One Radical Opinion | Just Let Terri Schiavo Die Already
Let me take this opportunity to put one of my most solemn beliefs onto paper. My wife is fully aware of this belief, but it seems that may not be enough. My friends and family know it, too, if they have paid any attention to my barrage of opinions on the subject. However, if the future finds my wife pitted against some well-meaning, God-fearing, politically pandering, so-called pro-life preachers, public, or elected officials of Bush ancestry, let me make this point perfectly clear:
If I lose my higher brain function and the doctors say it is not likely to return, let me die. Better yet, give me a lethal injection. I do not want to continue living as a tube fed, brain dead, shit-making machine. The entity known as “Russ Belville” lives in this cerebral cortex behind these eyes, and when it goes, I have left the building. Whatever’s left, even if it is breathing, blinking, farting, smiling, and responding to stimulus, is a condemned, abandoned warehouse that should be torn down.
In other words, I do not want to end up like Terri Schiavo.
Terri Schiavo, in case you don’t know, is a Florida woman who had a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 26. She suffered a severe lack of oxygen to her brain, but was revived by medical personnel. Over time her brain deteriorated and her cerebral cortex (where the brain houses higher thought processes, including consciousness, intellect, and feelings) wasted away, replaced by spinal fluid. Doctors find the condition medically irreversible. Terri’s body lives only through constant intensive care and a feeding tube in her stomach.
Terri does appear quite alive, however. She can blink and respond to sensory stimuli. This is because her brain stem was unaffected, so she still has involuntary reflexes and autonomic nervous system functions, like breathing, heartbeat, digestion, and elimination. The lights are on, but no one is home. Without the cerebral cortex, Terri is a functioning biological machine, but she is never going to form any sort of thought again.
Terri’s husband, Michael, has been fighting a protracted legal battle over Terri’s fate. For eight years following the heart attack, Michael watched the love of his life deteriorate. He has taken her to rehabilitation centers and tried every therapy, standard and experimental, to bring Terri back, all to no avail. Doctors had shown him, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Terri would remain in a “persistent vegetative state” for the remainder of her life, which, thanks to modern medical technology, could be a very long and expensive time.
In 1998, Michael filed a petition with the court to determine whether her feeding tube should be removed, claiming that his wife was quite clear that she would not want to have machines keep her alive if she would have no quality of life. That’s where the case gets controversial. Terri’s parents, the Schindlers, disagree with Michael. They believe that Terri would want to be kept alive, even in her severely debilitated state.
Michael and the Schindlers have been fighting this case for seven years now, and in every step along the way, the courts have sided with Michael. In February 2000, a judge ruled that clear and convincing evidence showed Terri would not want to continue existing with a feeding tube. In January 2001, the Florida 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the lower court ruling. In April 2001, the Florida Supreme Court denied a review of the 2nd District’s decision. Her feeding tube is removed on April 24, 2001.
I don’t argue that we should be capricious about ending a person’s life. Nevertheless, the husband is sure that his wife would not want to live this way. The doctors are sure that his wife was guaranteed to live this way. The courts found the husband and the doctors to be in the right. After eight years of hospitalization, Michael and the doctors watched his wife deteriorate into a mere simulacrum of humanity. For three more years, Michael fought in the courts to uphold his wife’s wishes. Finally, eleven years after his devastating loss, Terri would be allowed to die with a modicum of dignity by starving to death — since Florida, like most states, will not allow her to be euthanized (see Suicide Solution). She would have to be a rabid dog, an injured horse, or death row inmate to deserve that sort of humane treatment.
However, the Schindlers were not ready to quit, and thanks to an extremist pro-life public, pandering legislators, and an activist governor named Bush, Terri’s chance to shuffle off this mortal coil was dashed in only two days. The Schindlers claimed they had new evidence regarding Terri’s wishes, and on April 26, 2001, a new judge grants an injunction and orders the feeding tube restored.
New trials are heard about the Schindlers’ claim; the courts still find that Terri’s expressed wishes were against living with a feeding tube. The Schindlers then file claims that new medical therapies could restore some semblance of Terri’s cognitive functioning, and under those circumstances, she would not want to end her feeding tube. The courts empanel doctors supporting Michael’s side, doctors supporting the Schindlers’ side, and a court-appointed independent doctor. Following these trials and reviews once again by the 2nd District and the Florida Supreme Court, the court still finds that medical science can’t help her and that she remains in a “persistent vegetative state”.
The Schindlers also file a claim for an emergency injunction against removing her feeding tube based on 1991 bone scans that show Terri had been subject to trauma, suggesting that Michael had been abusing her. She could not be trusted to give a fair unbiased opinion about her own medical wishes because she was a battered spouse, and he could not be trusted to express those opinions because he was an abuser. This claim is also dismissed by the courts, which find no evidence to suggest that Michael abused his wife, and that her bone trauma could well have been caused by the undiagnosed bulimia that induced her heart attack in the first place.
The Schindlers even file claim in federal courts challenging that Florida’s laws on life-prolonging procedures are unconstitutional. This claim, too, is rejected by the courts.
It is hard for me to find much fault with the Schindlers; certainly, any parent would go to great lengths to fight for the life of their breathing, smiling child, praying against all reason that a miracle will bring their daughter back. Of course, they reject the scientific truth that what was Terri is no more. They cannot accept terms like “persistent vegetative state” — that is their little girl on that bed. However, given the overwhelming medical prognosis and triple-checked court rulings, it seems like the Schindlers are now acting more out of self-interest than out of altruism.
By this time, it is October 2003, and Michael has seen the animated corpse of his wife kept alive against her wishes for five years. On October 15, 2003, Terri’s feeding tube is disconnected for a second time. Once again, she is given a chance to die with some dignity, and for a whole week, she is allowed to follow the natural progression into death.
On October 21, 2003, however, under pressure from a vocal pro-life religious minority, the Florida Congress passes and Governor Jeb Bush signs legislation informally known as “Terri’s Law” to grant the Governor the ability to issue a stay in cases like Terri’s. Her feeding tube is reinserted following seven days of starvation.
That’s right, complete strangers felt the need to create tailor-made legislation to keep Terri’s zombie body alive, despite her own wishes, the testimony of her life partner, the diagnosis of her doctors, and the affirmation of numerous court decisions and appeals. It has something to do with a concept they call “sanctity of life”, which is the idea that only God or the Florida electric chair get to decide when people die. It has nothing to do with a concept most people call “quality of life”, so even blood pumping, respirating human bodies that would have died fifteen years ago, without hope to have a conscious thought again — hell, bodies that can’t even hope — must be kept alive artificially. I would not wish a fate like this upon anyone, not even a meddling hypocritical son of a Bush.
Governor Bush takes up the fight to keep Terri alive. He files suit to prevent Michael from keeping Terri’s feeding tube removed. He asks that the case be relocated to his home turf in Tallahassee. He asks the judge to recuse himself in the case. On every front, Jeb is rebuffed by the trial court, the 2nd District appellate court, and the Florida Supreme Court. Not only do the courts vigorously tell Governor Bush to mind his own business, but the Florida Supreme Court also finds “Terri’s Law” to be unconstitutional.
Governor Bush and the Schindlers weren’t convinced. In December of last year, Jeb asks the US Supreme Court to get involved and overturn Florida’s decision of unconstitutionality. (If there is one thing the Bushes know it is that you never let a decision go against you in the Florida Supreme Court without appealing to the US Supreme Court. Ask Al Gore. You know, it’s a “states rights” thing, unless the state disagrees with the Bushes.) But surprise, the US Supremes declined to review the case, concluding that at least once per decade they should follow the 10th Amendment.
The Schindlers filed various motions based on legal technicalities in an attempt to forestall the removal of Terri’s feeding tube. As of this February, every one of those motions has been denied. All impediments to Terri’s wish not to be kept alive as a brain-dead political prop had been removed.
All except one. In a stunning move, the Republican members of the US Congress attempted to delay the removal of the feeding tube by calling on Terri Schiavo to testify at emergency Congressional hearings. Since federal law forbids obstructing anyone from testifying before Congress, the Republicans hoped to keep Terri on life support.
You read that right: Congress, already busy with the incredibly important subpoenas of muscle-bound baseball millionaires, was calling upon a woman who cannot think, speak, write, feel, or comprehend to testify on her own behalf. Obviously, Terri cannot add anything more to the debate that has not been rehashed by her husband, her parents, judges, doctors, and legislators in a litany of cases over the past seven years. But her appearance does work as a slick political ploy to force Democrats to go on the record as approving euthanasia, and does wonders to appease a fanatical religious base that wants you to start calling fetuses “womb babies” and would rather have fertilization clinics continue flushing unused embryos down the drain than allow researchers to harvest some stem cells. These pro-life wackos would rather keep this brain dead bag of bones breathing than consider that quality of life is perhaps more sacred than quantity.
Thankfully, the presiding judge dismissed the Congress’s ploy and this afternoon allowed doctors to remove Terri’s feeding tube for the third time. Within a week or two, Terri will dehydrate and starve to death, and despite pro-lifers’ claims to the contrary, she will not suffer a bit, because she cannot feel or process pain in any way. Maybe then, Terri can finally go to that delightful afterlife most pro-lifers believe in — why they have fought for seven years to keep her away from their loving God is a mystery to me.
Just so we are clear: If I become a brain-dead vegetable like Terri Schiavo, let me die. No matter what George Bush, Jeb Bush, Mel Gibson, Randall Terry, crowds of fanatic demonstrators, or even my parents say about it. And if anyone keeps my zombie body alive for fifteen years, I promise to haunt your every waking moment from beyond the grave.
