Meanwhile Terri's Legacy shines on as more and more cases, once perhaps concealable are now in the open for the truth to be revealed.
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In what will no doubt go down in history as one of the craziest things our federal government has ever done, the U.S. House and Senate both passed an emergency law to save the life of a woman who had been near brain-dead for more than a decade. The case of Terri Schiavo, who collapsed in her home and who later lost oxygen to her brain after her doctors misdiagnosed the cause of her collapse, was undoubtedly tragic for everyone involved; it was also undoubtedly none of the federal government’s business.
After numerous state courts had sided with then-husband and guardian Michael Schiavo and ruled that Terri’s condition was irreversible and that her feeding tube could be removed to end her life, the Christian right launched into an epic freakout the likes of which America has not seen since 17th-century Salem. After much Tasmanian devil-style screeching and hollering from the GOP base, the Republican Congress passed a bill transferring jurisdiction of the Schiavo case to federal court. Bush, who seemingly never misses an opportunity to take a naked ride on the crazy train, interrupted one of his frequent Texas vacations to sign the damn thing into law.
Ah, if only he’d been this swift and alert when Hurricane Katrina hit (see moment No. 4).
While there were several moments of sheer, unbridled lunacy throughout (Pat Buchanan calls Michael Schiavo and his supporters Nazis! Tom DeLay issues threats against judges who don’t rule how he wants them to! Peggy Noonan calls Michael Schiavo supporters part of a “culture of death!"), the craziest by far was then-Sen. Bill Frist’s declaration that Terri had been misdiagnosed after he spent an hour watching a video of her in his office.
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WASHINGTON -- From the people who brought you the Terri Schiavo spectacle, the stem-cell research stalemate and the atrocious waste of tax money on abstinence-only sex education that has been shown not to work, comes a sequel: a proposal to redefine abortion to include some of the most common forms of birth control, and to potentially penalize with funding cuts hundreds of thousands of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who expect their employees to give women full reproductive care....
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Marie Cocco is a prize-winning syndicated columnist on political and cultural topics for The Washington Post Writers Group. She is a frequent commentator on national TV and radio shows. Her e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com.
Under New Proposals, Some Rape Victims Wouldn't Get Emergency Contraception
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