In May 2004, a Pinellas County Florida Circuit Court ruled that a state law, which allowed the governor to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo—a disabled woman whose estranged husband had ordered her feeding tube removed—was unconstitutional. It infringed, the court said, on Terri’s “right to privacy.” In September of that year, the Florida State Supreme Court also struck down “Terri’s Law.” The Supreme Court of the United States, without comment, rejected any further appeals. The case went back to the Florida circuit court where the same judge who originally ordered the tube removal saw to it that compliance with the order brought Terri’s death—which occurred on March 31, 2005.
Despite what Michael Schiavo, some media outlets and various “right-to-die” groups in Florida and around the country reported at the time, Terri Schiavo was not dying; she did not have a terminal illness; she was not comatose; she was not, even by Florida state statute, in a persistent vegetative state. She was cognitively and physically disabled—period. Any reasonable person who viewed the video clips of Terri would have recognized the truth of her condition. Terri’s disability required that she be given fluids and nutrition through a gastronomy tube at meal times—much the equivalent of giving a baby formula through a bottle. The removal of this tube irrefutably caused her death by starvation and dehydration.
Terri was “kept alive” by the same things that keep all other people alive—food, water, and air. It was murder to cause her death by denying her the food she still had the ability to digest and that continued to provide for her a definite benefit—life itself.
For years, Terri’s civil rights were under direct and constant attack. She was denied the right to rehabilitation and suffered under substandard medical and dental treatment. She was denied any services or treatments that would have helped to improve her condition. Terri may not have even required a feeding tube, yet no “swallowing test” was allowed to determine if she could be spoon-fed. Terri’s parents were even refused, for extended periods, visitation with her. Terri’s spiritual rights were also attacked. As a Catholic woman, she was denied, on numerous occasions, the right to receive Communion and to be visited by her clergy.
On January 8, 2004, in a message given at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II stated that the “disabled person, even when wounded in the mind or in his sensorial and intellective capacities, is a fully human individual, with the sacred and inalienable rights proper to every creature.” On March 20, 2004, the Holy Father again reiterated, “The sick person in a vegetative state, awaiting recovery or a natural end, still has the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc.), and to the prevention of complications related to his [/her] confinement to bed. He [/she] also has the right to appropriate rehabilitative care and to be monitored for clinical signs of eventual recovery.”
Recall also what the pope wrote in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, making it clear that “euthanasia in the true and proper sense must be understood as an action or omission which by its very nature and intention brings about death.” According to the pope, such an act is always “a serious violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person.”
It was a tragedy that Terri had to suffer in this way and that her family, too, was forced to endure such abuse. Terri’s life and rights as a human being were not defended the way they should have been according to our country’s founding documents. There was no justice for Terri.
A Mass commemorating “Terri’s Day,” the sixth anniversary of her death, will take place on March 31 at the chapel of Ave Maria University in Florida. Let us remember Terri Schindler Schiavo, and all of our vulnerable brothers and sisters, who need us to remain vigilant and to work to secure the rights of all human persons regardless of their health, ability, disability or dependence on others.
For further reading:
http://www.all.org/nav/index/heading/OQ/cat/NDA/id/NzMwMg/
For more information on the Terri’s Day Mass as well as the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network Concert on June 12, 2011, see www.terrisfight.org