Let's give Michael Schavio the benefit of the doubt

This for you, Chaim Rubin, and anyone else who dares to suggest from his armchair that Michael Schavio's motives are less than good.

There are two different opinions about what the culture of her own life meant to Terri Schavio. Her husband, Michael, insisted that, like many other Americans, she expressed a strong wish not to be kept alive by extraordinary measures. Her parents said they did not believe that was true, that they wanted her feeding tube kept in and her care transferred to them. One measure of how topsy-turvy this story became was the constant suggestion that Terri's husband should simply accede to the desires of his in-laws, as though that would be a good thing instead of a gutless betrayal. My own husband knows that I never want artificial means to keep me alive. What an insult to my memory and our marriage it would be if he opted out when the going got rough and permitted others to salve their heartbreak by maintaining a shadow of my self.

Read the rest of The Culture of Each Life