Paxety Pages

Everyone has written about Terri Schiavo - I, negligently, didn't pay much attention to the case until a few weeks ago.  I thought, like most folks, that she was dying and that her husband, as next of kin and guardian, should be allowed to do what he thought right. Then I learned better.

Terri Schiavo is not sick.  She's disabled with a brain injury.  She is not living in a rehabilitation hospital, as I had thought, but in a hospice - a place designed to help people die. She is not hooked up to any life support - at least not by any standards ordinary people would use.

I've written about it earlier here and here.  But in brief, in the mid-90s Terri's husband won a malpractice suit against a doctor.  After the verdict or settlement (it's not clear to me which it was) Michael Schiavo moved his wife into hospice in 1998 and his lawyer said Michael would stop feeding her.

In 1999, the Florida Legislature passed a bill, and Governor Bush signed it into law, amending the code section dealing with life - prolonging procedure to include "artificially provides sustenance and hydration." On the committee that wrote the bill was Representative Gus Bilirakis.  Mr. Bilirakis says on his web site that he is a member of the board of directors of the very hospice where Terri is housed.  Also on the board of directors, according to the records filed with Florida's corporations division, is George Felos.

Michael Schiavo hired George Felos as his attorney, and Mr. Felos filed the lawsuit to allow Terri to be starved, citing the new Florida law.  Judge George Greer made his decision allowing the starvation based on the new law.

It would appear that the Florida law was changed specifically to kill Terri Schiavo. And let's be very clear - if, indeed, Terri Schiavo told Michael that she did not wish to be kept alive by extraordinary means - extraordinary means, at the time she said it, did NOT include feeding and hydrating.

You will note that I use the term starve rather that the phrase you have probably heard from most of the media - "remove her feeding tube." I don't believe that's what will happen. It used to be that doctors fed and hydrated a patient by putting a tube down the throat (sometimes the nostril).  No longer.  They now make an incision in the stomach and insert a short tube.  The tube extends about six inches from the abdomen and has a removable cap.  The patient is fed by injecting liquid food or water into the tube with something like a large hypodermic needle or turkey baster. I don't believe the doctors are going to put Terri into surgery to remove the tube. It seems to me they will simply stop feeding her.

Then there's the strange wording of Judge George Greer's order. He uses the wording that the doctors "shall" stop feeding her.  Sue Bob's Diary discusses the wording more fully, but when a judge uses the word "shall" - he means it's mandatory.  He says the doctors shall not feed Terri at all.  That means if someone put a spoonful of Jello in Terri's mouth and she was able to swallow it, the person would be in violation of Judge Greer's order. In fact, the order says "the guardian, Michael Schiavo, shall cause the removal of nutrition and hydration ... ."

The order does not permit Michael and the doctors to starve Terri - it requires it.