Federal Judge Reviews Schiavo Case

Terri Schaivo's fate, humanly speaking, seems to rest in the hands of Federal District Court Judge James Whittemore, who received juristiction when Congress passed and President Bush signed a special bill removing her lynching from the juristiction of Florida courts and putting her case in the hands of the Federal judicial system.

At stake is the safety of every comotose or otherwise uncommunicative patient in America, who- if the ruling of the Florida courts is allowed to stand- could be starved to death by their relatives any time they decided that they wanted that patient dead- even if, as in Terri's case, they are neither brain dead nor terminally ill nor in a vegetative state.