I’ve been reading a lot about how horrible the Republicans in government are, to be dragging the very private, personal matter of Terri Schiavo’s care into the political arena. Excuse me? As much as I’d love to side against corrupt and opportunistic trolls like Tom DeLay, I take exception with this logic.

The Schiavo case has been a matter of public legal litigation in the courts of Florida for a long time, and not because the US Congress sued anybody. Lest we forget, it was her family who sued each other, openly and in public. They wanted the public, through the people’s courts, to render a legal enforceable public decision.

Just today there’s this AP headline: Warning that Terri Schiavo was “fading quickly” and might die at any moment, her parents begged a federal appeals court Tuesday to order the severely brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube reinserted. And over the weekend, I saw her Mom on TV, begging Congress to please please please save her daughter.

The matter of the disposition of Schiavo’s care would never have been in the public legal/political forum if the husband and parents of this woman hadn’t brought it into the courts of their own free will. In fact, I don’t think any branch or entity of government has butted in here without first being supplicated to intervene. Sorry, but if you don’t want to swim with sharks, it’s best to keep your butt in the boat.

I’m sorry for the suffering of these people, but the government didn’t put that poor young woman in that hospital bed. And the rest of us would never have been involved if these folks — God bless them — had been able to work out their personal, private pathos behind closed doors.