User:Amorrow/Terri Schiavo case

The Terri Schiavo case involved a United States citizen and was a euthanasia legal case that lasted from 1998 to 2005 involving Theresa Marie Schiavo (née Schindler) (/ˈʃaɪvoʊ/; December 3, 1963 – March 31, 2005), who was diagnosed in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) in 1990. Terri's legally married husband Michael Schiavo immediately became legal guardian and conservator spouse. With a PVS diagnosis, despite the fact that she could open her eyes and make moans, there was no hope that Terri would ever recover and Terri had previously verbally indicated to him that she would not want to be kept alive unconscious on life support for long, but he opted to maintain life support for seven years. In 1998, Michael changed his course of action and ordered termination of life support. This launched a series of legal challenges that intruded on this private family matter with the notion that the nuclear family is the building block of human society in the promotion of the general welfare, and that delayed Michael's decision from being implemented for yet another seven years, reminiscent of the adage "Justice delayed is justice denied". On February 25, 2005, a Pinellas County judge made the decision to remove the feeding tube for the final time and on March 18, 2005 it was removed and Terri died a few weeks later. Michael memorialized his adherence to Terri's wishes to not be maintained on artificial life support with the epitaph on Terri's gravestone "I kept my promise."

Michael's decision to terminate life support launched a long series court challenges against Michael by Terri's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler. The Schindlers attempted to seize authority away from him and, against Terri's previously expressed wishes, to maintain life support for Terri indefinitely according to their Roman Catholic doctrine and with the hope that Terri might ever recover and that the PVS diagnosis was incorrect. They joined with Randall Terry to raise awareness of their cause and the notion that they somehow had a claim and the three disseminated a rather attractive photograph of Terri that was taken months before her medical crisis that became associated worldwide with the case and influenced how some people concluded the case should be resolved. Somehow, the Schindlers kept on convincing the courts that they had standing in the matter. In every one of these civil cases, the finding was in Michael's favor and he retained his authority. Robert Schindler was in email contact with Jeb Bush as early as 2001. Interleaved in this time period were two episodes of lawmaking at the levels of the state of Florida and the federal level which attempted to do essentially the same as what the Schindlers had attempted. The state law was called "Terri's Law" which authorized "the Governor, under certain prescribed circumstances, to issue a one-time stay of court-ordered withdrawal of life-sustaining measures, and to appoint a guardian ad litem to review the matter and report back to the executive branch and the chief judge of the relevant Florida court." At the federal level was the so-called "Palm Sunday Compromise", formally known as the "Act for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo", which ran along similar lines. Both attempts to seize authority away from Michael were quickly challenged by him in court and were overturned as unconstitutional as according to the Constitution of Florida and the Constitution of the United States. They were both party-line votes and it was members of the Republican Party who as lawmakers, including Jeb Bush and George W. Bush, voted for or signed into law these two unconstitutional bills. Republicans were still mentioning the Schiavo case attempts at lawmaking in their campaigns in 2015.

A vast amount of activism by right to life groups and also the right-to-die movement and the disability rights groups caused a great deal of publicity about their causes and this case and raised public awareness of the matter. Discussion centered around the long-standing tensions in the USA between faith and rationality, which still remain unresolved to some degree even after Terri's death.