Diverse Opinions On Letting Terri Go

Salon's Lori Leibovich writes about letting her brother die, and Andrew Sullivan has an excellent essay on Terri Schiavo and "a battle for the soul of conservatism." And for once I agree with the National Review's John Derbyshire: he directs us to this conservative doctor's thoughts on Terri's situation:

it seems to me that much has been written on your site about the primacy of marriage, how it must be protected, cherished, encouraged, valued, that we must fight to keep it from being disregarded, belittled, lumped into the evergrowing, soiled pile of disposable, unsacred relationships. The position that many of your colleagues have taken and I gather the editorial position of your publication can only hurt this. How can we convince our children that this will be the most important relationship they will ever have. They will ask why? What am I supposed to tell them? "It'll be great because you'll get to have sex and not feel guilty". That's a child's view -- and what the hell everyone is already doing that anyway. No: At least in part, I will say, it's because you will get to stand together with that person through thick and thin with God at your side. That you will tell that person things that you would never tell another soul. That you will know them better than you know yourself. That when the end comes, you will do right by her and she will do right by you. That you will ease each others passing through this insufferable imperfect world and meet perfectly in the next. It's an awfully big leap to tell Mr. Schiavo that he doesn't know his wife best. It's an impossible leap to to tell that to the rest of us.

I"m not sure I've heard those thoughts expressed better.