'We Are All of Us Pro-Life'

Five months into a battle against liver cancer, my husband was rapidly losing weight. We begged the doctor for liquid nourishment to maintain him, and the doctor advised us not to go there.

"If he is not responding to treatment," he said. "It would actually be cruel." He then explained that, for a critically ill person, starvation is not the cruelest fate. Persistent maintenance of life signs is.

I hated him.

I hated that doctor, and I hated his office. I hated the family conference I'd been called to, hated the cancer that reduced my husband, a new father with a successful business, into a thin wraith who could hardly muster energy to speak. Most of all, I hated my helplessness. So I fought.

I fought for liquid nourishment. I fought for more treatment. I fought for oxygen to be delivered to the house. I fought for different answers. I fought for Gil's life, my life, the family we had just begun.

Then the doctor asked Gil what he wanted. And Gil said. "I just want to be at home, and I want everyone around me, and if the cancer isn't responding to treatment I want treatment to stop and I want hospice care."

What a blessing. Gil could speak. He could state his wishes, plainly and before witnesses. We didn't need an act of Congress or a legal judgment to know. We just asked.

We can't ask Terri Schiavo. We can only face her helplessness, and our own. And in the face of helplessness, all of us-those still blessed with the fighting fists of life-we seek different answers.

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