"Rights and Schiavo"

Mark Levin does an excellent job, in a comment to NRO's Corner, addressing the fundamental "right to live." Here's the first of Levin's four paragraphs, but please follow the link and read the entire comment:

The right to live, or more specifically, the right not to be killed, is a fundamental right. And it's a right recognized in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. So ingrained in our society is the notion of life, that the 8th Amendment prohibits "cruel and usual punishment" (even short of death) and the 14th Amendment prohibits states from depriving any person of life without due process of law. This has nothing to do with federalism, unless you ignore the 8th and 14th Amendments. (Unlike the Left, that contorts the 14th Amendment, I'm recognizing its literal meaning.)