The one that states the husband (spouse) gets to make the decision as to what her wishes were.
All Florida has to do is require a living will...make the person put it in writing that they don't want to be kept alive...if that happens, puff....no more controversy...
So, where is the legislature on this issue now?
The man was shacking up with another woman and had two kids by her! Isn't that an obvious conflict of interest?
"All Florida has to do is require a living will...make the person put it in writing that they don't want to be kept alive...if that happens, puff....no more controversy..."
I think living will laws could lead to nightmarish scenarios. Here's how:
Please imagine for a moment that you're a 14-year-old girl with a 60-year-old teacher. The teacher has warts, she moves like a turtle, she wears tacky print shirtwaist dresses. You turn to your friend and whisper, "I don't want to live to be that old." And your 14-year-old self really means it. Aging and death have no reality to you. But one day you wake up, and you're 60. And ... life isn't too bad after all.
Now, imagine you're 26-year-old Terri Schiavo. After watching a TV movie about the plight of a pathetic human "vegetable," you turn to your husband and say, "I wouldn't want to live like that! No tubes for me." Then one day Terri wakes up and ... she is like that. Is she getting anything out of life? Is she feeling any pleasure? We can't know because she has passed beyond the point where she can communicate with us. She is a different person, as surely as an elderly woman is a different person from her young self.
How can we know what that life is like? How can we judge its quality? Should the profoundly disabled person getting some pleasure from life be protected from the thoughtless assumptions of her younger self? Who decides?
Many humane governments require living will plus some other assurances as safeguards. I like Fr. Pavone's suggestion that appointing a proxy is smarter and safer than making a living will.
Wrong again. The law specifically forbids him to make that decision.