As I said, I blogged extensively about this at the time. And aside from the larger political issues, Michael Schiavo was a really evil human being.

He was possibly responsible for putting his wife in a coma in the first place, and his refusal to get her proper care early on arguably doomed her. He had her pets put to sleep, had her jewelry melted down to make a new ring for himself, and took up with another woman and had two kids by her while supposedly “caring” for his wife.

He was a despicable human being, and it boggles my mind that he got one iota of public sympathy, or that his side of the issue won in the court of public opinion.

That case really shook my faith in the American people.

Maybe.

But I blogged a lot about that case back when it was in the news, and, while the left may have managed to paint it as “right wing nutjobs” trying to force their pro-life views on society, a horrible precedent was set.

The result of that case, in the end, was this: without any written insturctions or other normally legally binding proof, if a person is no longer able to speak for themselves, they can be put to sleep if their spouse says “they’d have wanted it that way.”

What it means is this: if you’re the next-of-kin for someone who is incapacitated, and it becomes too expensive, or inconvenient, or depressing to continue to take care of them, you can have them killed, with the blessing of law and society, as long as you use the magic words “it’s what they said they wanted.”

We were already headed that way, and it’s going to become a bigger topic as Boomers get old and infirm and their care is placed in the hands of children who may not want to see their inheritances spent on increasingly expensive medical care that is only “prolonging the inevitable.”

I think that there will come a day when a lot of the people who supported Michael Schiavo and made political points against Republicans over this case, will regret having done so, when they find themselves unable to speak up on their own behalf, and some relative decides to end THEIR suffering, whether or not that’s what they want.

But it will be far too late by then, and they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.