Posted on 03/27/2005 1:30:00 PM PST by Gondring
For 13 years Terri Schiavo has been in a coma - with her husband, her parents, the Christian right and now the president's brother locked in a bitter struggle over her fate. This week could see a final decision on whether she lives or dies. Suzanne Goldenberg reports from Florida
The woman's eyes are open in the video. She slowly rolls her head along the pillow, keeping up a constant low moan, as a man's arm dangles a metallic balloon overhead. "Look over here, Terri," a male voice says. "Can you follow that at all?"
The medical community and Florida's courts are convinced that Terri Schiavo can't, and, indeed, that she will never be able to recapture even this degree of cognitive ability. So too is her husband, Michael Schiavo. Over the years, he has tried three times to remove her feeding tube.
But Terri's parents, Mary and Robert Schindler, say she can improve, and have collaborated with the Christian right in America to turn this very private tragedy into a national pro-life pageant. Using the internet, press and Christian radio and television shows, anti-abortion groups have turned Terri's catastrophic loss into a major political gain, expanding the parameters of the pro-life debate.
This week could provide the last act. After a decade of exhausting every legal measure - and all the furore the Christian right can rustle up - the Schindlers have arrived at the final round of their struggle with their son-in-law for control of Terri's destiny.
A judge is deliberating whether to strike down so-called "Terri's Law" - a last-minute reprieve pushed through the Florida legislature by the state governor and presidential brother, Jeb Bush, that forced the hospital to resume feeding Terri two weeks ago.
Terri's Law, condemned by civil libertarians, the legal and medical community, and queasy state legislators, was the Schindlers' last hope. If it fails, the feeding tube will be removed, and Terri will slowly starve to death.
None of this has penetrated through to Terri. In February 1990, aged 26, she suffered a heart attack, brought on by acute potassium shortage caused by bulimia. By the time the ambulance arrived, her brain had been deprived of oxygen for six minutes. She has remained in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state ever since. Her eyes are open, her limbs are contracted, she smiles and grunts occasionally, but without any sense of purpose, according to the majority medical opinion presented to the courts.
But even in that seemingly senseless form, Terri's parents were able to discern a remarkable power within their semi-comatose daughter. Over the years, as successive judges refused their demand to be put in control of Terri's destiny, the Schindlers have enlisted the support of the Christian right to challenge court verdicts that have gone in her husband's favour. In the process, they have turned her into an unwitting heroine for the pro-life movement, and a convenient foil for Governor Bush.
With a year to go before the 2004 elections, Brother Bush has been keeping a weather eye out for causes that would mobilise the pro-life movement. Earlier this year, he outraged legal opinion by intervening to prevent a severely disabled woman, who had been raped in a state institution, from obtaining an abortion. Terri's case has proved as enticing a cause - and the Schindlers are extremely cooperative.
From their rented camper van across the road from the hospice, they have presided over prayer vigils and power rallies, pumping up the emotions in the campaign to keep their daughter alive by smuggling out videos of Terri in her bed, and making them available on the internet. Although her father, Robert, claims that he hates the circus that has developed around his daughter, he seems well practised at delivering his pitch. The fight for her life, the argument goes, is the fight for disabled people across America.
"People are being executed every day. I don't mean by the law. I mean executed by being starved to death - mainly the elderly, and people with Alzheimer's," says Robert. "There is a big, dark secret out there."
His other daughter, Suzanne Carr, who is five years younger than Terri, is more expansive. "This whole notion of doing away with a group of people who don't contribute to society or who can't feed themselves or who are expensive to maintain, that is bizarre, that is crazy," she says. "You might as well put down handicapped people."
It is difficult to know quite what Michael Schiavo makes of all this. As the Schindlers sit in their camper van discussing TV talkshow schedules, he has been all but silent, granting one interview in two years. And so, while one version of Terri's life - the one peddled by the Schindler family - remains well known, there is nothing forthcoming from the person who arguably knew her best: Michael, her husband of six years.
To hear the Schindler family tell it, the trajectory that led to Terri's tragic existence can be traced to her years as an awkward, overweight teenager in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Suzanne produces a sheaf of pictures of a chubby child and teenager, smiling at the camera from behind large spectacles. In the family's authorised version of events, the extra weight made Terri painfully shy.
She emerged from her shell only after slimming down in high school, and was still not entirely sure of herself when she started at a local college in the Philadelphia area. Within a few months, she had met Michael and fallen deeply in love - although perhaps not enough for Suzanne's standards. "He was the first guy to pay attention to her, the first guy to say, 'I love you', and so she married him," she says.
Nowadays, the Schindlers can barely avoid mentioning Michael's name without writhing in hatred. They have reinforced their accusations that he is neglecting Terri by suggesting that he tried to murder her, and that she was a victim of domestic violence.
The Schindlers' lurid accounts of abuse and neglect don't seem to tally with past events. In the early years of their marriage, Michael appeared to be on good terms with the Schindlers. The young couple lived in the Schindlers' condo after settling in Florida in the mid-80s. After Terri's accident, Michael and the Schindlers shared living quarters and the burden of care for Terri.
Those family bonds snapped in 1993 - the same year that a court awarded Terri $1m in a medical malpractice suit, and granted her husband authority over the money to use for her care. Each party now accuses the other of trying to get their hands on the funds. The cash question became even more urgent four years later, when Michael arrived at his momentous decision to end his wife's life. If Terri died, he would inherit the funds remaining in the malpractice suit; so long as she lived, the Schindlers had a hope of challenging his guardianship over Terri, and his control of the money.
By 1997, when Michael was set to remove the feeding tube for the first time, the stage was set for an epic confrontation. It is unclear what led to the change of heart, but Scott Schiavo, Michael's elder brother, says he arrived at the decision soon after the painful death of his own mother. "It sort of woke him up when he was watching my mother die," he says. "One day he just stood up and said: 'I can't do this any more. I can't do this to Terri.'"
Six years later, it has come down to this: videos of a stricken woman on the internet, accusations of murder, and lining up television interviews in a rented trailer.
Today, the Schindlers are spending much of the afternoon with a crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network, operated by the evangelist Pat Robertson. There is no question which side the CBN is on. "There is a spiritual battle going on. There is a pro-death movement out there right now, and it nearly killed Terri," says reporter Wendy Griffith. "From our perspective, it is a spiritual battle. It basically comes down to good and evil, life and death."
Outside the Christian right, such clarity over Terri's fate - or indeed the best recourse for any person condemned to live for years with virtually no brain function - is generally difficult to obtain.
But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."
Exactly. The reason that every single court that has reviewed this case has sided with Greer is because there is no evidence that Greer has abused his interpretation of the law. For the second time in a few posts, here it is again:
10) "Life-prolonging procedure" means any medical procedure, treatment, or intervention, including artificially provided sustenance and hydration, which sustains, restores, or supplants a spontaneous vital function. The term does not include the administration of medication or performance of medical procedure, when such medication or procedure is deemed necessary to provide comfort care or to alleviate pain.
This is from 765.101 Florida Statutes. Deport has a link above.
We know where you're coming from.
Have a Happy Easter.
Greer did not have to make the ruling he did.
Hypocrisy thy name is SCHINDLER!
And finally, it was the Schindlers who encouraged Mr. Schiavo to start dating
Well that makes it okay. What happened to "til death do we part". I guess if you're in the process of death, that's close enough. Wrong is wrong. If he wanted to date another woman or start his life over, I have no problem with him doing so, but you do it the right way. First, You get divorced. Then, you date other people. That is the right way, whether you're existing wife is lying in a hospice bed or nagging you from the couch.
Oh paleeeze. These two cases are not even remotely similar.
Terri is not on life support. Schindler's mother was.
Only the ignorant see any aimilarity whatsoever.
YEARS OF THERAPY??? You are kidding, right?? YEARS OF NO THERAPY IS WHAT SHE HAD. Go do the research.
And the Supreme Court didn't have to make the ruling it did on Roe v. Wade, either.
But he did, and it did, and we have to fix both of the situations that allowed them to do what they did, not stand around advocating that a Governor or a President break the law.
Greer did not have to make the ruling he did.
It's been too ugly around here to be just the good guys with different views. Some have been visitors from the dark side, IMO..........
Do you know if there was any family in the Nancy Cruzan issue who were opposed to her being allowed to die? I haven't read much on that case- but wasn't her father only opposed by the state? Just wondering- not making a judgement about that case at all, I am not familiar with the facts.
Regardless of the motives or the actions of the participants in this tragedy, I think the focus should be on the merits of removing the feeding tube. More people are going to be in the situation Terri is in.
"Greer did not have to make the ruling he did."
What? Are you suggesting Greer rule other than what is written in law?
One......healthy young woman, on feeding tube only, NOT life support. The other, old, terminally ill woman ON LIFE SUPPORT.
See? Not even close to being the same thing.
"And the Supreme Court didn't have to make the ruling it did on Roe v. Wade, either.
But he did, and it did, and we have to fix both of the situations that allowed them to do what they did, not stand around advocating that a Governor or a President break the law."
Nice try while you sink back out from the backroom. You have no problem with what has taken place and to throw at me advocating anybody break the law is your own method of avoiding what you really believe. Tom Delay really got under your skin, worried about your own personal insurance premiums.
I don't know how many "expressed" it verbally, but in the United States in the year 2000, 29,350 people acted on their "desire not to be kept alive" by committing suicide. Is that a good thing in your estimation? Are you suggesting that we should forcibly starve to death anyone who merely "express a desire not to be kept alive"? What if there's no record of the expression, but just hearsay from someone who stands to gain from their death? Should we still off 'em?
Just wondering.
An excellent post, sinkspur; I agree with everything you've said.
"What? Are you suggesting Greer rule other than what is written in law? "
NO suggestion, Greer did not have to rule that the feeding tube would be removed, and nor did he have to give Terri over to Mike's custody.
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