The Los Angeles Times has revealed that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s family went through a similar ordeal as Schiavo’s family. While Delay has denounced the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube as “an act of barbarism”, he supported allowing his father to be taken off life support 16 years ago. In 1988, Delay’s father suffered a freak accident and went into a coma. He was kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment. Then when his kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. Charles Delay died on Dec. 14, 1988 surrounded by his family. Tom Delay’s mother said “There was no point to even really talking about it. There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew–we all knew–his father wouldn’t have wanted to live that way.”