It's Alive! Alive!

Terri Schiavo has been cremated, but the controversy lives on. You'll recall the big popular percentages in favor of removing the tube from a few weeks back. (How young we were back then!) An answer in a new Zogby poll seems to knock those numbers into a cocked hat.

When asked "If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water?" a whopping 80 percent of respondents replied, "Should not." Only seven percent were still for pulling the plug.

The complete poll results contain other stats less supportive of the pro-Schindler side, and this one may have been funked by the negative phrasing (ie, saying "should or should not be denied" when "should or should not be provided with" would probably have been clearer). Still, I look at all the lazy Karen Ann Quinlan comparisons made in recent weeks and I suspect many people didn't really understand what was meant by "life support" in this case. I'll be wondering until they pull my own feeding tube why the pro-tubesters didn't work harder to clarify the food-and-water terminology for the public. (Probably because they were too busy telling lies about the husband.)