Due Process Reviewed ??

Due Process Reviewed ??

Re-pub of a message posted by me at Yahoo Message Board about 18:21 03-28-05 Terri Schiavo's construed choice to avert an artificial extension of her life denies her the living option of a change of mind - she cannot revoke her construed 'living will'. Further - the providing of water and nutriment may or may not have been an artificial prolongation in her contemplation depending on the interpretation of that term. Florida's Supreme Court in limiting Gov Bush's intervention by special state law - stayed that state law which did not explicitly (adequately) dictate a procedure for the executive in these cases .. so the traditional choice of the judicial power [for resolution] remained paramount. In exercising that power and sustaining the lower state court's decision -Florida's Supreme Court, and the US Federal courts .. sustain the right to die as a medical privacy right - even when construed by a detached judicially appointed guardian from the evidence of the terminal patient's living wishes as a replacement for a physically prepared 'living will'. Hence - Terri Schiavo, can be said to have chosen an end even where her life is not vegetative - so long as her guardian can speak for her. Florida's statute broadly applies medical evidence to 'brain death'; however she would have to have capacity to revoke her guardian's decision. Proof of a changed mental condition might forestall her choice's effectuation. Revocation of a terminal death choice is a right denied Terri Schiavo in exercising her medical privacy. Florida does not permit a 'right to suicide' because the life in living is valuable to more than the suicidist. However - a dispute by next of kin does not stay a life termination by a terminal patient's 'next friend' guardian or surrogate. A better solution, where she prepared no 'living will' in advance would have been to default in favor of continuing her life to a more natural death.