What do people on both sides of this divide see when they look at Terri Schiavo? The scientific rationalists see a vegetable in human form, a life only in the strictest sense of the word. They see a human machine that is broken and cannot be repaired. And they see, in the application of the law over the course of 15 years, a totally rational series of decisions. Her husband is her guardian. He says she wouldn't have wanted to live in this condition, and because she cannot speak, he has the legal authority to speak for her. Then there are those who look at Terri Schiavo and see something else. They see a helpless person, a trapped person, a tragic person. But they do not see a vegetable. They see a human being with a soul. They see a mystery. The rationalists say she will not suffer through her slow starvation because she no longer feels. The soul-believers say there is no way to know that — that science has limits and that it reaches its limits when it tries to define what it means to be human. The rationalists, who center their universe on the brain, see brain damage as a horror beyond imagining from which death would be a relief. Their antagonists center their convictions on a belief in the soul, and they say: No soul is of lesser value than any other. The soul-believers have lost this argument to the rationalists. They are used to losing. They have been losing the argument on abortion for more than 30 years now. This isn't about winning for them. It's about believing in things that cannot be seen. For some reason, the conviction of those who believe in the divine fills the scientific rationalists with unreasoning rage.
It is no wonder the public get this wrong. Even the highly educated are parroting a falsehood. Michael's "legal authority to speak" (actually, duty to carry out the patient's wishes) comes from the court's divining of the patient's wishes.