The living Schiavo has come in for a fair amount of calumny.

People hate him with an intense, visceral passion.

Why does he persist in his chosen course?

Many claim that he is just interested in the money. He’s a murderer for cash, the Schindler camp proclaims to the world.

But their are a few problems.

By the Schindlers’ own admission at Terrisfight.org, Michael offered to give his inheritance to charity if they allowed his wife to die.

The inheritance now stands at less than $50,000.

A businessmen offered Michael ONE MILLION dollars to turn custody over to the parents. Michael refused.

So it is not money.

Michael must be motivated to carry out what he believes his wife’s wishes to be. And he has endured a tremendous amount of libelous abuse in the process.

Perhaps he should stop.

Allowing Terri’s parents to take over guardianship will not influence him in any appreciable economic way. In fact, it might allow him to move on with his life and turn his efforts to remunerative pursuits.

If we accept that his attempt to withhold food is an attempt to carry out Terri’s wishes, perhaps he should consider this: She is already dead and we have no obligations to the dead*.

Terri’s frontal cortex is gone. She is incapable of feeling pain. Can it make any moral difference if her shell continues to breathe for decades? One would think that Terri, aside from being outraged at her parents’ actions, when faced with those actions and their implacable determination to deny the obvious, that she would want Michael to get on with his life.

Turning Terri’s shell over to the parents ends the controversy with no harm to Terri and an end to the litigation to all involved. It sounds like a win-win.

* See upcoming post.