John Grogan | Just what life is being prolonged?
http://www.realcities.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/john_grogan/
By John Grogan
Inquirer Columnist
For Terri Schiavo, there are no happy endings, only degrees of sadness.
Her once-bright life has come down to two heartbreakingly bleak choices: to live, if you can call it that, in what the courts have determined is a "persistent vegetative state." Or to die.
If Schiavo could somehow make her wishes known, I have to believe she would choose the latter - a
peaceful death over a life sentence of endless, unconscious tomorrows.
But the former suburban Philadelphia woman cannot and did not give direction. And thus this anguished national debate.
Schiavo, who grew up in Huntingdon Valley, suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped as a result of an eating disorder. She has been nonresponsive ever since and, unable to swallow, is kept alive in a Florida nursing home with a feeding and hydration tube.
Her condition has left those who love her bitterly divided. Her husband, Michael, formerly of Bucks County, has fought to let his wife die with dignity. He says she made it clear to him she never would want to exist like this, tethered to a machine with no hope of recovery.
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have fought just as fiercely to keep her alive. They accuse the husband of being driven by greed and a desire to remarry.
A political end-run
The case has wound through the courts and back again. After the judiciary repeatedly sided with the husband, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, and his allies pushed through the state legislature a special bill, "Terri's Law," designed specifically to prevent Michael Schiavo from removing the feeding tube. A life was being used to push political agendas.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to overturn a lower court ruling that struck down Terri's Law, but that has not deterred her parents, who vow to keep battling on other fronts.
For Terri, now 41 and blessedly unaware of the ugly and very public family feud her condition has spurred, there is no end in sight. My sense is both sides are driven by pure intentions. Michael Schiavo does not want to see his wife's suffering prolonged.
Her parents cling to hope against all odds, as parents are meant to do. They see glimmers of life behind the blank stares. They believe their daughter still exists in there, just waiting to be freed. Her doctors say otherwise.
The fact that Terri Schiavo left no written instructions greatly complicates the debate. And yet we are not without clues.
Absent a written directive, we have the husband's word. And we have our own common sense and decency. We each can ask ourselves, If it were me, what would I want?
Is there anyone among us who would answer truthfully: "Yes, I would choose to linger for years, decades, in a vegetative state with no hope of ever regaining consciousness?"
Alarmist malarkey
What would a reasonable person want from such a tragic turn of events? The answer seems obvious: Not to be kept lingering in a permanent comatose state, unaware of yourself or your surroundings, with no chance for recovery.
The right-to-life camp has wrapped itself around the Schiavo case, and its members paint alarmist "slippery slope" scenarios that are shameful in their deceit. To hear them spin it, if Terri is allowed to die, then next we will be rounding up and mass euthanizing all whom society does not value - the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally diminished, the homeless.
Pure nonsense.
This wrenching case is not, as Terri's parents claim, about "judicial homicide." The courts are not killing anyone. They are merely attempting to determine Terri Schiavo's chances for a meaningful recovery (none) and what she would want.
This is about honoring a woman's wishes. She did not write down exactly what those wishes are. But we can peer inside our own hearts and know without qualm what Terri Schiavo would want. It would not be the perpetual and pointless purgatory known by that sterile and inadequate term, "persistent vegetative state."
That is no life at all.
Contact John Grogan at 610-313-8132 or jgrogan@phillynews.com.
Terri ping to 2063! Please contact John Grogan and let him know that he is incorrect about Terri's diagnosis! Let's FReep this guy! I'll bet anything he has ties to either Michael or someone in Michael's family.
If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know by FReepmail!
Thank you for the phone number. It is time for Mr. Grogan to DEAL with the correct facts otherwise known as the TRUTH!