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."
765.106 Preservation of existing rights.
--The provisions of this chapter are cumulative to the existing law regarding an individual's right to consent, or refuse to consent, to medical treatment and do not impair any existing rights or responsibilities which a health care provider, a patient, including a minor, competent or incompetent person, or a patient's family may have under the common law, Federal Constitution, State Constitution, or statutes of this state.
All this tap dancing around the fact a woman is being murdered by the *legal* (but NOT lawful) system is just sickening!
Mrs Schindler was terminal......that means, dying. And her life was being supported artificially (food is not artificial......many otherwise healthy people have feeding tubes).
Terri Schiavo was most likely NOT in a permanent vegetative state. There are too many medical witnesses who have signed affidavits to be ignored. She is brain damaged, but not brain dead..........and there is a HUGE difference.
She was healthy. Breathing on her own, heart beating on its own. NOT on life support.
And there was much new medical information, which the Congress knew about and voted on, and which Jeb Bush knew about and tried to get custody of Terri because of, that Judge Greer ignored, and the courts refused to consider.
I know that somewhere underneath that bluster and silliness, you know the truth..........that there was sufficient enough question about Terri's state to keep her alive for current medical analysis. And, instead, they are killing her.
If that doesn't bother you, I would check in with your conscience.
Yep, laws enacted by the duly elected legislators of the State of Florida and other states I'd assume.
Those duly elected legislators do some funny things at times don't you agree... Now the mission should be to get the laws changed if that is the will of a majority of the people of the State of FL. Until then they are on the books.
I have felt like I was in a pit of darkness at times. Seems like the trolls (at least some) are giving up and going back to the DUnderworld, and most of the discussions have at least a touch of rational thought today........MOST anyway. :o)
2. Robert Schindler pulled the plug on his Mother.
3. She died.
4. Robert Schindler is one of the biggest hypocrites on the face of the Earth.
Thats all I need to know, thanks.
Natural persons, or human beings, are under natural law...the law of 'Nature and nature's God' of the Declaration of Independence.
The government has turned us each into a legal entity without knowledge, consent, or full disclosure. Three of the necessary ingredients for a legally binding contract.
But was she conscious?
If so, you'd willingly pull the plug on someone who has conscious thought, simply because they're in pain, but can't imagine pulling the plug on someone who is not conscious?
FR has become Nut-Case Central the last week or so. Flame away.
"My prayer was that Michael Sciavo divorce Terri so that those who wanted to take care of her could. But he didn't.
I don't join with the hysterics, like Randall Terry and Patrick Mahoney, who advocate breaking down the doors and confronting the Pinellas Park police department with guns blazing.
If that's what you want, then why not get your hiney down there instead of jockeying behind a keybard?"
Amazing. I pray for the WILL of the Heavenly Father in Christ's name and to comfort Terri and her family.
Your are just in as much hysterics because of your FEAR of Terry and Mahoney, neither of which have one ounce of credibility.
You have bemoaned DeLay and you have worried about a Congress Constitutionally "interfering" raising insurance premiums.
You swing with a broad brush by suggesting that I support the hysterics you FEAR with your smear of a directive of where I should take my "hiney".
So please playing this better than thou will not fly.
44 Then they also [in their turn] will answer, Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?
45 And He will reply to them, Solemnly I declare to you, in so far as you failed to do it for the least [in the estimation of men] of these, you failed to do it for Me.
As it should be, because people like you scare the hell out of me.
So9
I thought DeLay was grandstanding last Sunday, and still believe that.
But your comment about "insurance premiums" is simply incomprehensible. I have no idea what you're talking about.
We were discussing your statement:
"Sustenance and hydration" are classified as medical treatments, according to Florida law.
Is it the case that no one can rightfully think that is an immoral law, and disobey it, morally speaking?
And do you agree or disagree with the Pope on the matter of nutrition and hydration being "ordinary means" of care, under normal circumstances?
Or are you just trying (and failing) to be cute?
>>>For 13 years Terri Schiavo has been in a coma -
NO SHE HASN'T! Idiot.
And don't forgit the number of believers in atheism. I am stunned at the number posting on FR.
Sure. But that "one" has to be able to take some action, which is why I mentioned Jeb Bush. You or I have no standing in this case.
And do you agree or disagree with the Pope on the matter of nutrition and hydration being "ordinary means" of care, under normal circumstances?
Yes, but you have to remember that JPII's pronouncement last year was the first attemtped resolution of this issue in 400 years. His has not been the constant teaching of the Church. We were taught in moral theology in the seminary that the withholding of sustenance for someone in a PVS was a possibility, depending on the prognosis and commensurate burden.
There is not enough information in this article (the veracity of which is in question in the first place because of its leftist source), to know if she was conscious or not.
Unless you provide medical information to prove that she was, there is no way to make the comparison.
But we do know that a number of medical experts have said that Terri is not in a coma, we have no proof that she wanted her life to end, and in spite of that, she is being deprived of food and water so that she will die.
Making the decision to remove artificial life support from his mother (or even not to place her on it), is not the same as the removal of the feeding tube of a woman who has been deprived of proper therapy, and has been fed through her mouth in the past.
These two situations are very different, and a different decision in each of them does not make Robert Schindler a hypocrite.
It's a common thing that happens from time to time. I have my differences with Bush on Immigration. But, some here go from disagreement to vitriolic hatred in a matter of seconds. Makes you wonder about their true agenda.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.