Posted on 03/21/2005 2:14:44 PM PST by BigFreddie
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A federal judge weighed the fate of a brain-damaged Florida woman on Monday, acting hours after the U.S. Congress and President Bush intervened to push the highly charged right-to-die case back into court.
U.S. District Judge James Whittemore began a hearing shortly after 3 p.m. EST to consider a request from Terri Schiavo's parents to reinstate tube feeding for their 41-year-old daughter that was halted three days ago. CNN reported that the judge gave each side 30 minutes to make their case.
Spurred by Christian conservatives who have embraced the case for prolonging Schiavo's life as representing the "culture of life," Congress rushed though special legislation to move the case to federal courts for a fresh review. Bush cut short a Texas holiday to sign the law shortly after 1 a.m. EST.
The extraordinary intervention by the Republican-controlled Congress into a legal dispute was criticized by Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, and by some Democrats as politically motivated meddling in a bitter family matter that has already been decided by state courts.
Bush, whose re-election last November was attributed in part to strong support from the religious right, thanked lawmakers for giving the parents "another opportunity to save her (Schiavo's) life."
"This is a complex case with serious issues. But in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life," Bush said in Tucson, Arizona.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Listening to Hannity right now. He's got a doctor on who spent time with Terri. Some amazing information. Obvious she isn't in a vegetative state AT ALL!!!
Prsy.
Pray.
Here is a poll to FReep: Should Terri Schiavo's feeding tube be reinserted? Yes or No? http://www.wkrn.com
The 'no' votes are currently winning 65 to 35%!!(this is in Tennessee!!) I smell DU and moveon at work.
how would one know?? There is no openness or transparency to know what has been tested, by whom, and what was tested..on other words, we are in the dark, much as the public is about this whole issue..all anyone wants is a fair evaluation of her present status..but her husband is not allowing that..I have a bad feeling about this judge..he is a Clinton appointee to a specially created position...why does he not order an independent eval from not less than two docs and specialists and why does he not go to see her personally???
Analysis here of Terri's CT scan from 1996 -
http://codeblueblog.blogs.com/codeblueblog/2005/03/csi_medblogs_co.html
In a nutshell -
"The most alarming thing about this image, however, is that there certainly is cortex left. Granted, it is severely thinned, especially for Terri's age, but I would be nonplussed if you told me that this was a 75 year old female who was somewhat senile but fully functional, and I defy a radiologist anywhere to contest that."
"If you starve this woman to death it would be, in my professional and experienced medical opinion, the equivalent of starving to death a 75-85 year old person. I would take that to the witness stand."
uncomfortable issues raised for limited-government, states'-rights advocates:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-schiavo21mar21,0,2140071.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
EDITORIAL
The Midnight Coup
March 21, 2005
Republican leaders, eyeing an opportunity to appease their radical right-wing constituents, convened Congress over the weekend to shamelessly interject the federal government into the wrenching Schiavo family dispute. They brushed aside our federalist system of government, which assigns the resolution of such disputes to state law, and state judges. Even President Bush flew back from his ranch to Washington on Sunday to be in on what amounts to a constitutional coup d'etat.
Conservatives are the historical defenders of states' rights, and the supposed proponents of keeping big government out of people's lives, but this case once again shows that some social conservatives are happy to see the federal government acquire Stalinist proportions when imposing their morality on the rest of the country. So breathtaking was this attempted usurpation of power, wresting jurisdiction over a right-to-die case away from Florida's judiciary, that Republican leaders in the end had to agree to limit this legislation's applicability to the Schiavo case.
In other words, according to the bill passed by the Senate Sunday afternoon, and which the House passed after midnight, among all the cases of patients in a persistent vegetative state nationwide, Terri Schiavo's case is the only one in which parents are able to have a federal court review state court rulings on the fate of their loved one.
Last Friday, after years of litigation and medical evaluations, the Florida judge presiding over the case ordered the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, pursuant to her husband's wishes.
House and Senate committees outrageously tried to intervene then by issuing subpoenas to the Schiavos and Terri's doctors, and by asking federal courts to order the feeding tube reinstated. But since this was not a case within federal jurisdiction, their efforts failed. Hence the effort to wrest jurisdiction the old-fashioned way, by passing a law.
Congress does act in other extraordinary cases on behalf of a specific individual, such as when it grants someone U.S. citizenship. But here, Congress is breaking new ground, trying to overturn a judicial decision by altering the Constitution's federalist scheme. This is the family law equivalent of the constitutionally banned "bill of attainder," legislation that seeks to convict someone of a crime.
Lost in all the political and legal maneuvering is the gut-wrenching conundrum of removing life support from a patient like Schiavo.
Bedridden for 15 years since she was resuscitated after she stopped breathing, Schiavo now breathes but is incapable of communicating or eating or drinking on her own. Her persistent vegetative state puts one in mind of the final stages of Alzheimer's disease, except that it can last for decades. Whether she can experience the simplest emotion is now the purview of politics, not medicine.
Schiavo's parents stand on one side of the gulf, demanding that she be kept alive by a tube that puts nourishment directly into her stomach. Her husband, whose motives the parents question constantly, says she would not have wanted to live in this dark twilight between physical life and humanity.
In law, a spouse's decisions about care of a mentally incompetent patient have long trumped parents'.
The praying, chanting protesters outside the Florida hospital where this drama plays out are a hint that this is the new front in what began as the abortion war, an effort to translate religious dogma into law under the right-to-life banner.
The feeding tube removed Friday at the order of a Florida state judge is not high medical technology. There are some people, children and adults alike, who may live nearly ordinary lives despite being forced to feed themselves or be fed through a tube because of other medical conditions. The line on removing such a tube is not as bright as removing a patient clearly at the end of life from artificial breathing or a heart machine. Ethical questions surrounding a case like Schiavo's are blurry and difficult, evidenced by the years of waiting and hoping for a miracle that have passed since she collapsed.
This case, headed like a bullet to the Supreme Court, must have most of the justices wishing for a Kevlar vest. The case is a marker for other battles — about medical assistance in ending a terminally ill life, as in the much-fought Oregon law and a similar proposal working its way through the California Legislature. About the rights of gay couples to assume spousal rights in medical decisions. Most painfully, about abortion.
Federal judges, regarded with contempt by moral conservatives on other issues, are being dragged into another swamp. No decision they make in the Schiavo case and those certain to follow can be the right one.
He says she can eat and the only reason she has a tube in is because of a judicial ruling.
Other neurologists that testified in the case only saw her for 45 minutes!!! Not enough time to make a diagnosis according to this MD.
Her constitutional rights have clearly been violated.
I'm shocked that Sean found someone who would say these things? Is she an expert? If she is, she should not be beleived.
Satan speaks.
Well we here on FR don't beleive experts, didn't you get the memo?
....expert is relative :)~
Of course.
This is not a right to die case.
It's a case about what the facts are.
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