Can a case be made for keeping abortion legal, which also recognizes the subtleties of defining "human life"? What combination of cognitive awareness, brain development, physical integrity, and dependence on others allows us to define Terri Schiavo as a citizen fully deserving of equal protection under the law, while denying that right to a two-month old fetus?

I don't know. Women should be able to choose whether or not to bear children. Birth control isn't perfect. But I would rather honestly face the problem of defining "human life" and granting it civil rights, than avoid the implications of Terri Schiavo's predicament.

Redstate asks "Where will the activist energy go (if anywhere) after Terry Schiavo dies?" (The discussion continues here.) I posted several of the disability rights articles I have linked to before, and some people appreciated that. Several said that it wasn't a disability rights issue since Schiavo's level of brain damage put her right on the edge of being "a living person," which is very different from types of brain damage in which it is indisputable that there is a living person, whatever their cognitive deficits are.

But that's not the issue. This is the issue:

Our country has learned that we cannot judge people on the basis of minority status, but for some reason we have not erased our prejudice against disability. One insidious form of this bias is to distinguish cognitively disabled persons from persons whose disabilities are �just� physical. Cognitively disabled people are shown a manifest lack of respect in daily life, as well. This has gotten so perturbing to me that when I fly, I try to wear my Harvard t-shirt so I can �pass� as a person without cognitive disability. (I have severe cerebral palsy, the result of being deprived of oxygen at birth. While some people with cerebral palsy do have cognitive disability, my articulation difference and atypical muscle tone are automatically associated with cognitive disability in the minds of some people.)

The result of this disrespect is the devaluation of lives of people like Terri Schiavo. In the Schiavo case and others like it, non-disabled decision makers assert that the disabled person should die because he or she�ordinarily a person who had little or no experience with disability before acquiring one��would not want to live like this.� In the Schiavo case, the family is forced to argue that Terri should be kept alive because she might �get better��that is, might be able to regain or to communicate her cognitive processes. The mere assertion that disability (particularly cognitive disability, sometimes called �mental retardation�) is present seems to provide ample proof that death is desirable.

Wittenberg Gate suggests that the "pro-life" crowd and the disability rights crowd form a coalition on issues they share (which I suspect has been happening already, but may gather steam now). Even extremely lefty Common Dreams is hearing from disability activists:

There isn't a single disability rights activist I've heard from who is happy that things ended up at such a sorry pass, and who isn't afraid that this will make liberals hate them even more than they now do. Yet it cannot help being noticed that it generally depends on whose ox is being gored as to what side of the states' rights debate one comes down on. We're all for federal laws when it comes to things like civil rights -- and gay marriage. We're not, though, when it comes to things we've labeled as "right to die" -- which we say are "privacy issues."

We might want to take another look at the cost of such privacy.

The disability rights movement I cover is made up of individuals who themselves are living lives that they may not have been able to previously imagine. Individuals who can communicate only via technology -- who, without today's computers, might very well be thought to have little or no cognitive ability. Several of these people, in fact, contribute regularly to Ragged Edge Online. There are people who have experienced aphasia. There are people with brain inries.

To these people, the case of Terri Schiavo looks very different.

They are particularly angered by the belief that Michael Schiavo knows what Terri Schiavo wants. "We didn't know what Terri wanted," Michael Schiavo told Larry King on Friday. "But this is what we want."

This isn't about Terri Schiavo anymore.

What follows is five news stories of people killing their disabled relatives.

Jeremy notes that feeding tubes are fairly mundane necessities for a lot of people who have enough cognition to discuss the pros and cons of different models on a message board.

Congress seems to be aware of the disability aspects of the issue:

"I think we should look into this and very possibly legislate it," said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who opposed Congressional action in the Schiavo case. Mr. Frank was speaking on Sunday on the ABC News program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos." Mr. Frank added: "I think Congress needs to do more. Because I've spoken with a lot of disability groups who are concerned that, even where a choice is made to terminate life, it might be coerced by circumstances."

In the Senate, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, has also been consulting with advocates for disability rights and is preparing to introduce legislation along the lines of the bill that the House passed, a spokeswoman said. Senator Harkin, an author of the Americans With Disabilities Act, was one of the few Democrats in the Senate who spoke in favor of the so-called private relief measure that allowed a federal court to review Ms. Schiavo's case.

More on Tom Harkin, who apparently rallied the Dems who supported the congressional measure.

UPDATE: Just a reminder about some people who took Terri's side, or at least supported the federal intervention, who are not rightwing fundamentalist right to life Taliban nutjobs trying to impose a theocracy on America:
Bill Clinton
Alan Dershowitz
Joe Lieberman
David Boies
Jesse Jackson
Ralph Nader
Lanny Davis

UPDATE: Dirty Harry has just one small question for the "pull the tube" contingent. He's willing to agree with all their other points if they will answer just one small question. If you thought pulling the tube was the right thing to do, give him an honest answer to his question.

UPDATE: Jane Galt asks essentially the same question.