"Liberation Day" comes for Terri Schiavo, 3/31/2005, 9am EST

No, it's not what you might think. The stormtroopers didn't come busting in to seize her and take her to an "undisclosed location" where the nutrition would be restarted. No, she simply died.

Now, hopefully, we can get some "reality based" information on what really happened and how likely or unlikely it would have been that she could have recovered from the state she was in. The autopsy will be done by the Pinellas County coroner, and it's probably going on as I type this. In a rare show of unanimity between the husband and the parents, both sides requested the autopsy. Certainly the sides have differing reasons why to do the autopsy: the parents want to find evidence of spousal abuse, the husband wants to show the extent of the brain damage and prove that she didn't have enough grey matter to support consciousness as we know it.

Meanwhile, if this had happened in Texas and Ms. Schiavo had been poor and lacking health insurance or on Medicaid, the plug would have been pulled on her a long time ago.

The moral to this story? Write up Advance Medical Directives, and make damn sure people know they exist.

Note at 11:16pm: Tomorrow is April Fool's Day. Expect all kinds of weirdness throughout the blogosphere. I might indulge, I might be totally serious next time I post here. It depends on how I feel.