Ain't I A Man?

No; it's not about Terri Schiavo. And it hasn't been for quite awhile.

It's about us.

It's about each of us who thinks "I wouldn't want to live if I were a vegetable." It's about each one of us who thinks, as one blogger wrote, that Michael Schiavo has been "chained to a drooling shitbag for 15 years."

But it's also about those of us who are those vegetables, those drooling shitbags. Those of us who want to live but know we're a burden to our families. Those of us who fear "do not resuscitate" orders. Those of us who use ventilators, and who use feeding tubes. And those of us who can communicate with clarity only through artificial means.

Read the whole thing. (via Amy Welborn)

The author goes on to detail a litany of recent cases in which family members have murdered their physically or mentally disabled kin, and then escaped punishment. And I don't mean "murdered" in the oh-Angus-you-hyperbolic-pro-lifer sense. I mean "murdered" in the throat-cutting, bludgeoning, three-shots-to-the-chest sense.