Medical decisions and politics

Evenin';
How much time have you spent with a person in a persistent vegetative state? Terri Sciavo's parents spend quite a bit of time with such a person. Their desire is to keep their daughter alive. But it's not about their desire. It's about her desires(regarding the prospect of ending up in her current situation), and how those desires should be respected and executed on her behalf.
Damn me for starting with an emotional hook? It's part and parcel of situations like this. No one who's personally involved in such a case can be dispassionate about it.
Terri Sciavo is unable to make decisions for herself or to indicate what her feelings are regarding her predicament. Those actions are left to her proxy, in this case her husband. It is his assertion that she told him she would not want to live in her current state. All of the laws necessary to assure that her rights are protected are on the books. No mainstream religion objects to allowing persons in her condition to die. Nor do they object to the withdrawal of nourishment and hydration.
But what of Michael Sciavo's motives? He is Catholic. In the eyes of the church, he is married to her until death. He is in love with another woman. Does he have a vested interested in hastening her death? Short of obvious, egregious abuses of his responsibility to his wife as her health care proxy, questioning his motives is a blatant invasion of his privacy, and must(in fairness) bring into question the motives of the party(s) raising the questions.
Terri Sciavo's mother has appealed to President Bush to intervene. He should tell her he has no right to intervene on her behalf, that it would be an abuse of his power, but there's political specie to be gained here(however abominable an abuse that may be), and he and his party are hungry for capitol. Tom Delay has taken the lead in pursuing this issue. He's taken quite a drubbing over his professional missteps of late and is desperate and grateful for a diversion.
There has been an assertion(most recently by those who defend the Partiot Act) that the Constitution and Bill of Rights does not guarantee us the right to privacy. In general, I would agree with that assertion. But, this venue is a bloody damnable way to test that assertion, and it's being tested for all the wrong reasons.
Hank