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."
Bwahahahaha, nice try agitprop, your hero Michael Schiavo says the same thing.
But it's a funny thing about those videos taken two or three years after her collapse, where, sitting in a wheelcahir, she's swallowing on her own, following Michael's pointing toward things out on the lake and the sworn testimony of nurses during that therapy giving time that Terri could follow commands to assist getting on a bedpan. Those videos expose you for the fool or agitprop you are, either voicing as parrot for the Michael Schiavo 'kill Terri' ghouls or voicing as his agitprop.
Welcome to the growing crowd of dead souls that lickspittle about on FR of late exposing their ghoulish selves in grostesque posturing.
I believe in life, too...just not at the expense of rights.
Do you really think a man should sell custody of his wife? What kind of sick thoughts do you have?!?
I guess that leaves babies in the lurch. (No bottle, no teat, 'cause that's sustenance and hydration..)
More poorly written law.
Is your sister-in-law 79?
Where did you get the idea that sustenance and hydration are classified as medical treatments, according to Florida law? Nowhere in Florida Law does it state that food and water are medical treatments. However, food and water are required by law. Therapy is required by law. The laws which are actually on the books have been ignored or lied about.
Terri Schiavo has the right to die, whether she wants to or not. There is no Constitutional Right To Life. That's just a fantasy invented by right wing religious zealots. Now everybody bring your sacrificial Christian into the pentagram, so we can begin the holy sacrifice to Satan. /sarcasm
DUH! Ever heard of connecting the dots?
Point is, it's really not about the money, is it?
And...it's really not about "honoring" wishes or contracts, is it?
Gee...i wonder what it could be!
If Terri had specified herself in writing that she didn't want a feeding tube, the entire situation would be different......but she didn't.
I repeat. Otherwise healthy people sometimes require feeding tubes. It is different from a ventilator which is keeping a person artificially alive, or a cardiac machine that keeps an otherwise dead person's heart pumping.
There is evidence that Terri could eat by mouth if she had been properly cared for, since several nurses have sworn affidavits saying that they fed her by mouth.
Only, you know what?
He was talking about the liberal point of view!
You must be SO proud!
On the contrary, my FRiend.
I believe like many disabled persons, that Mrs. Schiavo's plight is an excellent highlight of the fear many people have--that nobody will respect their right to die. Many disabled persons have trouble enough getting their preferences met as it is, let alone when they are unable to speak for themselves.
I stand strongly in support of Mrs. Schiavo...realizing that Life and Liberty are co-equal rights, and there's no way a Right to Life should be used to take away a person's Right to Liberty...including the right to choose end of life care.
Since Mrs. Schiavo didn't seem to leave anything in writing, we must use our tool for solving such unknowns, and rely on the law that supports the sanctity of marriage--where a spouse can give the best judgement on what would be wanted.
Those who would step in have thrown personal responsibility, sanctity of marriage, rule of law, and compassion out the window. I don't want a society where the disabled's rights are ignored, all for some zealous "Life At All Costs" philosophy.
Yes, I heard today on Rush that the great Conservative Icon Jesse Jackson is against me. You and Jesse Jackson, what a great team.
I'm just stuck out here with the Constitution. Boo-Hoo...
Note to ohioWfan... if your petard is resting at your own feet, don't light the fuse.
Statement is pure hyperbole and trying to make a point that turns logic on it's ear.
The truth is most newborns are completely normal and breathe on their own just fine.
I used to work new born nursery. We had to medivac a baby out for critical care about once a month. And the ones that needed critical care were overwhelmingly pre-term.
"There is no parallel in the cases of Terri and her grandmother, whose kidneys failed (you need at least one), who could not breathe on her own, and who apparently could NOT -- in answer to Robert Schindler's inquiry to her doctor -- "come out of this thing."
I believe there is a parallel in the cases. It may not be as black and white, but surely they are comparable. Terri is in a PVT (or her brain no longer functions) , just as the kidneys failed. Terri needs nutrition through a tube and the Mother needed air through a tube. Now, having to be fed or given nutrition through a tube is not normally viewed as a medical procedure, however, when you are in a PVT it is considered medical treatment.
Notice how there is always nuance on the left, so many things to take into consideration except when it suits them.
Uneasy would be an understatement
Actually pulling the respirator only changed the time of her death not the fact that she died.
She would have died from renal failure in 3-4 days , if she stayed on the ventilator.
"I used to work new born nursery. We had to medivac a baby out for critical care about once a month. And the ones that needed critical care were overwhelmingly pre-term."
How many of those premature babies were simply allowed to die?
"One......healthy young woman, on feeding tube only"
What is healthy about someone in a PVS.
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