Terri Schiavo suffered from brain damage. It was a specific type of “disability.” Are we squeamish about speaking the words: Brain Damage except in dismissal, as in “brain damaged wife” meaning: less than human, ready to be discarded?
Neurologists do not understand the complexities of the human brain nearly fully. Each type of brain injury is different from the other. Damage is done to different parts, affecting different functions, with other parts sometimes developing to compensate.
Life is to be valued, and innocent human life is to be protected. Terri’s brain was impaired to the point where she could not do many things, perhaps most things. There are human beings alive today born with only brain stems. Do we kill them? There are people confined to wheel chairs since birth with brain deficiencies? Do they die? People are injured, and each brain injury is different. Which die, which don’t? And who decides?
“That’s why we have courts,” frankly, is a frightening suggestion.
