Terry Schiavo's story is infinitely sad. For her parents, for her husband, for a conflicted America, for a young woman whose body has continued to exist long after her brain has ceased to function. It's not a story that should have been turned into political opportunism by Congress and the President. This is a deeply personal moment for a family, not a political circus for elected officials.

It's not just the cynical Republican leadership who, according to a leaked memo, saw a chance to turn a family tragedy into political capital for the 2006 election that bothers me. It's also the Democrats who didn't have the backbone to stand up to a pathetic political charade and insist that Congress stay out of people's most personal, intimate decisions.

For seven years, Terry Schiavo's parents and husband have battled through the courts over whether she should live or die, both sides in this sorrowful saga claiming to know what a brain-dead woman would want. While the courts ultimately sided with her husband, allowing her feeding tube to be removed, that simply provides a legal answer to a deeply disturbing ethical choice. Given our medical ability to sustain a body long after there is any realistic chance for that body to live what most of us would consider a real life, the debate needs to go deeper than simply the legal judgments issued here.

Who, for example, should make such a life and death decision when family members are in conflict? A person's parents or spouse? Terry Schiavo's case is complicated by the fact that her husband, though still married to her, has two children with his girlfriend. Does that make him incapable of making the right decision for her, of claiming he knows what she wanted in such a dire circumstance? I don't think so. He has remained married to her even though he could have made his current life easier through divorce. Nonetheless, if I were Terry Schiavo's parents, I'm sure I would be very bitter if my son-in-law, with another family, chose death for my daughter, his wife.

As in most cases where the death of a severely brain-damaged person is a family choice, this is no easy ethical answer. I try to imagine what I would do if Terry were my daughter. I believe I would want to let her go rather than live in an awful quasi-existence. I would hope that her husband and I could agree on what she would want. But, I am not Terry Schiavo's parents, so I don't really know how I would respond in their situation, if I'd cling to hope or let her slip away.

As an outsider, if asked, I would advise her parents to let her die, believing it would be better for her. As a mother, in the face of a deep family conflict over life or death, I would advise her husband to let her live because that is what her parents wish. And they are the ones closest to her now.

This leads me to several conclusions. Above all, politicians have absolutely no business intruding in the most private and difficult decisions a family must make. It's bad enough to have to settle a tragic dispute in court, but at least that provides an impartial hearing, not an opportunity for political gain.

Second, all of us should let our families and doctors know, in writing, what our wishes are if we were to be in a "permanent vegetative state". Finally, families need to have available to them the most caring, ethical medical advice possible to help them determine whether what, to me, seems like a life worse than death is indeed just that. Then, it becomes their decision based on their personal and spiritual values. This ethical debate is one for society to have in general terms. This specific choice is one that only those who love us most should make for us.