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A Times EditorialGov. Jeb Bush and House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's emergency law to reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube smacks of political opportunism.
No one can know how much Terri Schiavo has suffered as she has lain, comatose, for the past 13 years, seven months and 27 days. We know only that three people who love her - her husband and her mother and father - don't agree about whether she would want to exist in a vegetative state. We know that courts have spent five years gathering evidence and medical testimony and agonizing over what to do. And now we know that a moralistic governor and an opportunistic House speaker think they have all the answers.
The emergency law that was rushed through the Legislature Monday and Tuesday gave Gov. Jeb Bush and Speaker Johnnie Byrd what they wanted all along. It allowed the governor to order the reinsertion of a feeding tube, contrary to the finding of every single state and federal court that ruled on the case. Given that the new law confers upon Bush powers that to date have been vested in the courts, it may not survive judicial challenge. But that's now in the hands of yet more lawyers and more judges. What makes this particular act of the Legislature so repugnant is the immoral politics that gave rise to it.
This is the political spectacle that now attaches to Terri Schiavo's bedside:
On Monday afternoon, while the Legislature gathered in special session to discuss a $310-million deal to lure a biomedical research institute, the U.S. Senate campaign office of Byrd got busy. It e-mailed supporters, announcing he would appear on the Fox TV show Hannity & Colmes to talk about how "to save Terri Schiavo." By that evening, with antiabortion activist Randall Terry watching from the gallery, House members were asked to approve a bill they had never seen and were handed scripts in case they faced questions. Here's what they were told to say: "Someone needs to be a voice for the voiceless like Terri Schiavo." And here's what Byrd did say: "I want to do everything I can to make sure she lives. I've got three daughters, and I'm putting myself in the shoes of other parents."
That Byrd would so eagerly squeeze himself into an anguishing family's shoes is presumptuous enough. That he would do so in a play for right-to-life votes in the Republican primary is contemptible.
Senate President Jim King ceded to the pressure put on him by Bush and Byrd, and his chamber voted Tuesday, 23-15, to go along. "I hope, I really do hope we've done the right thing," King said. "I keep on thinking, "What if Terri Schiavo really didn't want this at all?' May God have mercy on us all." One effect of the action was to carve an exception to the 1998 Death with Dignity law that King himself sponsored.
Under the law, families can withdraw "artificially provided sustenance and hydration" when their loved one is "in a persistent vegetative state," even in the absence of a written declaration. Such decisions are made all the time, somberly, privately and with the consultation of doctors and priests. But any family member who disagrees has the right to petition the court, which is what happened in the Schiavo case, and the courts sort through the facts and determine whether the patient's condition is irreversible and whether he or she had expressed an intention about life-prolonging medical procedures.
Note that neither the House nor the Senate, prior to their action, pored through the thousands of pages of medical and legal testimony that confronted Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer over the past five years. They were content instead to count the e-mails for and against, and defer to the consciences of their governor and speaker.
The law that passed is narrowly written to apply to Schiavo, but the exception it creates is also placed into the public policy arena. To that extent, the Death with Dignity law is now defined by whether an aggrieved family member has access to a legislative presiding officer who is seeking swing votes in an upcoming political primary. Terri Schiavo has been in a coma since Feb. 25, 1990, and the legislative zeal to enter into one family's torturous decision only adds to the indignity.