A crusade against a 'culture of death'
For Dennis Baxley, Terri Schiavo's case is a personal fight.
By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published March 17, 2005
TALLAHASSEE - Dennis Baxley says he is trying to stop what he calls a "culture of death."
The Republican House member from Ocala is starting with legislation to prevent Terri Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed Friday. But he wants to go beyond Schiavo and prevent the denial of food and water to anyone in a vegetative state who doesn't have a living will.
To his supporters, Baxley is a committed champion of human life.
To his detractors, he is exploiting a family tragedy to score political points.
The Schiavo case has spawned a political movement in Florida that continues to attract wide national attention. Tens of thousands of people across the country have telephoned or e-mailed legislators. Demonstrators have held prayer vigils outside the Capitol.
At the center of this political storm is Baxley, who describes a nation in which government now plays a role in prematurely ending human life.
Today, after attending the annual Legislative Prayer Breakfast with Gov. Jeb Bush and other legislators, Baxley will urge fellow House members to vote to keep Schiavo alive.
"Our culture is on a death march," Baxley said. "Now, we're even to where we're going to sit here and debate whether somebody should be starved to death."
His critics say Baxley is making a mockery of Republicans principles of less government, family values and individual responsibility.
"What we're doing is not prolonging life. We're prolonging death," said Rep. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood. "This bill is about Terri Schiavo, and let's face it, folks, we are rushing this through."
Baxley, 52, is a fifth-generation Floridian and son of a Southern Baptist minister. He vividly recalls touring orange groves with his grandfather at age 4 and being handed a pocketknife with strict directions on how to trim the shoots.
He's also the only funeral director in the Florida Legislature.
Bald and bespectacled, Baxley has the steady demeanor and expressionless face of an undertaker - until the topic turns to life and death.
After having three children, Baxley and his wife adopted a son, Jeffrey, who was left blind and brain damaged as an infant after being severely shaken. Now 18, Jeffrey rides a bus weekly to and from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine.
As he made an impassioned argument for his bill in a House committee Tuesday, Baxley mentioned "a little boy in my life," and his voice broke.
"I began to question myself, why was I so caught up in this?" Baxley said later in his corner office on the Capitol's second floor. "It is my awareness that my son has taught me about the vulnerability of a brain injury."
After working for three years to adopt Jeffrey, the Baxleys adopted his sister, Renee, 15. Dyslexic, she attends a Catholic high school where, he said, she plays softball and the clarinet and gets attention for her learning disability.
He reaches for the Bible on his desk and quotes from Matthew, 25:35: "For I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in."
Only in America, Baxley says, could Jeffrey have found a second chance.
Rep. John Stargel, R-Lakeland, one of Baxley's closest friends in the House, said Baxley's passionate support for prolonging life is real, not political.
"Dennis is a compassionate, caring person, and that has been his lifestyle. He doesn't just give lip service to the fact that he thinks every human has value."
Baxley's approach has alarmed other legislators who see him as using the Schiavo case as a platform to promote his ideology. But on Wednesday, several other House Republicans hammered out a new version that some Democrats find more reasonable.
"The original bill was advancing an ideological position," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. "Moderation seems to be the current vogue."
Gelber said the legislation is still unconstitutional because it would apply retroactively to "every living person," including Schiavo. "You have a due process right to not have a tube put into your stomach," said Gelber, a lawyer.
Baxley said his position is not at odds with Republicans ideology.
"If a husband beats his wife, we interfere," he says. "If they mistreat their animals, or be cruel to them, we interfere. We protect the innocent, and we try to interfere just as little as possible. That's how I reconcile it."
Baxley's mother, who suffered from a variety of ailments, made a written directive in which she said she wants no extraordinary means to prolong her life. But as her kidneys failed, she decided she would accept dialysis treatments.
"Sometimes, you just want one more comfortable day," Baxley said.
Baxley does not have a written directive, commonly called a living will, on whether he would want to be kept alive with a feeding tube.
He said he does not trust how that might be used, worrying that it could be used to prematurely end a life.
"I'm not worried about that," Baxley said. "My family knows how I think. We respect life."
Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com