The parents say that even if Terri had told them explicitly to remove her feeding tube, they would keep her feeding tube against her own wishes.
Furthermore, the parents would not remove Terri’s feeding tube even Terri had her limbs amputated. They would still not respect her desire to have her tubes removed if she had gangrene and all her arms and legs were cut off.
According to the Wolfson Report, (page 16) provided to Governor Jeb Bush by Court-Appointed Guardian Jay Wolfson, the Schindlers have no desire to respect Terri’s wishes not to be kept alive in a vegetative state.
Testimony provided by members of the Schindler family included very personal statements about their desire to ensure that Theresa remain alive. Throughout the course of the litigation, deposition and trial testimony by members of the Schindler family voiced the disturbing belief that they would keep Theresa alive at any and all costs. Nearly gruesome examples were given, eliciting agreement by family members that in the event Theresa should contract diabetes and subsequent gangrene in each of her limbs, they would agree to amputate each limb, and would then, were she to be diagnosed with heart disease, perform open heart surgery.When people are so fanatical, they raise significant questions about their ability for rational decisions.There was additional difficult testimony that appeared to established that despite the sad and undesirable condition of Theresa, the parents still derived joy from having her alive, even if Theresa might not be at all aware of her environment given the persistent vegetative state.
Within the testimony, as part of the hypotheticals presented, Schindler family members stated that even if Theresa had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it. Throughout this painful and difficult trial, the family acknowledged that Theresa was in a diagnosed persistent vegetative state.