The next "Terri's Law"?

Terri Schiavo's ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family doesn't show up and turn the burial into a media spectacle, a member of the Schiavo family said Thursday.

"If Mike knew they would come in peace, he would have no problem with it," Scott Schiavo, Michael Schiavo's brother, said during an interview at his home.

After an autopsy, Michael Schiavo plans to have his wife's body cremated and her ashes brought to Pennsylvania, where she grew up. Scott Schiavo said the ashes would be buried in a plot left by an aunt and uncle, but the family does not plan on providing the specific location for the burial.

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had fought for years to prevent her feeding tube from being removed, and they opposed cremation and wanted her buried in Florida.

This is an increasingly bizarre situation. Will there now be lawsuits over the custody of the corpse, and its disposition? No indication of that, of course, but given events, not an unreasonable speculation. And will Tom DeLay and Congress have to step in, asserting some Congressional privilege to decide who decides the disposition of a corpse? Is burial, perhaps, a part of the "culture of life?"

Well, if we're going to revisit the question of medical care, why not plunge on into the question of corpse disposal? I mean, as long as we're poking the wasp's nest....