Death by starvation

The parents of Teri Schiavo, Bob and Mary Schindler, have exhausted all legal remedies in the Federal and State courts of the United States. Florida Governor Jeb Bush says he has no power under the US Constitution to do anything more. After ten days, as of this writing, without food and water, Teri continues on her inexorable journey towards a cruel and certain death.

As a lawyer, I can understand why the Federal and State courts in the United States refused to intervene and order doctors in Teri’s Florida hospice to reinsert feeding tubes which were removed over a week ago.

The Federal courts, all the way up to the US Supreme Court, said they couldn’t see a "Federal claim," as opposed to an issue of state law. I’m sure they all decided the case in accordance with law and were legally right in refusing to intrude into what they saw as a pure matter of state law.

The State courts of Florida, both at the trial court and the appellate levels, were unanimous in ruling that that the parents of Teri, Bob and Mary Schindler, had not cited any new reason to reopen a case that had already been "finally" decided in about 19 previous occasions.

Further, it is true that Michael Schiavo, Teri’s husband, was her legal guardian since he had not divorced her despite her 15 years in an allegedly "persistent vegetative state." As her legal guardian, according to the State courts, Michael, not her parents, had the right to determine when her "life support" system could be disconnected and Teri would be "allowed" to die.

The appeals of the Vatican have fallen on deaf ears. The Church had made clear that maintaining "nutrition and hydration" does not constitute an artificial life support system. The Vatican’s position, naturally, was accorded no weight in both Federal and State courts.

To Catholics though, the teachings of the Vatican do carry weight. Teri and her parents happen to be Catholics and the Schindlers did make the argument before the courts that removing her feeding tubes, contrary to the teaching of the Church, in effect deprived her of her Constitutional right to practice the religion of her choice. The courts didn’t buy that argument too, stating that this wasn’t a religious freedom case.

As a Catholic, all the legal niceties aside, it is difficult to see this case as anything other than the unjustified taking of an innocent life. This isn’t a simple case of a life support system being withdrawn. Teri wasn’t on a life support system at all, but on feeding tubes. She is dying not because this life support system is no longer around to sustain her life but because, simply put, she was condemned to starve to death.

There is also serious dispute about whether Teri is really in a persistent vegetative state, or a state of "minimal consciousness." Some doctors who claim to have seen tapes of her interaction with her family are of the opinion that while she may never be restored to her original state of full normalcy and may be permanently disabled, she is certainly not brain-dead. She may still be able to live a viable, albeit not completely normal, life.

Other doctors hold the opposite view. But the tragedy is that considering the order of the State court to remove her feeding tubes, and the refusal of both Federal and State courts to hold further evidentiary hearings on Teri’s case, we will never know for sure which prognosis is correct. That to me simply does not make sense.

What would be lost by allowing the Schindler family to secure a firm opinion on her actual condition? I realize that several doctors have said her situation is irreversible, but where the alternative is to starve her to death, the current situation under the State court order, what harm does it really do to obtain other opinions. To paraphrase President George W. Bush, if we err, is it not better to err on the side of saving life?

The other circumstance difficult to square with reality is the ruling of a State court that Teri’s husband Michael is the person authorized to determine her fate, regardless of her parents’ wish to assume responsibility for her continued care. Michael purports to be carrying out her wish not to be maintained on a life support system, a supposed wish revealed by Michael only about eight years after Teri’s devastating heart attack in 1990.

As noted above, Michael has not divorced Teri. That makes him her legal spouse and legal guardian. However, it appears he has had a common-law wife for several years, with whom he has two children. He has obviously moved ahead with his life. Thus, his declarations of concern for his wife strike some as somewhat disingenuous.

Moreover, it is relevant to reiterate that a medical malpractice suit filed by Michael against Teri’s doctors in the early 1990s resulted in a $1 million settlement. $300,000 of that settlement went to Michael as civil damages for so-called "pain and suffering." The balance of $700,000 was for Teri’s medical expenses. Michael claims that fund has been exhausted.

However, Bob and Mary Schindler are willing to underwrite all expenses for her continued care. This is what many find extremely difficult to comprehend: Since a husband has given up hope and wants his wife to die, but her parents cling to hope and want their daughter to live, why in God’s name isn’t she given every chance to live?

The decision to disconnect Teri’s feeding tubes is nothing short of a death sentence. It is by no means a peaceful or dignified death she is condemned to, but a slow and brutal one. I don’t know if Teri feels pain as she approaches death, but whether she does or does not cannot mitigate the cruelty of this process. I can’t believe it’s happening in what is supposedly one of the most decent and progressive societies on earth, in a legal system which goes to great lengths to protect individual rights.

What Bob and Mary Schindler are going through is, as their son Bobby has accurately put it, "absolutely barbaric." Every parent shares their suffering as they are forced to watch helplessly as their daughter dies slowly.

Foreign lawyers who have had the privilege of studying American law often end up admiring, even envying, that system of justice. But the Teri Schiavo case is not one of the finest hours of that system. At bottom, this isn’t just a routine case of a conflict between federal and state legal jurisdiction, but a tragic instance of a life that fell between the cracks of legal protection and is being sadly, needlessly, snuffed out.