I have nothing profound to say about Anna Quindlen’s Newsweek column on Terri Schiavo except that it gives me the chills. She writes, in part:

Arguments about Terri’s case centered on something described as a “culture of life.” It is an empty suit of a phrase, absent an individual to give it shape. There is no culture of life. There is the culture of your life, and the culture of mine. There is what each of us considers bearable, and what we will not bear. There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays…

So in Quindlen’s dictionary: life: n., when the music box (preferably running a Carole King or Gloria Gaynor tune) plays inside a person. Determined by husband, whether he has an obvious conflict of interest in another woman and the children he’s fathered with her or not. Music-box existence can be determined with the not-so-objective aid of a right-to-death-advocate doctor. If parents and siblings see music box where husband doesn’t, tough for them…