The controversy surrounding the fate of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman who died Thursday in a Florida hospice, spread to Northwestern as professors introduced the case in classroom discussion and students debated the issue among themselves.
Mark Sheldon, a philosophy lecturer, argued that Congress had no business intervening in the case.
“These kinds of decisions are made everyday by families and I think that (is) probably the most appropriate way for these decisions to be made,” he said.
Sheldon said court decisions in the last 30 years have established that although a written will was not present, Michael Schiavo could still provide evidence that his wife would have wanted to die rather than live in a “persistent vegetative state” with no hope of recovery.
Bioethics Prof. Laurie Zoloth echoed Sheldon’s argument that the courts in the Schiavo case acted in accordance with prior court cases.
“The clear-and-convincing evidence standard does not necessarily mean a written will,” Zoloth said. “(Terri Schiavo’s) husband established such evidence for over 30 courts.”
Siding with the president and Congress, Weinberg junior Ed Bacher said the courts should have ordered Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube to remain in place.
“She didn’t have a written will,” Bacher said. “She expressed her feelings offhand. Hearsay is not enough in a case like this.”
For Communication freshman Govind Kumar, the Schiavo case was a life lesson in being prepared for the unexpected.
“The logical solution to a problem like this is to have, at 18 years old, a living will dealing with a situation like Schiavo’s,” he said. “We do it for organ donation, why not for something like this?”
Schiavo’s death ends the seven-year court battle between her husband, Michael Schiavo, who has fought to take his wife off life support, and her parents, the Schindlers, who campaigned in both state and federal courts to block the removal of her feeding tube. The tube was removed two weeks before she died at about 9 a.m. Thursday.
In the last month, however, the decision of life and death became a public affair in a media frenzy that swept the country. The family’s legal struggle escalated into a high-profile national controversy.
House Republican Leader Tom DeLay condemned the state and federal judges who refused to prolong her life, warning that lawmakers “will look at an arrogant and out-of-control judiciary that thumbs its nose at Congress and the president.”
“I never thought I’d see the day when a U.S. judge stopped feeding a living American so that they took 14 days to die,” he said.
Schiavo first suffered brain damage when she collapsed in her Florida home in 1990. After a court ruled that she was incapacitated, Michael Schiavo was named her legal guardian. Since then, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer has repeatedly ruled in favor of Schiavo’s husband.
The Schindlers’ attempts to have Greer’s rulings reversed sparked interventions by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Schiavo’s feeding tube was briefly removed in 2001, but was reinserted after two days when a court intervened. In October 2003, the tube was removed again, but Gov. Bush rushed “Terri’s Law” through the state legislature and had the tube reinserted six days after it had been removed. The Florida Supreme Court later struck down the law as an unconstitutional interference in the judicial system.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
