Other Columns by Kevin Fobbs
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Terri Schiavo would be alive today if the Founding Fathers had only thought to add to the Constitution "Food and Water" to the basic inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There would be no need of an official Terri's Day. The Founding Fathers did not consider hydration and nutrition because it appeared no civilized nation at the time had deprived their citizens, not even their convicted criminals of that basic right, so therefore the thinking had to be, why include the obvious? Perhaps as Thomas Jefferson was at his desk laboring over crafting the correct wording for historic passages which would become the framework for our Constitution ... food and water ... just slipped his mind.

America's founders at its origin did not stumble over something so basic, because, the biblical basic respect for the life at the beginning and at the end was well grounded. It was sacrosanct to our developing American culture.

Now, 230 years after America's founding and one year after Terri Schiavo's needless death, the nation finds itself stymied by a troubling dilemma. We must question just where does the constitutional protection of "life" begin and end? Ask yourself, if your daughter collapsed in gym class at school and was comatose for a time but was not deathly ill, would you make a decision to deprive her of nutrition and of hydration because recent polls you read or saw on television that week, indicated starving your daughter to death is better because you won't see the same smile, or hear the same voice from her. Should the polls make your decision?

What about your son who's lying in a hospice bed and now after 11 years is "unresponsive" to doctors or to his wife but he forces a smile for you, just around the edges of his mouth, and he blinks out a small tear when you talk about his old hockey games or reminisce about a young adult outing with three fishing buddies and how the big one nearly got away? The medical professionals are telling you to agree with his wife, and pull the plug by depriving his hydration and food. Whose quality of life is being measured here? Whose burden is being considered?

Where is the line? Where is the line when a wife or a husband has "moved on" and taken up with another person as a significant other? Where is the line when that daughter-in-law or son-in-law has moved on and even has one or two kids with the new person? Did we suddenly lose our common sense last year, or were we just willing to look the other way on Terri's rights? Is it always better to just simply turn the page on our basic rights, but suddenly become politically correct when it comes to protecting the rights of eleven to twenty million illegal aliens who have crossed over the border because they want our protection and our rights and because they "add value" to our nation's economy?

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