Posted on 03/06/2015 7:39:49 AM PST by wagglebee
At the end of this month, Terri Schiavo will be ten years dead. But she is far from forgotten. Everyone reading these words knows the story, and everyone has an opinion. What began in 1990 as a private tragedy—a vivacious young woman stricken in the prime of life with a severe cognitive disability—became a source of profound cultural division, as likely to spark debate today as when the case first broke into the public’s consciousness.
Why has her story remained so potent? Part of it has to do with the high-profile and vituperative legal and public-relations battle between Terri’s husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. Still, most heated public controversies run their course and fade into history. But not this one. Since her death, Terri has become a symbol of deep-seated conflicts in our country about the nature of human life and what role we have in controlling it—or ending it.
Even though Terri’s case had nothing to do with abortion, she quickly became mired in the “pro-life” versus “pro-choice” argument. True, abortion opponents strongly supported the Schindlers’ effort. But they were not alone in defending Terri’s life. For example, the disability rights movement—generally secular, distinctly liberal in political outlook, and hardly pro-life on the abortion issue—also vociferously opposed Terri’s dehydration (which precipitated her death). So did some progressives, like Jesse Jackson.
But the political diversity of Terri’s supporters has been ignored or downplayed in most media stories—and from the beginning. The New York Times, for instance, barely mentioned Terri’s name until Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry appeared on the scene. Under the front-page headline “Victory in Florida Feeding Case Emboldens the Religions Right,” the paper reported forebodingly that Terri’s socially conservative supporters intended to harness public sympathy to “chip away at court rulings allowing abortion and banning organized prayer in schools and the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.”
Utter drivel, but once the story settled into a theocrats-versus-rationalists contest, people divided into their usual ideological corners, and most remain there to this day. In fact, the left and the mainstream media are now using Terri's case as a cudgel with which to damage the presidential chances of Republican Jeb Bush–who, as governor of Florida, sided strongly with the Schindlers.
The recourse to her case in electoral politics wouldn’t happen if it didn’t invoke current disputes over the meaning of life and death. Supporters of Terri’s parents believe in the equality and sanctity of life, an ethic under which Terri remained infinitely precious regardless of her impairments. In this view, whether she was conscious or not didn’t matter. Her parents should have been allowed to care for her for as long as she lived.
Those who support Michael’s successful effort to remove her feeding tube—including most of those in the bioethics movement—tend to adhere to the “quality of life” ethic that perceives some lives as not worth living. This is usually framed as a question of personal autonomy—for example, as the “right to die.” But behind that rationale lingers a profound loathing or disregard for impaired human life—to the point that some denigrated Terri as not worth the cost of care, while others opined that she should be lethally injected or that her organs should have been available for transplantation.
Debates over the sexual revolution and the meaning of marriage also became entangled in opinions about Terri’s fate. In the media, Michael is often identified simply as Terri’s “husband” who pursued a difficult course because that is what she would have wanted. But it wasn’t nearly that simple. Prior to petitioning the court to remove Terri’s feeding tube, Michael began cohabiting with another woman with whom he had sired two children.
Those who supported Michael often shrugged off his adulterous involvement as an understandable part of the process of “moving on.” In contrast, those who opposed Terri’s dehydration believed that, by starting another family, Michael had effectively abandoned his marriage—meaning that he should have had no part in deciding Terri’s fate.
Polls tend to show public support for the fatal outcome. But I don’t sense any peace about it. Indeed, I think our inner voices, the part of us that never lies, may harbor lingering doubts. Perhaps the reason we still react so viscerally to Terri Schiavo—why she remains an open cultural sore—is that our consciences are haunted by the enduring memory of her smiling face.
Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patient’s Rights Council.
We will NEVER forget!
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I remember Jeb Bush was for keeping her alive until a pathetic little state judge ordered her death and he backed off like a scalded dog. If he had just sent two state troopers to the hospital to enforce insertion of the feeding tube he wouldn’t have to pander to illegal aliens for votes.
“fact, the left and the mainstream media are now using Terri’s case as a cudgel with which to damage the presidential chances of Republican Jeb Bush–who, as governor of Florida, sided strongly with the Schindlers.”
Yes, he did. A point in his favor.
But, he ultimately backed down when it came time to let her die or save her.
It could have turned in to a shooting war of some kind with two different law enforcement agencies each with opposite orders.
Not strongly enough. He was a wimp. I watched the situation very closely and Jebbie could have saved her. He could have said screw everyone and pulled that woman out of her death spiral.
Jebbie is the kind of guy who while walking around a lake sees two young kids drowning in 4 feet of water near the edge of the lake. He is standing mere feet from the waters edge and could step in and save them. But he does not. Why? Because he sees a sign that says "Swimming Against the Law".
I am outraged that this spineless pu$$y is not being laughed out of any election for any office. Let's not forget that besides his cowardice he like the entire rest of his family are parasites sucking at the host of government and ALL have had their hands in the taxpayers pockets. Almost all the Bush family and the Walker family for that matter think that any local, state and federal treasury is their own piggy bank. Beside that they trade their name and connection to get themselves on boards of companies and acquire stock in such companies. Someone out to count the pump and dump deals they have enriched themselves on. It is a great deal if you can get it. I say enough of these slugs!
——He could have said screw everyone and pulled that woman out of her death spiral.——
now now, there is no evidence that is true.
He could have allowed her to hooked to life support for years and years, but not pull her from a death spiral
Until the second meaningful action was required. Way to go, Jebbie.
Jeb was constitutionally obligated to save Terri, he had the authority and power to save Terri and he let her die. That makes him complicit.
Jeb played with Terri’s life, for political gain. He only spoke up on her behalf when he perceived a political advantage in doing so. When the skewed polls came out, claiming (falsely) that the majority of likely voters supported torturing her to death, he reneged on his promise, and allowed for her to be murdered. If he had known that most people are opposed to torturing people to death for being severely and/or cognitively disabled, he would have kept his promise and done his job. Right or wrong had no bearing on his choices. If he has any regret about his choice to stand back and watch her being tortured to death, it’s only that it cost him some votes. He doesn’t care what it cost Terri, her family, or the countless victims who have been Schiavoed, thanks in part to him.
Have you given up food for Lent?
NEVER NEVER NEVER! Jebbie does not have a snowball’s chance in hell. When it mattered, Jebbie ran.
Whether willfully or through ignorance you are totally and completely WRONG in this statement.
Terri WAS NOT on "life support," in fact, she received no medical care at all for YEARS (she was not even given antibiotics for a urinary tract infection). Terri was subsisting on nutrition and hydration, something that ALL people need.
As for a "death spiral," we are ALL in a sort of "death spiral" from the moment we are born, it is inevitable - we can do things to postpone death, but we cannot avoid it. Terri's life expectancy BY ALL ACCOUNTS (even her murderers) was that she would live another thirty or so years with her injuries.
She was not hooked to any machines. She was able to breathe on her own and swallow her own saliva.
I always thought, they claim she would choke to death if she ate so they won’t feed her and instead let her die.
Makes no sense.
There was no life support. And no death spiral. You must be confused.
It seems like just yesterday, sometimes.
I have to wonder, is that support based on the actual facts in the case, or on the construct the media tried to build around it? As I recall, the media consistently referred to her as "brain dead" (she wasn't), or as "dying" (she wasn't), or otherwise tried to make it sound like some semblance of life was being artificially maintained in what was essentially a corpse.
Terri was impaired, not dead.
I wonder if the public would be so supportive of the fatal outcome if the actual facts of the case were widely known, instead of the narrative the media put out?
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