"Is God testing us? Are we afraid we will have failed that test if this one woman is allowed to die in peace?"

I worry that maybe the opposite could be true - that we perhaps fail the test when we forget that the body is just a vessel, and focus myopically on our ability to preserve that vessel, even at cost of trapping the soul from returning home to Him.

The case is one where the imperative to determine how one feels about the ethics is overpowering, but I freely confess that I can't make up my mind on the issue. The only thing that I feel for certain is that the principle of being a nation of constitutional government and laws is more important than any one person's life - just ask the thousands of our best and brightest, who for over two hundred years soaked the flag in their blood to keep us that way.

That's it. Precisely.

Not the point at all. The test may be in what we do in the face of the needs of the stricken, the seemingly purposeless, the half-dead. Do we see the terrible face of Christ in these, or do we simply turn away, As so many turned away from him? Who are the priest and the Levite from the Good Samaritan story today? Who is among "least of these, my brothers and sisters..." staring us in the face, glassy-eyed and needy?

Maybe. But when I cannot know what her wishes would have been in a situation like this, I do not know how aggressive she would like her treatment to be. Therefore I do not know how to serve her needs.

Do we ease her suffering by prolonging the ordeal, or by allowing nature to take its course?

All I'm asking is that we try to walk a little bit softly, here. I'm all in favor of requiring an MRI when these things go in front of a judge, but I'm hoping that the history of abortion law will remind my pro-life brethren that "hard cases make for bad law."

I wish we'd concentrate less on this one case, and more on how to prevent this sort of thing in the future whenever possible: how can we encourage living wills? How can we guard against spouses with hidden agendas?

"how can we encourage living wills?"

I should think that one, highly-publicized case, where such a document was lacking, with a tragic outcome, should do the job.

If you read Charles Krauthammer's article in the WashPost yesterday, that made some good suggestions for where we could go next in terms of national policy.