Terri's Tragedy
by James Hall, Senior Associate Editor
December 4, 2003
"Leaning Left"
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"I keep on thinking "What if Terri didn't really want this done
at all?' May God have mercy on all of us." - Jim King, Florida Senate President,
about the Florida Legislature's bill to save Terri Schiavo's life.
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If
Terri Schiavo (right) had signed a living will before her heart attack in 1990,
this controversy would never have occurred. But she didn't, and now lies mute
in a hospital bed, unable to say whether she wants to continue the constant
daily efforts to keep her half-alive-with feeding tubes, physical therapy, and
24-hour nursing care-or whether she wants to slip away from that into death.
Terri's father and mother and siblings, the Schindler family, still hold out the hope that there's a chance that even after 13 years of a vegetative state, Terri might come out of it. Her husband Michael, her legal next of kin, says she made her wishes clear to him not to be kept alive with extraordinary circumstances. So did two other witnesses in court testimony taken over this issue.
Many of us feel the same way about our own deaths, especially after we see a loved one being kept alive on a machine. We don't want to linger or continue to suffer in a hospital or nursing home when a good quality of life is no longer possible for us. Whatever our beliefs about an afterlife might be, we accept death as the natural end of this life on earth,
Florida law makes it clear that the next of kin is the legal guardian and has the final say over the treatment of a patient who can't speak for herself. But for a decade Terri's husband and family have struggled over her wishes in court, with doctors and expert witnesses called in to testify on Terri's physical condition, her wishes, and her chances for recovery.
Finally, after due deliberation, a judge stepped in and ordered hospice officials to comply with her husband's request that the feeding tube be removed. A judicial appeal of this decision by the Schindler family was reviewed and turned down as well.
It was at this point that Terri's desperate parents went for help beyond the legal process and the laws set up to create legal guardianship. Terri became a symbol of sorts for the right to life movement in Florida. Somehow the people in Florida's right to life movement seem to think, despite a publicly professed belief in God and an afterlife, that Terri is better off lying in bed in the limbo of a permanent vegetative state than she would be in heaven.
Persuasive arguments can be made that it's cruel to unhook the feeding tubes that keep Terri alive, essentially starving her to death. But these arguments overlook the cruelty of thirteen years of an unconscious, bed-ridden existence, and the cruelty that could result from many more years of the same poverty of half-existence. And the right to lifers who oppose pulling the plug also stand opposed to any measures that would permit Terri to die quickly and painlessly-assisted suicide isn't in their plans, either.
Pushed into action by the Florida right to life's publicity machine, Florida's Republican-majority legislators acted in haste and passed a temporary law taking the decision away from Terri's husband and the Florida court system and putting this personal decision in the hands of Florida's governor, Jeb Bush.
The legislature's law violates the separation of powers by placing the governor in the middle of the appeals process. It also violates the spirit of law itself by being a law drawn up for a one person and a one-time use. One wonders what strict constructionist conservatives make of this exercise of blatant unconstitutional power.
Faced with this embarrassment, legislators now talk of making a permanent law for any patient facing the prospect of having life-maintaining machines turned off. If they have their way, any family member who disagrees with a patient's legal guardian can stop that guardian from removing that patient from the machines that keep him alive, no matter how futile his future. Patients will linger on machines while lawyers fight out their future in court.
If there was even a small chance of recovery for Terri, I might feel differently about this case. But after 13 years, it seems plain that nothing is will change for Terri. Brain scans show incredible damage to the higher order parts of Terri's brain, and medical experts have testified that her recovery just isn't possible.
How many of us would want to continue living in this condition? How many of us would want our families to continue to suffer, to put their own lives on hold, to care for and spend money on us while we inhabit a physical and spiritual limbo not of our own choosing?
This comes down to a question of values. Is life so important that it must be continued at all costs and beyond all reason? After all, we're not talking about cutting a person's life short; only about letting natural death take its course. Has the right to life movement's focus on life become so one-sided that it must embrace it at all costs, even miserable, pointless, machine-fed life?
The right to die naturally exists, too, and the right to life movement in Florida
ought to understand that when a person is no longer conscious and able take
care of himself, with no prospects of change, death becomes both natural and
welcome. And Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature should keep their hands off
of this process, political pressure from right-to-life or not. ***
James Hall
Orlando, FL USA
© 2003 James Hall
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© 2003 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN.
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