Here's the original court order to which I was referring:(see page 10, second to the last paragraph) I've read that court order. It says that Mike the Murderer was authorized to proceed with the discontinuance of "said artificial life support for Theresa Marie Schiavo". To what "said artificial life support" does the order refer? In reviewing the contents of the order all references to "artificial life support" are the movie about the case of Karen Ann Quinlin and something about not wanting to be "hooked to a machine". NONE of them were about a simple feeding port and tube into which food is injected by syringe a few times a day. There were no machines - she was hooked to nothing. If the case had been properly reviewed as ordered by the Congress of the United States and not just re-rubber-stamped, this may have come up and Terri's life would have been protected. If the activist judges had not overturned the wishes of the citizens of the State of Florida by striking down "Terri's Law" then her life would have been protected.
Here's your "artificial life support". Does this look anything like being permanently "hooked to a machine"? Note, the tube was normally taped against Terri's body and only connected to a syringe at meal time.
Are these considered "artificial life support"? If Terri had received the appropriate therapy and had been able to normally receive nutrition orally - like Ensure products through a soda straw sometimes administered by medical staff - would that also be considered "artificial life support" and would it have been OK to have removed it in order to kill Terri?
But the court order I posted is the final court order that lead to Terri's death. It did not order the discontinuance of "artificial life support" it ordered that she be dehydrated/starved to death.
CRUZAN v. DIRECTOR, MDH, 497 U.S. 261 (1990
JUSTICE O'CONNOR, concurring.
I agree that a protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment may be inferred from our prior decisions, see ante at 278-279, and that the refusal of artificially delivered food and water is encompassed within that liberty interest.
The State's imposition of medical treatment on an unwilling competent adult necessarily involves some form of restraint and intrusion. A seriously ill or dying patient whose wishes are not honored may feel a captive of the machinery required for life-sustaining measures or other medical interventions. Such forced treatment may burden that individual's liberty interests as much as any state coercion. See, e.g., Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 221 (1990); Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 600 (1979) ("It is not disputed that a child, in common with adults, has a substantial liberty interest in not being confined unnecessarily for medical treatment").
The State's artificial provision of nutrition and hydration implicates identical concerns. Artificial feeding cannot readily be distinguished from other forms of medical treatment. See, e.g., Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, American Medical Association, AMA Ethical Opinion 2.20, Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment, Current Opinions 13 (1989); The Hastings Center, Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying 59 (1987).
Whether or not the techniques used to pass food and water into the patient's alimentary tract are termed "medical treatment," it is clear they all involve some degree of intrusion and restraint. Feeding a patient by means of a nasogastric tube requires a physician to pass a long flexible tube through the patient's [497 U.S. 261, 289] nose, throat and esophagus and into the stomach. Because of the discomfort such a tube causes, "[m]any patients need to be restrained forcibly, and their hands put into large mittens to prevent them from removing the tube." Major, The Medical Procedures for Providing Food and Water: Indications and Effects, in By No Extraordinary Means: The Choice to Forgo Life-Sustaining Food and Water 25 (J. Lynn ed. 1986).
A gastrostomy tube (as was used to provide food and water to Nancy Cruzan, see ante at 266) or jejunostomy tube must be surgically implanted into the stomach or small intestine. Office of Technology Assessment Task Force, Life-Sustaining Technologies and the Elderly 282 (1988). Requiring a competent adult to endure such procedures against her will burdens the patient's liberty, dignity, and freedom to determine the course of her own treatment. Accordingly, the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause must protect, if it protects anything, an individual's deeply personal decision to reject medical treatment, including the artificial delivery of food and water.