WASHINGTON (ABP) — Terri Schiavo is dead, but the passions and controversies her case stirred are certain to have a life of their own. Just hours after the incapacitated Florida woman died March 31, those who fought to keep her alive vowed to carry on their cause after her death.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said her case would cause Congress to take a “look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president.”
Meanwhile, Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said Schiavo's “tragedy was seized upon by fundamentalists and their political allies in a bid to force their narrow moral code on everyone” and “to stack the judiciary with right-wing ideologues.”
Whatever the case, many experts agreed America's most highly publicized debate over end-of-life decisions since the Karen Ann Quinlan case nearly 30 years ago likely will have wide reverberations in the ethical, legal and political realms.
At the center of the case was a family dispute over whether a feeding tube should be used to sustain the life of the 41-year-old woman, who suffered significant brain damage 15 years ago following a heart attack brought on by an eating disorder.
Court-appointed doctors determined Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, and Florida courts repeatedly agreed with her husband's determination that Schiavo would not have wanted to continue living in such a condition. But her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, disagreed on both counts, and questioned Michael Schiavo's motives in wanting to end his wife's life. Nonetheless, a judge ordered removal of the feeding tube that had kept her alive.
Among the issues raised by the case: Is it ever ethical to withhold feeding from someone? And how should courts go about determining which family member has an incapacitated person's best interests at heart when there is a dispute?
David Smolin, a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., said he wished the case had been resolved by Michael Schiavo relinquishing custody of his wife to her parents — or by the law offering those who wanted to keep her alive more legal means for forcing such a custodial change.
“I continue to think that the right approach in the Terri Schiavo case would have been to deal with the relationships among the parties,” said Smolin, an expert in health-care law. “There should have been legislation to change the guardianship or the statutory order.”
But instead, Congress attempted to throw the issue to the federal courts, which agreed with the state courts and sided with Michael Schiavo. Now, he said, both Congress and state legislatures are likely to take a different approach — to change the law about the use of feeding tubes.
“I'm not optimistic that we're going to see legislation on the question of who is an appropriate guardian coming out of the Schiavo case,” Smolin predicted. That would be “very narrow” and apply only to a handful of cases, he said. “I think that there will be attempts to legislate about feeding tubes and the circumstances, if any, in which it's appropriate to withdraw feeding tubes” from patients in conditions similar to Schiavo's.
Indeed, Alabama legislators are already considering a bill that would make it more difficult for predicaments like Schiavo's to occur. The U.S. House passed a similar bill two weeks ago, although the Senate balked at it.
However, Smolin noted, the dispute over specific legal issues raised will probably play in to the wider debate over important cultural issues.
“I think this case is just simply going to be viewed as a case about the right-to-life issue or the right-to-death issue of the withdrawal of feeding tubes, particularly from brain-damaged individuals,” he said. “I think that that puts it squarely in the line of the cultural divide over abortion and the very clear cultural conservative versus culturally progressive divide in the United States that played such a role in the 2004 election.”
A major part of that debate, in recent years, has been over the role of so-called “activist judges” in ruling on controversial social issues, such as end-of-life decisions.
DeLay used a press conference following the announcement of Schiavo's death to launch a broadside in the battle over the future of the judiciary. “This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change,” DeLay said. “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another.”
Other Religious Right leaders, such as Focus on the Family head James Dobson and Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land, issued statements decrying the judiciary's role in the case.
Conservative leaders have repeatedly accused left-leaning judges of misinterpreting laws and legislating from the bench. The battle between Senate Democrats and Republicans over several of President Bush's most conservative nominees for federal judgeships has reached a stalemate in Washington.
Meanwhile, many centrists and liberals have accused conservatives of trying to stack the federal courts with right-wing judicial activists. In a March 31 statement, Lynn said DeLay and his congressional allies have “aimed their venom at the state and federal courts involved in the Schiavo matter” and they “are ready to work hard to push the kind of judges these religious extremists desire.”
While conservative leaders are calling for more right-leaning judges, critics point out that George Greer, the Florida state judge vilified for ordering Schiavo's tube removed, is a Republican. Likewise, the federal judge who wrote the majority opinion turning down the Schindlers' last attempt to save her life was an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.