Terri Schiavo's plight is heart-rending. She is the Florida woman who suffered bleeding in her brain some 15 years ago, and who has been the source of a battle between her putative husband and her parents ever since. He says she is in a persistant vegitative state, and that she wouldn't want to be kept alive like that; her parents say she is in fact responsive to them, that she would not want to die, and thus should not have her feeding tube removed so that she can essentially be starved to death.
The courts have consistently ruled in favor of her husband. First the Florida legislature, and now the US Congress, have tried to intervene on her parents' behalf.
Let me say that I do not at all trust her husband's claims in this matter. He has had several affairs, including at least one that produced a child, while his wife has been afflicted. He just wants out of an increasingly burdensome (to him) marriage. [Why doesn't he just file for divorce? Perhaps under Florida law he cannot as long as she is unable to respond due to her medical condition. Or maybe he's waiting to collect on her life insurance.] There is no independent evidence supporting his claim that Terri would not want to be kept alive this way; there is a lot of film and videotape of Terri responding to her parents and other visitors . . . and indeed, if one looks into her eyes in those films and tapes, one can see that despite her difficulties in communicating, the lights are on. Terri is at home.
One thing I have not seen in any of the news coverage of this situation is whether anybody has thought to get Terri a guardian ad litem, someone who could give the court independent advice and information. Perhaps that was her parents' original legal tactic, but since they have an obvious interest in the case, they were not sufficiently independent and disinterested themselves to be named Terri's guardians. Why no one else has been appointed [and whether that's even been tried], I do not know.
The news media have neglected to report many pertinent facts about this case. It is certain, however, that the state and federal legislative attempts to rectify the situation are unconstitutional. They have been drafted to deal strictly with Terri's plight. Furthermore, they violate the separation of powers under our system. The legislature is not supposed to adjudicate, any more than the judiciary is supposed to legislate. A better legislative attempt to help might be to change Florida law to give the parents of anyone in such a situation equal say-so with that person's spouse as to what will or will not be done medically.
At the heart of the matter, in any event, is this: in Terri's case, removing her feeding tube is cruel. It will cause her a slow and painful death. Given the visual evidence of her condition, starving her is just plain wrong. Her husband should not be allowed to throw her away just because he has the legal power, being her husband, to do so.
Therefore, while I do not agree that either the Florida legislature or the US Congress has the power to intervene in the ways they have tried to do, I agree with them 100% in terms of morality. Terri Schiavo should not be condemned to die by having her feeding tube removed. Someone needs to find a legal way to get it reinserted before even more unnecessary damage is done to this poor woman.
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