Liberal Columnist Nat Hentoff Blasts Barack Obama on Terri Schiavo Flip-Flop
The Senate unanimously approved a compromise bill but Obama said he should have stood up against the life-saving legislation.
“It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped,” Obama said. “And I think that was a mistake."
Hentoff takes Senator Obama to task for the flip-flop in a column published in the magazine Forward.
He called Obama’s decision to flip-flop an "irresponsible robot-like judgment " not based on the facts of the situation Congress considered.
"He should be proud of the Senate vote he now recants–and learn a lot more about the disabled," Hentoff wrote.
"The reason Congress asked the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state," Hentoff explained.
Hentoff points out that "staunchly liberal Democratic Tom Harkin of Iowa" was one of the leading advocates of judicial review because he is so well-informed on disability rights cases.
He also notes that Obama apparently doesn’t know that "29 major national disability-rights organizations filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to understand that this was not a right-to-die case, but about the right to continue living."
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