This blog is back from its brief hiatus (that turned out to be briefer than I thought it would be) to tackle some important issues. And what is on the mind of Americans more these days than Terri Schiavo?

How did an unassuming middle-aged woman become a household name in the center of a 'right to die' debate? Surely the circumstances are geared toward the public's attention. A feuding family. A conflux of medicine, religion and politics. It's got something for everyone.

But it will all end soon. Because with the Supreme Court's latest refusal to consider the case, Terri will surely expire before long. Is this a tragedy? Of course. But the tragedy is not the removal of her feeding tube. The tragedy was the affliction that left her a vegetable 15 years ago. That is no way to exist and I surely would not want to exist in such a manner. Maybe some people would and that is their prerogative - hence it is important to establish living wills, where we express our wishes in such worst-case scenarios (as morbid as they may sound). If it were me, I would not want to be kept alive in that state and neither does Terri. So we should honor her wishes and let her go.

How do we know that Terri would feel that way? That's the crux of the debate as, after all, she has no living will. However, I don't believe that her husband - her legal guardian - would be fighting this hard for her right-to-die if Terri hadn't expressly told him how she felt about the subject. I sympathize with her parents but once she got married, they forfeited all of their legal rights to speak for her.

Then you have the Right-to-Lifers who vehemently protest the removal of Terri's feeding tube because of their religious convictions. There is a certain blog that I've recently visited that often espouses a Pro Life philosophy. The poster and most of the commenters feel that any life, even the life of a vegetable, is worth preserving. And if you dare disagree with them, they answer with Biblical quotations and warnings that America is evolving into the Fourth Reich. Sigh. I'm secular. I can't have a public policy discussion when Biblical passages are the basis of an argument. I personally believe that organized religion is a mythology passed on through the ages and while I respect people individual beliefs, I don't want them enforced on me or anyone else who doesn't subscribe to their philosophy. Yet religious institutions are encroaching more and more on our public policies and we must be very weary of that trend.

And finally there's the politics of this matter. Historically, the Republicans have respected the rights of the states to decide matters themselves with minimal federal interference. But I suppose that's only if the states don't conflict with their ideology. First President Bush attempts to pass an amendment banning gay marriage. Now he and the Congress tried to take a case out of the state's hands and put it in a federal court's hands. Thank goodness we still have an independent judiciary. Let's hope it remains that way amidst the anger that the Religious Right will display as a result of this outcome.

So those are some of my thoughts on this matter. Rest in peace, Terri. It's 15 years coming.