The dramatic case of the legal and political tug of war surrounding Terri Schiavo went to the U.S. Supreme Court which refused to get involved — thus avoiding getting enmeshed in the middle of a buzzsaw of ethical, religious, legal and political questions.
The latest twist is this:
Late Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, denied an emergency request from the House committee that issued the subpoenas to reinsert Schiavo’s feeding tube while the committee files appeals in the lower courts to have its subpoenas recognized.
The issue has divided Americans. And if you look at the issue no matter where you turn you come up with questions.
One of the big ones is whether someone who has been basically on life support for 15 years is aware of what’s going on. Some insist she is not. And then you get a report such as this one on World Net Daily:
An attorney for Terri Schiavo said the severely brain-damaged woman cried and yelled out that she wants to live after being told today her life-sustaining feeding tube was about to be removed by court order.
Barbara Weller was in Terri Schiavo’s room at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., when the encounter took place, according to activist Randall Terry, who spoke with World Net Daily from outside the building as demonstrators continued a vigil.
Weller essentially told Terri Schiavo, “You had better say you want to live or they will kill you. Just say you want to live.”
Schiavo responded with a drawn out, “IIIIII,” then screamed out “waaaaaaaa” so loudly that a police officer stationed outside the room came in.
The officer then ordered Weller removed from the room, according to Terry.
The event was witnessed by Terri Schiavo’s sister Suzanne Vitadamo and Suzanne’s husband Michael.
“I talked to Suzy and Michael, and they both said it was unbelievable,” Terry said. “It was very articulate, for Terri, but they also say this is normal [for her to communicate].”
Still, you can’t say this is a slam dunk argument, since the case has become so emotional, bitter and intertwined with politics that some would argue that unless there were completely unbiased witnesses the account was coming from one of the sides pulling out all stops to prevail.
You can now also literally pick and choose the quote of your choice from whichever side you wish want. There is more than one such list.
Here are just a few of the many questions the cases raises:
THE SUPREME COURT’S INVOLVEMENT: The court is still recovering from its controversial role in deciding the 2000 election. This isn’t necessary an issue that strictly falls along party lines. If it had injected itself, it could have been labelled partisan (since the biggest proponents of keeping Shiavo on the feeding tube are GOPers). Its refusal to get involved in this case could generate some criticism of it being ineffectual by some..
WHEN CAN A FAMILY MEMBER PULL THE PLUG AND CAN SOMEONE SPECIFY THEY WANT THE PLUG TO BE PULLED IF THEY ARE INCAPACITATED? The whole idea of allowing to a family member to pull the plug or for a person to specify in a living will that they don’t want treatment continued has taken off over the past 20 years. If the tube is reinserted by court order what does this mean when people leave instructions in their wills? Does this mean family members are not allowed to make this decision? Will Congress codify this –putting controls on future instances?
WHO DECIDES IF THE PLUG IS TO BE PULLED? Is it up to the husband, the person in their living will or will there eventually be tighter medical or government controls? What will be the position of insurance companies if there is indeed a chance to change the laws? How will the insurance companies lobby? Is a living will the solution — or will that be challenged? Remember that issues that start on Point A have a way of being expanded to Point B. Will that happen here?
HOW MUCH OF THIS IS ETHICS AND HOW MUCH OF THIS IS POLITICS? Some talk shows were quoting House Majority Lead Tom DeLay as accusing Democrats of being cowards in this issue. Rush Limbaugh was quoted as saying no Democrats have come out for keeping Schiavo alive. Does every issue in this country come down to US Versus Them politics — where Democrats have to be attacked or Republicans have to be attacked? Does every serious issue boil down to one side wanting to triumph and give high-fives if they prevail? Or can issues be debated on the merits of ethical, legal and political questions?
Peggy Noonan has framed this issue as if it is now a show of GOP muscle — that the GOP MUST win this to show is has THE POWER to do what it wants…and we are not exaggerating that interpretation:
Here’s both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can’t save this woman’s life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base. And they will of course deserve it.
This should concentrate their minds. So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo’s feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.
MY FAMILY’S PERSONAL STORY: In early 1973 my grandfather Abraham Ravinsky was in Florida pursuing his favorite hobby — playingh chess. He was in his mid-80s and in the middle the game he keeled over. He was basically dead by the time they got him to the hospital but he was revived and placed on a life support machine.
To this day my mother, Helen, tells the story about how she got there and heard the pumping sound of the machine, and how much agony her father was going through. He pointed to letters to try and communicate with her through spelling. Tubes were down his throat. She was always amazed that he had such a wonderful death playing chess…and that they brought him back and he was placed in agony. She asked the doctors about when they would remove him from the machines, and they insisted he would stay on as long as it took.
One day, after days of agony, they went to move him to another machine, and he died. But, as she always noted, he died the first time, a quick death, doing what he wanted to do. And he was revived to live in agony.
The point? This doesn’t apply to all cases, of course. But there are questions within questions. My grandfather didn’t die at a time when people specified in living wills that they didn’t want to be kept alive by machines. Today, my mother, father and sister have all indicated they do NOT want to be kept alive in this manner if it ever reaches this point — and have put it into their living wills.
THERE ARE MANY VOICES ON THIS SUBJECT AND HERE IS A CROSS SECTION FROM VARYING VIEWPOINTS:
—Pennywit has a thought-provoking piece that should be read in full but here’s a small part:
There is a very powerful lesson from the Terry Schiavo case, one that a lot of people seem to overlook: If you want specific things done when you are comatose or in a persistently vegetative state, write a living will.
Michael Schiavo and Terri Schiavo’s parents have been locked in this decade-long battle over the comatose Ms. Schiavo’s fate because she failed to execute a living will.
Because Ms. Schiavo did not have a living will, it fell to her husband to determine her wishes. Because she did not have a living will, her family was able to challenge Mr. Schiavo’s decisions. Because Ms. Schiavo did not have a living will, it fell to the court system to discern her wishes.Because Ms. Schiavo did not leave a living will that explicitly set out her instructions, she has become not a person, but the starring attraction in a political circus of the macabre.
—My DD:
Now, the Republican Party is having to show the nation its true base– that of the dogmatic evangelical minority which enables the Republicans to victory after victory in elections. And yet, term after term, the Republicans get away with delivering next to nothing of the social conservative agenda, while striping the wealth from those same middle-class voters. Peggy Noonan, like the rest of the Republican establishment, just wishes that this was over, and they could be rest assured that the “base” is in their corner, and go back to ripping them off.
—Michelle Malkin as usual has a slew of excellent links on this controversy.
—Ace of Spades:”There are a lot of us who are not ultimately “on the side of life,” but rather believe “be on the side of life when there is considerable doubt as to a stricken patient’s true desires, and the only evidence on the subject is the hearsay of interested parties. That’s not really a moral concern. It’s a bare-bones-minimalist prudential one.”
—American Digest has a long reflective post.
—Mary Madigan at Dean’s World:”Good for the House Republicans. I don’t usually agree with them on social issues, but in this case, they’re absolutely right. There is no solid evidence that Terri chose to die. Her parents want to take care of her, she has no living will. As witnesses and as caretakers, her parents seem to be more reliable than her husband.”
—Kevin Drumm:
It’s not just that this is an obvious abuse of congressional power, since subpoenas are designed to compel testimony and Terri Schiavo is obviously not going to testify about anything. What’s really nauseating is the almost slavering Republican eagerness to treat Schiavo as a common media spectacle. What are they going to do? Wheel her into a committee room under the klieg lights so the whole country can gape in wonderment at a comatose woman? Why not just set up a circus freak show on Capitol Hill and be done with it?
—James Joyner:”While I maintain that Congress is acting unlawfully, not to mention stupidly, here…the fact that a subpoenaed witness is about to die creates some sense of emergency in that her death would preclude her testimony. Of course, given that she’s medically incapable of testifying and will forevermore be thus is something of an obstacle as well.”
—Ezra Klein:”Aren’t conservatives supposed to be for, you know, limited government and congressional restraint and states’ rights and stuff? Yeah? So tell me how they can possibly justify following up their subpoenas to Major League Baseball with yet more subpoenas stopping doctors from pulling Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube and forcing her and her husband to testify before a committee.”
—Centerfield’s Abel Harding:”It’s a truly heart-wrenching case, but I know that I would have no desire to live as a vegetable with no end in sight. At what point do her parents have to accept that their daughter is dead? As tragic as it is, exactly what are they proving by keeping her “alive?” I’m curious as to everyone’s thoughts.”
—Wizbang has a lot of links to news stories.
—Baldilocks recounts a wrenching personal story and adds:”What’s being done to Terry Schiavo is barbaric, criminal and evil. Plain and simple. All the talk is just that.”
—Corrente:
Put simply, Congress cannot act as part of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches all at the same time — which is what they’re trying to do. Furthermore, we keep hearing about how all of this is coming from the U.S. House. It’s not, these subpoenas are coming from the crazy leadership of one House and one Senate committee.
I guess I’d feel differently about all of this if I really thought these folks were doing this because they thought it was the right thing to do, not because they hoped their demagoguery would distract us all from the scandal that is currently engulfing Tom DeLay or Bush’s low 40s approval ratings or Bush’s DOA Social Security Destruction Plan.
—Crooks and Liars points to this blog that has both sides of the issue and adds:”Sometimes there are no winners.”
—The Liquid List says this on the legality of the House’s action:”
—Clayton Cramer:”What is happening with Terri Schiavo is being done on the word of one person. The ACLU considers it “cruel and unusual punishment” to execute a person for murder based on a decision involving a jury of twelve, a judge, as well as appellate judges all the way up the line, none of whom have any financial interest in putting this person to death. Why should we trust the word of one man about what his wife wants, especially when the method would never have been considered constitutional if it were being done as a punishment for a felony?”
—The Spoons Experience:”If Jeb Bush were a truly courageous man, he’d send in the national guard to stand in the hospital room door and insure that those ghouls don’t get to kill Terri Schiavo in cold blood.”
—Professor Bainbridge:”As for those who claim there is no difference between Congress use of its subpoena power to drag baseball players before it and Congress’ use of its subpoena powers to save Terry Schiavo’s life, I have very little sympathy for your argument. There’s a big moral difference between a publicity stunt and trying to save a human life. Likewise, there’s a big moral difference between intervening in what is basically a labor relations issue and trying to arrest further erosion of the culture of life.”
—Thoughts Online has a long thoughtful post. A key part:
I’m really disappointed in them – it’s sad to find out that your side is no better than the other side when it comes to making one’s own rules, of disregarding the law, of violating what is supposed to be conservative philosophy. We’re not supposed to be the ones calling for government to get involved – yet it was those who want to keep her alive that dragged the government into the mix. We’re not supposed to be the ones calling for the federal government to get involved in what is a state matter – yet they did. We’re supposed to resist the temptation to have Congress stick its nose into every last thing – yet it is the conservatives in Congress who are trying to pass laws and issuing ridiculous subpoenas to have her testify. What do they expect to do, drag her hospice bed up to Congress, then threaten her with contempt if she doesn’t answer the questions?
We’re supposed to be the ones upset at judges making things up as they go along instead of following what is a pretty clear law. We’re supposed to be the ones calling for an end to the creative use of the courts to continually rejudicate what has already been decided over and over and over again. We’re not the ones who are supposed to be all for having Hillary’s village stick their nose into what is supposed to be a decision for her husband to make (he may be an a**, but he is still her husband), yet we’re out there demanding the village do just that.
—No More Mister Nice Blog:”Ah, but if you try to search the Internet for “schiavo” and “mri,” you get pages and pages and pages of right-wing/Christian conservative sites, all recycling the same lies, rumors, and half-truths, including the assertion that she’s had no test that would show what’s really going on in her head. For the millionth time, the right-wingers, using sheer volume, have won an information war — even NPR this morning was presenting the possibility of Schiavo’s recovery as a he-said/they-said story (something to the effect of “but Schiavo’s parents believe she could recover”).”
—La Shawn Barber:”Please pray for a swift and painless death for Terri and that she received Christ as her Savior before falling into this tragic condition. If her husband played a part in it, God will contend with him. But even his sins are forgivable. If God had mercy on me, he can surely have mercy on Michael Schiavo.”
—Running Scared’s The One True Tami:
Well, the truth is, that this is America, and the law is an ever-evolving thing. This woman is not without family, her parents are still here, and they feel that she should continue to be fed through a tube. They don’t have a clear-cut legal right to keep her going, but it’s murky, and they’ve used their options of taking the case to court. And they lost.
They lost. Judges ruled against them. The case, and its appeals are over. This whole thing of having a woman who cannot possibly speak on her own behalf summoned before Congress is a shameless stunt worthy of the sleaziest of ambulance-chasing lawyers. It’s a shame that they’ve lost sight of their dignity in their desperation.
—Laura Rosen:”Honestly, why doesn’t the judge just transfer guardianship of Schiavo from her awful husband to her parents?”
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.