Florida Public backs right to die

I haven't been following the Schiavo case in Florida too closely, but
I've read enough to know the basics. Terri Schiavo has been in a coma
for a long time, and her husband has been fighting to have her taken
off life-support. He claims that they had talked about it (as married
couples do) before she was in the car accident that rendered her
nonresponsive and she'd requested not to be kept alive if she were ever
in a vegetative state. Her parents have been fighting him tooth and
nail until finally the courts ruled in his favor. The feeding tube was
removed, but Gov. Jeb Bush stepped in and put forth a executive order
reinserting the tube.
I'd been assuming that the Florida public was behind Bush in this case,
but according to this poll that's not the case at all:

Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Republicans reignited a national
debate on the right to die when they ordered a feeding tube reinserted
into a brain-damaged woman, but the majority of the state's voters
believe the politicians got it wrong, according to a new poll.
By nearly three to one, registered voters across religious, party and
gender lines told pollsters they disagree with the intervention. While
Bush and GOP legislators acted at the request of Terri Schiavo's
parents to keep their daughter alive by overruling the wishes of her
husband and a court, an overwhelming number of the poll's respondents
believe that a spouse should determine whether an incapacitated person
without a living will should be taken off life support.
''The governor is clearly in the wrong in terms of public opinion,''
said Democratic pollster Rob Schroth, who conducted the poll for The
Herald and the St. Petersburg Times with a Republican pollster,
Kellyanne Conway.

Posted by flow Frazao on December 7, 2003 at 07:33 PM | Permalink