Schiavo finally laid to rest

Jun 16 2005

Hopefully autopsy findings released today will finally allow Terri Schiavo to be laid to rest.

Michael Schiavo in his long battle with his in-laws, state legislators, a governor, a president and ultimately Congress, was finally vindicated by the findings which declared that his wife, was in a persistent vegetative state, after suffering massive and irreversible brain damage and was beyond help from any therapy or treatment.

The autopsy found "the vision centers of her brain were dead", and her brain weighed less than half the expected weight of a normal brain, and she could not see.

Terri Schiavo, 41, had suffered a heart attack that led to severe brain damage in 1990. She died 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. For more than seven years, her parents and her husband waged a legal battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed or not.

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, maintained that she suffered from a disability but could be rehabilitated.

Her husband, who was her legal guardian, said she would not have wanted to live in what he believed to be a persistent vegetative state with no real consciousness.

The Schindlers made numerous appeals through the federal court system, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and at every judicial step of the way, including the last, the courts ruled for Michael Schiavo.

The case was considered by Florida courts, its legislature and its governor.

When they were rebuffed, the Schindlers even tried legislative action through the Congress and President Bush.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the Congress' 11th-hour bill to prevent the removal of the feeding tube was "demonstrably at odds" with the Constitution.

They said opponents of removing the tube were reckless and wrong in their determination to see the husband's decision overturned.

The only possible good outcome of the case is that people now might take action on their own end-of-life issues, and make a living will which designates someone to carry out the decisions we have directed.