Point: Schiavo's death unwarranted

By JACKIE WOMACK

The ending of Terri Schiavo’s life was slow and full of legal action and political rhetoric. And it should not have happened.

The existence of someone in a persistent vegetative state — that is, someone with little or no higher brain function — is not something anyone would ever want for him- or herself. However, the removal of feeding and hydration tubes leads to a very slow death and, though there may be little higher brain function, there is nothing that says the perception of pain is gone.

And not everything is known yet about the brain itself. For example, until recently doctors didn’t think the brain could regenerate itself by growing new neurons. So, the assurance that someone in this state doesn’t know what’s going on is not a certain one.

The possibility that Schiavo might in any way have been aware of what was going on is a very scary and haunting one and one that may not be known for sure since the last neurological exam on her was done in 2002.

In fact, this case raises some profoundly troubling questions: Is society now at the point where the chronically ill are considered less fit to live?

To draw an admittedly limited parallel, if a person were to treat a dog or cat the same way Schiavo was treated, they would be arrested for cruelty.

Some of the protestors who kept vigil outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice compared it to what the Nazis did in concentration camps. The comparison is a bit overblown, but in this case, the protestors do have some valid comparisons: In both cases, the deaths were planned and deliberate acts taken with either the approval of the government or by the government itself. In both cases, the disabled were targets.

The government’s role in Schiavo’s case is particularly aggravating. First of all, the state of Florida is really the only place that had any business deciding any legal matters — Congress and President Bush butting in was political grandstanding. They knew any law passed so hastily, which interfered with states rights and was targeted to one case, would be thrown out by the courts. And politicians using cases like this for their own ends is particularly slimy.

Probably the only good thing that has come out of this case is that people are talking about these kinds of decisions and making out living wills that spell out what they want, thus eliminating some future legal battles between family members.

But even though the state of Florida is where it should have been decided, there were some serious mistakes made there as well. The legislature there also passed a specific law to get Terri Schiavo’s tube reinserted in 2003.

It didn’t hold up in court for the same reasons cited above. What the legislature should have done was pass a law that said, in the absence of a written directive, the law will assume that a person would have wanted to stay alive if he or she fell into a persistent vegetative state.

Of course, the state and federal government would have to wind up paying more in health care costs, so that might be one reason why neither one passed a more general law.

A law like this is good because the main disagreement in the Schiavo case was whether she would have wanted the tube pulled. All that the judge based his ruling on was Michael Schiavo’s contention that Terri — after seeing a movie — once said that she wouldn’t want to be kept alive.

This kind of casual conversation is not something that should be used to base life-and-death decisions on.