Gianficaro: It was time to let Terri Schiavo go

It has been postulated that the worst cruelties often hide behind the seemingly best intentions.

That belief accurately describes the actions of the parents of Terri Schiavo, whose name, to this very day, continues to spark debate over whether anyone or anything but the hand of God should end a life.

Ten years ago Tuesday, that perspective gnawed at me as a sportswriter covering the Philadelphia Phillies during spring training in Clearwater, Florida. The team had finished in second place in the National League East the season before, and despite new manager Charlie Manuel and NL Rookie of the Year Award winner Ryan Howard, the team would finish second again, with nearly an identical record. Nothing truly changed.

However, my perspective then about cruelties and best intentions was focused not on changes at a baseball park, but in Pinellas Park, 13 miles south of Clearwater. It was there, in a hospice center, where the world watched as, for the first time over the 15 years she was in a persistent vegetative state following cardiac arrest, something finally changed in the life of right-to-life cause célèbre Terri Schiavo.

Thirteen days after a feeding tube was removed from the 41-year-old woman, Schiavo died. Death came after many years of a nasty legal tug of war between her husband, Michael, and his efforts to suspend life support for his brain-damaged wife by removing the tube, and Robert and Mary Schindler’s efforts to keep alive the daughter they were certain wouldn’t have chosen to die by anything but God’s will.

Schiavo’s parents fought and prayed for a miracle that had lost its way. They fought to save their daughter, who was lying there, eyes open, breathing on her own, but unresponsive and with no chance of recovery. She was there, but she wasn’t. When she died, an autopsy confirmed what doctors had concluded: Her brain was damaged beyond any hope of recovery. Nearly all neurons were gone, and her brain weighed less than half of a normal one. The catastrophe rendered Schiavo incapable of any thought or emotion. She couldn’t see — the autopsy confirmed the doctors’ diagnosis that she was blind. She couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t talk, couldn’t express herself in any way, and couldn’t swallow. She was a man’s wife and her parents’ daughter in name only. Medical science assured all that her life had exited this world, and that the door swung only one way.

Michael Schiavo, of Levittown, Pennsylvania, understood that and, with the support of the courts, chose to do the humane thing by letting her go.

The Schindlers ignored it all and fought for the status quo: to keep their daughter alive and hope for the miracle that medical experts assured them was never going to come charging to her rescue on a white steed, regardless of the number of prayers to heaven. As Catholics, they didn’t want to violate fundamental religious tenets, even at the expense of their daughter. Their worst cruelties overshadowed their best intentions.

When Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed, she wasn’t starved to death, not in a traditional sense. Doctors said her severe brain damage didn’t allow her to feel starvation. She had no brain function. She was, as was written at the time, “blissfully unaware.”

Over the past few weeks, I asked many folks to put themselves in Schiavo’s place back then, and tell me if they would choose to live or die. Not one chose life if it meant living in such a state. Honestly, who would?

The English translation of the Italian surname Schiavo is “slave.” In essence, Schiavo became just that, a slave to political operatives back then.

The ringmaster was then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. He sided with the Schindlers, and as was written in The New Yorker last month, he used his political clout and that of his president brother, George, to stop the removal of the feeding tube, thereby “dismissing the medical and scientific consensus on Schiavo’s condition because it didn’t fit his or his party’s political preference.”

If Terri Schiavo had a living will, the international circus outside the Hospice House Woodside in Pinellas Park wouldn’t have occurred. There would have been no TV satellite trucks, klieg lights and cameras, protesters on either side of the issue, even jugglers, and pro-life parents instructing their children to go to the front door of the hospice center with cups of water for Schiavo. The lesson here: Prepare for the catastrophe before the storm arrives.

As a parent, our children’s mortality is beyond comprehension. For if there is one thing we demand from our Maker, it is that we want to die first. Our sons and daughters cutting that line is unthinkable. But there are exceptions, irreversible situations where our protective, paternal instincts must take a back seat to that which is right and just for our children. In that regard, Schiavo was Exhibit A.

Sometimes, as was the case with Terri Schiavo, the right choice is to take one’s lead not from Scripture, but from science.

Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@calkins.com or @philgianficaro on Twitter.