Post-Gazette Editorial – 4/1/05

This page was last updated on April 2, 2005.

Peace at last / Finding meaning in Terri Schiavo’s death; Editorial; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; April 1, 2005.

Very few of us know enough of the facts in this case to draw many conclusions. I am not one of those few, and I suspect neither is the editorial’s author. The editorial’s author, however, writes as if everything he presents is fact beyond dispute.

I can’t speak for what the Terri Schiavo case meant to anyone but me. Here was my problem with the case. After about seven to eight years, Michael Schiavo found a girlfriend and announced his engagement though Terri and Michael were still married. At about the same time, Michael Schiavo, his brother, and his brother’s wife remembered that Terri told them she would not want to live as she was. If it was true, Terri Schiavo never put it in writing.

In a trial, the judge found credible the hearsay testimony of Michael Schiavo et al but rejected contradictory testimony. That decision ultimately led to the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. It just doesn’t seem proper that hearsay testimony from a person with the appearance of a conflict of interest would be enough to warrant withholding food and water from another person. FYI, hearsay testimony is frowned upon in court and tends to be ruled inadmissible, especially when the party who allegedly made the comment can’t testify.

During a Larry King Live interview on CNN, Michael Schiavo said, “We didn’t know what Terri wanted, but this is what we want.”¹ Did Mr. Schiavo merely misspeak because he was nervous, or did he tell us something we needed to know?

If Terri Schiavo’s alleged wish not to be kept alive with a feeding tube were in writing, I would not have had a problem given what little I know of the case. Also, if the family unanimously agreed this was her wish, I would not have had a problem.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“In dozens of quiet rooms across this nation, in hospitals, hospices and private homes, severely injured or ill Americans were passing quietly away yesterday with dignity. Most of us did not hear about them, or about their loved ones who had reconciled themselves to the sad fact that trying to postpone these deaths would not be love but cruelty.

“Instead, all eyes were focused on the fate of poor Terri Schiavo, who lay in a Florida hospice unknowing and unfeeling at the center of a vast media and political circus. For 15 years, she had been in a persistent vegetative state, doomed never to get any better, trapped in a nether world between life and death and not belonging to either. Her death was different to many others only in that she had been at the center of a bitter family dispute.

“Terri Schiavo -- the flesh-and-blood woman who is and not the falsely created symbol -- died yesterday, some 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. She apparently died peacefully and not in the agony that had been so emotionally predicted. By any sane reckoning, her passing was a mercy.”

[RWC] Exactly how does the PG know beyond doubt that Terri Schiavo “died peacefully and not in the agony that had been so emotionally predicted?” Did Michael Schiavo’s lawyer write this? If you’ll recall, Mr. Schiavo’s lawyer was the one who tried to tell us Terri Schiavo never looked as beautiful as she did after more than a week of dehydration and starvation.

Note the subtle demonizing. If you believed Ms. Schiavo deserved a final review of the facts – not just a legal review of procedure – you are insane.

“But rationality didn’t figure much in the protracted legal fight waged against her husband, Michael Schiavo, by her parents and their supporters. They did not accept that she had told her husband that she did not want to be kept alive in such circumstances, nor did they have respect for the principle that spouses are the ones empowered to make such decisions.”

[RWC] Terri Schiavo’s parents were irrational? Lest we forget, Michael Schiavo didn’t mention his wife’s alleged wishes until nearly eight years after her heart attack and at the time he was announcing his engagement to another woman. Since then, Schiavo has had at least two children with his common law wife. How is it irrational to at least suspect Michael Schiavo may no longer have been acting in his true wife’s best interests?

“What Americans saw in the Terri Schiavo case was a full flight from reason under the guise of sanctimony. This was a right to life raised to the level of fetish, not a force for human dignity but actually as an agent for its subversion. If her misguided supporters had succeeded, Terri Schiavo’s ‘life’ would have been more imprisonment in a vacant mind manifestly incapable of joy or hope or even prayer.”

[RWC] What Americans saw was a court decide the fate of an innocent woman’s life based on hearsay evidence from a husband with an apparent conflict of interest. Another witness cited a conversation in which Ms. Schiavo indicated she wouldn’t want to “have the plug pulled.” I don’t know if Mr. Schiavo acted in Terri Schiavo’s best interest or not, but it’s hard to ignore the apparent conflict of interest.

“Every maneuver was tried to perpetuate her physical limbo. No calumny was too big to paint her husband as some sort of heartless demon, no lie about her condition was too implausible not to be put about as a counter to the terrible truth -- and all in the name of God and humanity.”

[RWC] I wonder why the editorial failed to mention Michael Schiavo claimed Terri’s parents were in it for the money?² I guess that doesn’t count as demonizing to the PG. I also wonder why the editorial failed to list any of the alleged lies about Terri Schiavo’s condition?

“Political principle also never stood in the way of those who wanted to keep her tethered to a feeding tube. In both the Florida Legislature and the U.S. Congress, conservatives who say they fear the reach of government fell over themselves in trying to put its intruding hand into a private dispute.”

[RWC] I can’t describe how ridiculous this last paragraph is.

Let’s write the first sentence a little differently. “Political principle also never stood in the way of those who wanted to feed her.”

I don’t believe the actions were against conservative principles, unless protecting innocent life is not a conservative principle. For the sake of argument, though, let’s assume they were. When it comes between standing for “political principle” and the life of an innocent, should principle trump life? Wouldn’t that be an example of blind partisanship?

“Fortunately, the courts stood firm for common sense. Politicians can’t now blame the activist judges of caricature, because many of them were conservative. The U.S. Supreme Court itself declined six times to intervene.”

[RWC] The courts did not stand “firm for common sense.” The appellate courts merely decided there were no procedural errors. They never ruled on the facts of the case.

The PG wants us to believe the Supreme Court is conservative. I guess the editorial board hasn’t been paying attention to Court decisions during the last few years, or the PG is far more liberal than it cares to admit.

“By and large, the American people were not fooled. As opinion polls show, Americans by a solid majority objected to Congress becoming involved. That should be no surprise. In the place where common people actually reside, most loved ones are not kept alive artificially for years beyond all reason. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, before he became the Republicans’ arch- hypocrite, removed life support from his own father.”

[RWC] When citing the poll results, the editorial fails to note most of the outcome was determined by how the questions were framed and asked. For example, at least one poll stated unequivocally that Terri Schiavo was a vegetable, in a coma-like state, and on life support. In doing so, the polls conjured the image of a person in a coma requiring a respirator to breathe for her, et cetera. Anyone who saw video of Terri Schiavo saw she was not in a coma, not on “life support,” and that she responded to persons around her. Can a person be in a “persistent vegetative state” and behave as Terri Schiavo did? I don’t know; I’m not an expert in the field. In any case, at least some of the polls the PG referred to were rigged, intentionally or not.

The author wants us to believe the cases of Terri Schiavo and Tom DeLay’s father were very similar. They were not.

In Terri Schiavo’s case, her only “life support” was that she had to be fed by a tube. In the case of Rep. DeLay’s father, Charles, doctors did all they could to save him after an accident caused catastrophic brain damage. Despite the best efforts of doctors, Charles DeLay remained in a coma, on a respirator, being fed intravenously, and his organs were failing. Charles DeLay was dying; Terri Schiavo was not.

I wonder if the PG believes the Schiavo and Christopher Reeve cases were similar? You probably remember that – as Terri Schiavo – Christopher Reeve could not feed himself.

“If there is one thing good to come out of this sad affair, it will be a rush to sign living wills. The problem, of course, is that for those who think Terri Schiavo’s death is murder, a living will is logically suicide. If such extremism ever becomes general in America, intensely private decisions will be a lost prerogative.

[RWC] There’s a problem with the editorial’s “problem.” If Terri Schiavo did not wish to have the feeding tube removed, it was murder. We’ll never know, though.

“God bless Terri Schiavo -- may she rest in peace. But God also save this republic from the angry and unthinking forces unleashed on her behalf.”

[RWC] I hope the PG includes itself in the group of “unthinking forces.”

1. Larry King Live transcript; CNN.com; March 18, 2005.

2. Schiavo suspects bulimia caused wife’s collapse; CNN.com; October 28, 2003.