Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
I am having a real tough time with the Terri Schiavo case.
It troubles me on many levels. First of all, as you're reading this, she may already be dead.
I mean, it's been more than a week without food or water.
Honestly, we treat sick dogs better.
You know it's true. If any one of us had a dog that was somehow brain-damaged, would we starve it to death?
(Actually, we do have a brain-damaged Yorkshire Terrier in our house, but that's a whole different column.)
Regardless of what either side is saying in the case, I just have a real hard time with the concept of death by starvation.
I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but it exists in this country. You could take the most vile, heinous criminal imaginable and our government would protect him from a cruel and unusual starvation death.
He'd get a nice, tidy lethal injection or jolt of electricity.
Another thing I find troubling is the fact that the Florida judge who has been ruling all along has never gone to visit the woman over whose death he presides.
Doesn't that strike anybody as odd? If you were the judge, wouldn't you want to meet the woman? Check it out for yourself?
Also troubling is the wide diversity of medical opinion in the case.
I heard one doctor say her cerebral cortex is liquid.
That would seem to indicate a vegetable status. Yet you see video of her turning her head, blinking her eyes and making sounds.
Now, I will readily admit her quality of life is very poor. But it is life, isn't it?
Yet on the other side there are doctors - even one Mayo Clinic guy - who say she may have a certain level of consciousness.
My big fear is that she really does have a modicum of realization. I pray for her sake that's not the case.
Could you imagine lying there with some minimal understanding of what's happening and being unable to do anything about it?
According to some doctors, that's a possible scenario.
According to other doctors, she's about as alive as a jar of olives.
Who knows?
Which is another troubling aspect of the case. Everybody's lining up on one side or another without knowing for sure exactly what her condition is.
Troubling, too, is the idea that what is going on is perfectly legal under Florida law, giving the fact that multiple appeals have failed and the U.S. Supreme Court sees no reason to intervene.
That seems pretty bizarre. It's legal in Florida to starve a brain-damaged person to death absent any clear indication of that person's wishes.
They're doing this on the word of her "husband." Of course, the husband's got a girlfriend and a couple kids. So it's not like he's been doting by his wife's bedside through all this.
And some of the nurses have testified that the husband has made some pretty calloused, disparaging statements regarding his wife's condition.
On the other side, there are the woman's blood relatives, who seem to bounce around among emotions from hope to despair, optimism to delusion.
I heard the dad talking about telling his daughter they were going to try to get her feeding tube re-inserted. He said she smiled at him.
I don't know. I just don't know.
But I can understand where the dad is coming from. I am sure if it was my daughter in that situation, I would want to believe the best. I would be optimistic, hopeful.
The husband, on the other hand, wants her dead.
His sole reason, and he clings to it tightly, is that it's what she would have wanted.
And I am pretty sure she probably did casually say something like, "I would never want to live hooked up to a bunch of machines."
Lots of people say things like that.
But did she say, "I want you to unhook my feeding tube and let me starve to death?" I highly doubt it.
So I keep putting myself in his shoes. (If this was happening to me it would be all different, anyway. I'd be taking care of her and there would be nothing for CNN to talk about. Frankly, I'm confident there are severely disabled people all over America being cared for by spouses.)
But if I'm him, and my wife's family wants to take their daughter home with them and love her and care for her, what would I do?
I can say - unequivocally and without reservation - that I would grant them their wish.
And that's the one thing that most troubles me about the Schiavo case. Why in the world is the husband so unyielding in his demand that his wife be dead?
