".....I was at home in Newton on the morning of Sunday, March 20,2005, when I received notification that the House would convene later that same day to consider the case of a Florida woman named Terri Schiavo.Fifteen years earlier,she had fallen into a comatose state. Once it became clear  her condition would not improve, her husband asked the hospital to remove her feeding tube. This was in accordance with a wish he said she had expressed to him before she was stricken.

    Schiavo's parents objected , and since the law as it stood gave her husband the right to decide, Florida Republicans, led by a passionately committed Governor Jeb Bush , rushed to change that law and nullify the husband's directive. When  their effort was overruled by the Florida courts-with very little judicial disagreement-the president took over from his brother , and with the enthusiastic backing of the Republican leadership, asked Congress to accomplish what Florida legislators could not.

  The Republican bill was debated but could not be enacted  before Congress's spring recess began. With Congress not due to reconvene for  18 days , this meant that Michael Schiavo's interpretation of his wife's wishes would prevail, the tube would be removed and it would be too late for the returning Congress to do anything about it.

    When the recess  began , I made the same misjudgement that I had made during impeachment. I assumed that the Republicans would not push their ill advised effort to a conclusion.......The summons..disabused me.

   It's generally believed that the Republicans hoped for large political gain. In fairness to my colleagues ,I do not think that was their major motivation. Jeb Bush,Tom DeLay , and other prominent Republicans genuinely and passionately believed that removing the feeding tube would contradict God's wishes, and their moral responsibility to intervene overrode any other considerations.(Good!-Flavius)

     I did not want to go to Washington...............It was clear that there was nothing I or any other opponents of the bill could do to stop it,especially because everyone assumed it would have broad and deep public support.

     Logically, staying home made more sense. But emotionally ,I couldn't not go. When I first ran for office,I promised myself that I would offset my cowardice on the subject of my sexual orientation by not ducking any other tough issue-and this looked like it would be one of the toughest.. Moreover ,I was as angered by the Republicans ' effort as Jeb Bush and Tom DeLay were by Michael Schiavo's decision. The bill was an outrageous intrusion by the legislative branch into the proper domain of the judiciary. For Congress to reverse a specific court ruling,one that had been properly made, meant an end to the rule of law.Politics,not the merits of the case,would become the arbiter of disputes whenever enough politicians got the urge.

    Additionally, substituting Jeb Bush's personal ,religiously based view of what should happen when a person is brain-dead for her own wishes and those of her husband , was a terrible violation of personal autonomy. No one was telling Bush,DeLay or any other Republican what should be done if he were in an irreversible,totally insensate vegetative state. Their right to abide by what they believed God was telling them deserved full protection. Only in a theocracy did they have the further right to impose this position on people who disagreed with it. I stress this point for a reason. While the bill's most ardent supporters claimed to doubt that Terri Schiavo had instructed her husband to eschew life support, it became clear that they would have tried to prevent the removal of her feeding tube even if her wishes had been unmistakable." 

FRANK     

Farrrar,Straus and Giroux                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Copywright 2015 by Barney Frank

From Pages 239 to 241

Why this quote?

We can sometime  be fairly dismissive here of those 538 folks in Washington.This seemed like a good example of one of them earning his pay.