Schiavo.

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Her case has become "a great political issue," as a Republican memo that surfaced over the weekend put it. It has become a debate over the political hypocrisy of conservatives who abandoned their respect for states' rights to federalize the issue in an emergency session. It has become swept up with other divisive issues, and the question of the right to die has become categorized as the right to kill.

It has even become a trial of her husband, Michael Schiavo, and whether he just wants to get rid of his wife so can get the money from her medical malpractice lawsuit for himself and marry his girlfriend, who has given birth to their two children.

(snip)

This is truly a life-and-death issue, and it needs to be brought out into the open for a dispassionate discussion. Instead, we are once again being deeply divided as a nation without getting the kind of debate that would move us forward. Terri Schiavo's tragedy has become a national tragedy. Just as nothing can help her, nothing that comes out of her case is likely to help the rest of us. How unfortunate.

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~2774785,00.html#