TERRI'S CRUEL DEATH.

SCHIAVO, Terri, 1963-2005; SCHIAVO, Michael

This article focuses on the death of Terri Schiavo and the issues involved in her case. The troubling case of Terri Schiavo raises question after question, conundrum piled on conundrum. Who owns us? Who speaks for the voiceless? Is the need for food and water a medical condition or a demand of human dignity? Is life consciousness or existence? Did the real Terri -- all she ever was or could be -- already die 15 years ago when she suffered her heart attack? Her husband, Michael, who finally succeeded in his seven-year attempt to have doctors permanently remove the feeding tube that supplied his wife with water and nutrients, was solidly supported by majorities in various American polls and, more importantly, by the courts. While the courts carried the day in the end, Michael Schiavo's side had almost no support among the people gathered outside Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., during the two-week ordeal. The life-and-death battle, and the circus-like atmosphere, obscured the ugly fact of deprivation and the real issue at the heart of Schiavo's case. Over the years a seemingly endless array of Florida judges accepted Michael Schiavo's testimony that Terri would not have wanted to live as she had since 1990, though surely not one of them could have thought she'd contemplated this death. It was the state of Florida that -- in the teeth of its own laws against assisted suicide -- enabled her death.