Judge Denies Request to Feed Schiavo

From the AP:

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, denying an emergency request from the brain-damaged woman’s parents.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge James Whittemore comes after feverish action by President Bush and Congress on legislation allowing her contentious case to be reviewed by federal courts. The judge said the 41-year-old woman’s parents had not established a “substantial likelihood of success” at trial on the merits of their arguments.

Rex Sparklin, an attorney with the law firm representing Terri Schiavo’s parents, said lawyers were immediately appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to “save Terri’s life.”

I was lying in bed with my wife this morning thinking about all the things that just don’t seem right about this case: a “husband” who’s living with another woman wants her dead, apparantly loving parents are willing to care for her, the scenes of Terri laughing or otherwise responding, the fact that experts think that she could improve with therapy while at the same time she has been denied any therapy, her diagnosis didn’t even include an MRI scan, real questions remain about the actual cause of her condition. I was thinking about all these things and asking myself, “how can this be happening?”