Terri is given food and water through tubes. Is disconnecting a feeding tube the same as ending life support?
Yes, under Florida law, which governs the ability of each person to determine, or to appoint someone to determine, whether each of us should receive what the Legislature terms "life-prolonging medical procedures." The Legislature has explained:
The Legislature recognizes that for some the administration of life-prolonging medical procedures may result in only a precarious and burdensome existence. In order to ensure that the rights and intentions of a person may be respected even after he or she is no longer able to participate actively in decisions concerning himself or herself, and to encourage communication among such patient, his or her family, and his or her physician, the Legislature declares that the laws of this state recognize the right of a competent adult to make an advance directive instructing his or her physician to provide, withhold, or withdraw life-prolonging procedures, or to designate another to make the treatment decision for him or her in the event that such person should become incapacitated and unable to personally direct his or her medical care.
§ 765.102(3), Florida Statutes.
The Legislature has also defined what is a "life-prolonging procedure": "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.
§ 765.101(10), Florida Statutes (italics added by author).
To "permit any affirmative or deliberate act or omission to end life" is forbidden by Florida Statute (withholding natural nutrition and liquids) §765.309(1). Greer not only permitted it, he ordered it. That's spelled out very clearly in Florida statute HERE
Disturbingly, George Greer and George Felos (Michael Schiavo's attorney), aided by others in the euthanasia movement, lobbied the Legislature to enact specific changes to the Chapter 765, tailoring it as closely as they could to what they said was Terri Schiavo's condition by adding two other conditions for the protocol. The patient had to have an “end-stage condition” and be in a “persistent vegetative state”.
The specially amended legislation became effective Oct. 1, 1999 and Felos declared that the provision to end her life was “the law in Florida” although at the time he had filed the petition to end her life by removing her feeding tube in May, 1998, the artificial provision of sustenance had not been considered medical treatment.
In March 2000, Schiavo and Felos secretively and illegally relocated her from the Palm Gardens Nursing Home to the hospice without court order and without notifying her parents.
Felos also conveniently forgot to give notice to the court and her parents that he was chairman of the Hospice board of directors at the time.
The transfer was fraudulent because Terri was not in fact terminally ill and ineligible to be admitted to the Hospice under Medicare.
Terri Schiavo was admitted into the hospice without the required medical evaluation, without the required written certification, without the diagnosis of a terminal illness and at a time when the chairman of the Hospice Board, George Felos, was part of the administration refusing to pay back the monies illegally received. Only Judge George Greer’s death order issued Feb. 11, 2000, made Terri Schiavo terminal, not Terri’s medical condition.You can read more about that HERE.
In addition, Judge Greer ignored the evidence of responsiveness which would have precluded a clinical diagnosis of PVS, and forbade the PET scan and other tests which could have challenged such a diagnosis.
The whole thing was a blatant violation of Mrs. Schiavo's rights and constitutes a clear and present danger to all medically vulnerable people in the State of Florida and beyond.