Fallacies About the Schiavo Case

New American | April 2 2005

The case for starving and dehydrating Terri Schiavo to death was built on hypocrisy and deception. The culture of death revealed its face in the propaganda campaign for Terri Schiavo’s demise. Perhaps the most noteworthy fact of the entire ordeal, other than the killing of an innocent woman by starvation, was how thoroughly the American people were lied to throughout the entire affair.

Consider, for instance, the major media claim that death by starvation and dehydration is painless. According to the New York Times: “Patients who are terminally ill and conscious and refuse food and drink at the end of life say that they do not generally experience pangs of hunger, since their bodies do not need much food.” The Times quoted Dr. Sean Morrison of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York as saying: “They generally slip into a peaceful coma. It’s very quiet, it’s very dignified, it’s very gentle.” The Los Angeles Times quoted another expert, Dr. Perry G. Fine of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, as saying of starvation: “There’s nothing unpleasant about it — in fact it can be quite blissful and euphoric.... It’s a very smooth, graceful and elegant way to go.”

Of course, one does not have to be an “expert” to recognize that this distorted view of death by starvation and dehydration defies common sense. If starvation is not all that bad, then why should we be concerned about the plight of famine victims? And if Terri Schiavo was not experiencing pain, then why was she given morphine? Revealingly, the same forces that supported withholding food and water from Terri did not criticize giving her morphine to control the pain they say she did not have. Moreover, why would an IV drip for hydration be deemed excessive while an IV morphine drip is not?

Those who argue that Terri Schiavo could not feel pain should consider the terrible ordeal of Kate Adamson. Mrs. Adamson suffered a severe stroke in 1995 that left her totally paralyzed, but she has since experienced what has been called a “miraculous recovery.” Mrs. Adamson, who opposed the removal of Terri’s feeding tube, recounted for THE NEW AMERICAN how she was aware of what was happening when her own feeding tube was removed for an eight-day period because her digestive system (unlike Terri’s) had shut down. “I was screaming on the inside: ‘I don’t want to die,’ ‘feed me,’ ‘I want to live,’” Adamson recalled. “I could feel everything and do nothing, as though I was suspended in a black hole. When the feeding tube was removed, I felt it being ripped from my body.”

Here are a few other egregious lies propagated by liberals to justify Terri’s death by starvation and dehydration:

• Liberals claim that the decision of a husband to kill his wife by denying her food and water is a “private matter.” Since when has a husband killing a wife been considered a private matter under our laws?

• Terri’s husband Michael claims that Terri would have wanted her feeding tube removed rather than live in the state she was in. But Terri did not put this wish in writing, and others who knew her say that she would not have wished to be killed. Moreover, Michael did not bring to light Terri’s supposed wishes until seven years after her injury.

• Advocates of the culture of death claim that they were allowing Terri to “die with dignity” by removing her feeding tube. Implicit in that statement is the notion that a slow death by starvation and dehydration is dignified and that Terri Schiavo retained the mental capacity to understand and agree with this. Yet the very liberals advocating this point of view also claim that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and that she had no self-awareness.

• Pro-death forces also claim that Terri Schiavo was on life support and was being kept alive through extraordinary means. But a feeding tube is not life support in the traditional sense. Also, foregoing extraordinary means to keep a dying patient living longer sounds rational, but providing food and water is not an extraordinary means, and Terri was not dying. In fact, Terri’s death resulted from the deliberate denial of food and water; it was not a natural consequence of her medical condition.

• The major media treat as a given that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Though a PVS diagnosis does not change the morality of not providing food and water, it is still worth pointing out that some medical authorities disagreed with this diagnosis. In the April 4 issue of THE NEW AMERICAN, we quoted Dr. Richard Neubauer, medical director of the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Ft. Lauderdale, as stating in an affidavit that Terri was neither “brain dead” nor in a “persistent vegetative state.”

• Leftist politicians and media outlets criticized the Republican Congress and the president for enacting a law aimed at saving Terri’s life and accused the Republicans of “practicing medicine without a license.” Since when has food and water been considered medicine? Aside from that, the same leftist politicians want the government to run the entire health care system. (If they succeed in accomplishing that objective, it would not be surprising to find the government rationing care and determining who lives and who dies.)

The Left is at least correct in saying that the congressional action was unconstitutional. But since when has the Left worried about violating states’ rights? During the congressional debate, Rep. Jim Davis (D-Fla.) lamented even the idea that Congress would consider disregarding Florida state laws. “This Congress is on the verge of telling states and judges and juries that their laws, their decisions do not matter,” he warned. However, Rep. Davis was notably silent when, earlier in the same month, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s law permitting the execution of 17-year-old murderers. Similarly, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who bemoaned that Congress would “forego any pretense of federalism” in the Terri Schiavo case, is a militant supporter of the Roe v. Wade decision that struck down state anti-abortion laws throughout America.

Using states’ rights as a pretext, what the Left is really saying is that they want the particular decision of a Florida state judge to stand. And they want it to stand because they believe in a culture of death. Just as they support abortion, they also support euthanasia, and they see in the Terri Schiavo tragedy a test case that will help make more commonplace the elimination of supposedly unwanted and useless human beings. In truth, the judge’s decision should not have stood, and the remedy should have (and could have) come from the legislature and governor of the state of Florida.