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."
Terri has been dead for 15 years. Now sadly her body 'lives' on as a pawn in a political game.
Umm...she ain't dead. She will be in a few days however. Until then, stop saying she died 15 years ago. This statement is self-evidently false. Give it a few days, then you can cackle about her destruction, and dance around some pyre of death and rejoice in her starvation. Until then show at least a modicum of humanity and respect.
A human being does not exist for 15 years nor with five of that being in Hospice if they are dead. The game you see being played out is not "political" but the future to how we as a society deals with our handicap, infirm and the weak.......We have already decided when God Creations can be born, now we take away God decision as to when he calls us home. Political game? You only wish it was only that... I do not want to be in the shoes of those that mock God.....
How often a couple has conjugal relations is a "marital affair". Spending too much money at the beauty salon is a "marital affair". Leaving the seat up is a "marital affair". Killing an innocent person by starvation is not a "marital affair".
Also, there was no hearsay in this. Another propaganda point.
Better study up on your law of evidence before making ignorant pronouncements like that. When a witness offers testimony as to a statement made by another person, and that other person's statement is offered for the truth of its contents, that is hearsay. In this case, there is no first-person record of Mrs. Schiavo's wishes. Mr. Schiavo and his brother have offered their testimony as to what they allege Mrs. Schiavo said to them, and are alleging such to be the truth. That is the very definition of hearsay.
Spouses often "stand to gain from [a spouse's] death"...shall we just treat them all like they're criminals, in absence of charges or conviction?
Not necessarily, but when a witness has an interest in the outcome of a proceeding in which he is offering testimony, that interest must be factored into the credibility of the witness.
What this underlines is the importance of both filing your wishes, as well as respecting the wishes of others, so you can know yours will be respected.
What this underlines is the sad lack of respect for life in our society. Nothing more, nothing less.
Stupid, just plan stupid. You never cease to amaze me, Sinkspur. What could "standing" possibly have to do with an act of civil disobedience? "Standing" is a legal term giving someone the right to bring a civil or criminal action. Everyone is way past that now. The discussion is civil disobedience. If you don't know what you're talking about...just shut up.
As far as the Pope's statement on nutrition and hydration, what exactly is your answer to the question posed? You say you agree with the Pope, but then you equivocate by referring to your seminary as a counter magisterium I guess. My impression from this Texas 2-step is that you don't believe in the Pope's statement ("it is not an infallible statement, you see") and that you think the boys over at your seminary got it right.
Wondering if you would be so kind as to tease out this special extra-ecclesial teaching of your seminary masters as well. Might be of interest to all.
I do think it was dumb to get up in a press conference and say "We have the authority to take custody," and then wait for the judge to issue a restraining order before acting.
That said, he made a serious and protacted effort to work within the legal framework, corrupt as it is, to save Terri. He deserves credit for that.
I can't say exactly what I would have done in his position, because I'm not in his position.
I would say, though, that if he would have chosen an extralegal avenue, he would have been morally justified, and I would have fully supported him in that.
It was illegal to protect Jews in Nazi Germany. Thankfully, there were many brave people who did so in violation of the law.
Absolutely no comparison - as any person with a modicum of intelligence knows. How clueless do you have to be to even make such an argument?
This is the problem with the left: no perspective and no reality check. Another example: they condemn those of us who are anti-abortion yet pro-death penalty. Do they not have even a clue? In one case a harmless, helpless baby is being cruelly and senselessly murdered. In the other case, justice and righteousness is being implemented.
Liberalism is definitely a mental disorder.
Oh please. My grandmother declined rapidly after bypass surgery. We held out hope UNTIL her kidneys failed. At that point, the body builds up toxins that will eventually kill. Kidney failure as part of a serious illness is usually an indication that a person is close to death.
No surprise that The Guardian tries to equivocate a truly ill elderly person with Terri's situation, but it's completely transparent to most.
The GUARDIAN removed someone for anti-Israel bias? She must have been truly outrageous in her reporting, LOL!
Halleluja, brother. And as St. Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all."
While I am at, I am going to get physically ill if someone opines one more time that this is a nation of laws. What nation wasn't a nation of laws? Our founding fathers broke laws. They broke the laws of their Sovereign, the Kind of England. Without such "lawlessness" we wouldn't have this "nation of laws." They fought and died for the proposition that there is a higher law than mans' law.
The idea of a higher law, natural law, what have you, has a long tradition in the Western world. I think there comes a time when people have to draw the line. I think this sentiment is perfectly compatible with the beliefs of our founding fathers.
Umm...I meant "King of England". He was not very Kind.
You should direct your comments to Terri's dad, Robert Schindler who "took away God's decision" as to when to call his own mother home by pulling the plug on her!
Walking man, there is a difference, if you have reason enough to understand.
His mother was dying. Terri Shiavo, as we all can planly see, was not dying. Schindler's mother died from her underlying disease. Terri is dying from starvation.
I am tired of dictator loving, backstabbing crackpots, telling me what to do!
Are you dancing around the pyre of death for Schindler's Mother???
You know:
THE ONE HE PULLED THE PLUG ON????
Umm, the article said nothing about pulling the plug. She was dying, Walking Man. It sounds like they elected not to use extraordinary means. My guess is that she was given food and water until she died. Terri is being starved to death. She is not dying from any underlying disease, she was not in the throws of death. She was alive. Now she is being starved to death by the state.
These people are definitely trying to compare apples and Fords.
So it was OK to sit back and watch her die, without lifting a finger to help her?
I want to know if this is the official position of the right-to-life movement!
Is this the official position of the RCC and its leader??
I want to hear Dr. Kennedy, Dr. Dobson, Pat Robertson, Rush, Hannity and Savage say that it was fully justified to let Robert Schindler's mother die but somehow its different for Terri who has been brain-dead and PVS with no hope whatsoever of recovery for 15 years!
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