Schiavo's life confiscated by agendas of strangers
By MARY JO MELONE
Published October 23, 2003
What happened this week in Tallahassee was a breathtaking display of mob rule.
The side that could generate enough e-mails to the governor and the Legislature won.
The outcome, the restoration of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, had nothing to do with the facts, nothing to do with the law, which had consistently sided with Michael Schiavo.
What are facts or laws to the Republicans?
In winning, they laid bare their own contradictions.
You know the mantra: They believe in government that stays out of people's lives.
So what did they do? With the help of a handful of Democrats, the Republicans stuck themselves smack in the middle of the most private of family matters - when to end the life of a loved one who will never get better.
Don't tell me the vote to feed Schiavo was all about the governor's deeply held Catholicism or lawmakers' compassion, as some have tried to portray it.
Politics were all over this act, a craven catering to the far, so-called Christian, right that fuels the Florida GOP's power, so removed from the ordinary middle ground where many of us live.
And don't tell me the issue will rest with this one case, despite the decree that this week's bill was meant to deal only with Schiavo.
Rep. Sandy Murman, R-Tampa, said Tuesday that passing the bill will give the Legislature time to "assess our current law. We must address these questions before anyone else in Florida dies from starvation or dehydration because of vagueness in the law."
In other words, the Legislature may eventually inject itself in another part of the end-of-life question - not just when to end it but how.
Turning off a respirator is apparently okay. But if Murman's remarks are any indication, the Republicans apparently find the denial of nutrition, a common end-of-life-practice, offensive.
Are they prepared to stick their noses into how doctors work, too?
You have to wonder - at least I do - about the case's potential echoes.
Do the lives of terminally ill cancer patients get even further prolonged because doctors become leery of following family wishes? What about patients at the end of Alzheimer's disease?
Those questions have particular impact in Pinellas County. The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, which has cared for Schiavo, is the largest in the country, with about 1,700 patients in Pinellas. Their doctors and families wrestle with life's sorrows every day, as they try to make peace with the inevitable.
Further, the questions are not new. For the last 30 years, courts have ruled that families have the right to remove the feeding tubes of irreversibly ill relatives. The matter has been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
I know we're different here in Florida. We conduct our elections in peculiar ways. Life's a beach, and all that. But are we not answerable to the Supreme Court?
If I were a newspaper cartoonist, my drawing this week would be of Terri Schiavo in a hospital bed. Her husband, Michael, would be holding her hands, while others - the governor, House Speaker Johnnie Byrd or her parents - pull at her feet.
It wouldn't be a pretty image, but the situation isn't pretty. This is what it looks like when politics hijack the private affairs of family.
The other side has contended that Terri Schiavo was abused by her husband. I would say the latest turn of events is what constitutes abuse. She is being kept alive for use as a powerful icon in the pro-life political game.
Michael Schiavo is one man. The other side is a movement. Schiavo will have to return to court for the game to end. He shouldn't need to do that. He should still have a right that he won, legally and fairly, to let his wife die.
