Terri Schiavo's Case is an Exception

Andrew McCarthy says that the facts are unusual: "It is not for nothing that we say bad cases make bad law. We have no reason to believe Terri's situation is more a paradigm than an aberration. For most husbands in Michael Schiavo's shoes -- anxious to get on with new lives and aware that a stricken wife's family was willing and able to take on the burdens of care -- we can reasonably hope that ending the wife's life would not become an obsession. Most men or women in Michael's circumstances would step aside. Many, if they'd entangled themselves in new relationships, would avail themselves of the ready legal framework for ending the marriage. Most spouses would not suddenly remember, seven years after the fact, that their partners had evinced a carefully considered wish to die rather than be sustained if they were ever to become incapacitated."