Terri Schiavo and the Right to Live
Michael Moore
March 30, 2005
COMM 105
Samuel Zervitz
Terri Schiavo and the Right to Live
A couple of days ago I was watching Fox News in my living room, while seated next to me my son played quietly with his action figures. He was seemingly unaware of the stream of babble emanating from the television, which is not unusual as most of it must seem completely foreign to him. At the time, the on-air personality was rambling about one of the many completely inconsequential stories which lately seem to be the primary focus of newsrooms around the country, but then something interesting happened. The topic moved to the Terri Schiavo case, and the latest development concerning the parents’ attempts to have her feeding tube reinserted. My son suddenly turned his attention away from his toys and directed it towards the man speaking on television. I hardly noticed at the time, until he suddenly turned to me and asked, “Why aren’t they letting that lady eat?”
I looked at my son and saw a profound concern, rather impressive for a nine-year-old, and explained to him that the lady needed a feeding tube because she was brain damaged and could no longer feed herself. I told him that her husband had watched her lay in a hospital bed for the last fifteen years without her condition improving and had decided it was time to give up the hope that she would ever recover. My son continued to look at me and I could tell that this flimsy explanation was doing nothing to convince him that it was okay to not let someone have food and water. Hoping to switch the subject before I became entangled in any kind of lengthy explanation of the definition of life and the right to die, I said “Why do they show such sad stories on the news these days?”
My son agreed. “That is really sad,” he said.
I have inadvertently followed the Terri Schiavo case much closer than most of the stories in the news lately. I normally shy away from stories that are going to be personally upsetting, but there is just something about the entire situation that strikes me as fundamentally wrong. It’s as if every time I hear another so called “expert” discuss the many merits of starving a mentally disabled woman, I feel that I am the only one who sees how our political, legal, and medical systems have gone horribly wrong. Everyone is making their arguments, but none of them seem to address the real issue, the issue of why there is even a question as to whether or not we should help handicapped people, regardless of how diminished their mental facilities are. A severely retarded or even all but brain-dead person is still a person. I know that this paper is not going to help decide the argument over Terri Schiavo. I know that writing it will not affect the outcome in any way. What I do hope to accomplish is to create something that I can show my son when he is a little older and better able to understand all of the complexities involved with such a case, to let him know that he was perfectly right to not understand why some people think it is okay to starve an otherwise healthy person.
I was introduced
to Terri Schiavo from the overwhelming dirge of news pieces the likes of which
always seem to saturate the airwaves whenever a story materializes with the
emotional charge and widespread interest of this one. In the days and weeks
that followed I attempted to shield myself from the overwhelming coverage of
the story. Despite my best intentions, the story kept presenting itself to me,
initially no more than a snippet at a time. Terri’s husband, Michael, was
working to remover her feeding tube. Terri herself was in no real pain, nor was
her condition worsening. Terri’s parents were appealing to keep the
feeding tube in place. As time went on I finally decided that if I was going to
fully understand what was happening to this poor woman in
Terri Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990 when, during a cardiac arrest, she suffered brain damage from her body’s inability to supply oxygen to her brain (Eisenberg, 2005, p.24). She was put on a feeding tube, which, except for two earlier instances when it was removed due to court orders (Eisenberg, 2005, p. 24), has supplied her body with nutrients ever since. Terri Schiavo is a Catholic. She never made a living will to let anyone know her intentions if she were ever in a situation such as this. Michael Schiavo states that Terri had let him know that she would not want to be kept alive by a machine. This statement however somewhat contradicts Mr. Schiavo’s actions in the past, such as in 1994, when after deciding that his wife was not going to recover, he signed a do-not-resuscitate order (Eisenberg, 2005, p.24). If Terri had told him prior to entering her current state that she did not wish to be kept alive by artificial means, then why did he merely sign the do-not-resuscitate order? Shouldn’t he have been petitioning at that time to remove her feeding tube? The fact is that it wasn’t until four years later that he began his fight to kill his wife.
Until the recent removal of her feeding tube, Terri was being kept alive by what is known as “ordinary” means. In cases such as these, ordinary means are known as those that do not impose undo burdens such as financial burdens, or the burden of great physical pain (Childress, 1985, p.11) “Extraordinary” means on the other hand are those whose burdens outweigh any potential benefit from continuing treatment. This distinction originated from the Roman Catholic Church in order to separate individuals who refuse treatment into two categories, those whose actions constitute suicide, and those whose actions are considered justified by the Church (Childress, 1985, pp.10-11). Since Terri was being caused no pain by her feeding tube, and there was no financial burden involved, there really was no reason to not continue treatment indefinitely. As a matter of fact, some argue that there is an obligation to continue treatment.
“Perhaps the most plausible argument is that in beginning a life-sustaining treatment a professional makes a promise, creates an implied contract or covenant, or engenders expectations, which, on grounds of fidelity or loyalty to the patient, require that the treatment not be stopped.” (Childress, 1985, p.3)
Those who wish to
see Terri die, argue that she has been so severely brain damaged that she is in
a state of wakefulness without awareness (Peck, 2005). The problem that I see
with this argument is that even if it is true, which is by no means a given,
what makes us think that we have the right to kill unaware people. In the
Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that people are
“Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life,
My question for
those who strive so valiantly to end the life of Terri Schiavo is this: What
makes you so sure that she is not happy with her new life? Terri has
undoubtedly changed irreparably since 1990. The Terri Schiavo that lies in a
References