Exactly!

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...from James Taranto (who, by the way, is not a Catholic), a columnist for the WSJ OpinionJournal:


Supporters of Michael Schiavo's effort to end his wife's life have asked how conservatives, who claim to believe in the sanctity of marriage, can fail to respect his husbandly authority. The most obvious answer is that a man's authority as a husband does not supersede his wife's rights as a human being--a principle we never thought we'd see liberals question.

But why do those of us who aren't right-to-life absolutists side with Mrs. Schiavo's parents, who want to keep her alive, over her husband, who wants her dead? It's a fair question, and it raises another one: What kind of husband is Michael Schiavo?

According to news reports, Mr. Schiavo lives with a woman named Jodi Centonze, and they have two children together. Surely any court would consider this prima facie evidence of adultery. And this is no mere fling; a Orlando Sentinel sympathetic 2003 profile in the described Centonze as Mr. Schiavo's "fiancée." Mr. Schiavo, in other words, has virtually remarried. Short of outright bigamy, his relationship with Centonze is as thoroughgoing a violation of his marriage vows as it is possible to imagine.

The point here is not to castigate Mr. Schiavo for behaving badly. It would require a heroic degree of self-sacrifice for a man to forgo love and sex in order to remain faithful to an incapacitated wife, and it would be unreasonable to hold an ordinary man to a heroic standard.

But it is equally unreasonable to let Mr. Schiavo have it both ways. If he wishes to assert his marital authority to do his wife in, the least society can expect in return is that he refrain from making a mockery of his marital obligations. The grimmest irony in this tragic case is that those who want Terri Schiavo dead are resting their argument on the fiction that her marriage is still alive.

2 Comments

That does perfectly express it. It doesn't demonize him but at the same time explains how ludicrous to see him in the role of husband, (unless the bigamy laws have been rescinded). Thanks for posting this.

nce money of which I wondered how much would be left if she has been on life support for 15 years in a hospice. Your medical expenses are very crippling compared with what we pay in Australia with medicare so I assumed that most of her payout would be already gone. If he is living with another woman surly that annuls any rights he would have had as her husband. One thing is for sure I am glad he is not married to me as he does not seem to have his "wife's" interests at heart. It reminds me of the earlier Karen Quinlan case

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