I get so sick of historical revisionism, that I decided to post this entry about how Democrats also backed the Terri Schiavo federal law. This is what Tom Harkin, Democratic senator from Iowa, said at the time:
He’s no “theocrat.” Indeed, Harkin is one of the most liberal members of the Senate. And he was right to want to protect a helpless and vulnerable woman from the bum’s rush she received in Florida. Too bad the press has its own narrative to sell rather than the truth.Where there is a genuine dispute as to what the desires of the incapacitated person really are, then there ought to be at the end some review by a federal court outside of state jurisdiction. You might say, ‘Why a federal court?’ State courts vary in their evidentiary proceedings and in their process—fifty different ones. . . . Every review of that, up through the state courts, is basically on the procedure, not upon the first facts. In a case like this, where someone is incapacitated and their life support can be taken away, it seems to me that it is appropriate — where there is a dispute, as there is in this case—that a federal court come in, like we do in habeas corpus situations, and review it and make another determination.
Alas, the federal judge refused to follow the law and Terri is now in her grave.
