More on Schiavo and the Texas Futile Care Law

Mark Kleiman has a good post up regarding the Texas Futile Care law and the absurdity of all the hypocrisy and generally poor policy (a "careful biopsy of their wallet" is the line of the week).

However, some aspects of the post and several of the postscripts got me wondering how there might be some push back on this whole sordid affair. Mark poits out that:

Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state, but isn't terminal. The two Texas patients were terminal but not vegetative. It seems to me that the distinction between a patient who is aware and a patient who isn't aware is the morally relevant one, while the disctinction between a death that is sure to occur soon and a death that is sure to occur eventually is morally irrelevant. (Try pleading as a defense to a murder charge that the victim had a terminal ailment.)

I don't how that would play out in the legal world, but it seems to me that it would be more than sufficient to get your foot in the door (hell, the issue of who is making the ultimate decision should be enough).

Why not go that route? Although the folks who would want to challenge the law would be those folks who would be unable to pay for the patient's care and thus unlikely to afford legal action, there has to more than a few organizations that would be willing to pony up. Kleiman and other are miffed that the MSM has failed to pick up on the story... I personally think the MSM is indiscriminately selective of what blogger-generated item they report on due to their own comfort level and vanity, but if this gets turned into a legal action, then the dynamic changes.

Just a thought...