Deadline Approaches for Withdrawal of Terri's Feeding Tube

By Dave Andrusko

As NRL News goes to press, it is only a few days until an October 15 court order is scheduled to take effect that would remove the feeding tube through which Terri Schindler-Schiavo is fed. If the 39-year-old brain-injured woman is deprived of nourishment, she would die a ghastly death that could extend over a period of up to two weeks.

Terri's husband has fought a five-year-long legal battle to have the feeding tube removed, according to the Associated Press (AP). Terri's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have been just as determined that their daughter be fed.

However, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge George Greer has agreed with the husband that Terri is in a so-called persistent vegetative state (PVS) - - a diagnosis vigorously rejected by Terri's parents and more than a dozen experts. The parents have unsuccessfully tried to persuade Greer to disqualify himself and to obtain relief from the Florida Supreme Court.

Making a bad situation worse, as feared, Greer handed Terri's parents a second defeat, beyond scheduling the removal of the feeding tube at 2:00 p.m. October 15. He rejected requests by the Schindlers that Terri be "allowed an eight-week trial of speech, occupational and physical therapy," and "be taught to swallow food so she could be spoon-fed once the feeding tube is removed," according to WorldNetDaily.com.

Rebuffed by Greer and the state High Court, the Schindlers have tried the federal courts. They've filed an amended federal lawsuit with U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara, arguing that Florida's Advance Directives law is unconstitutional, according to the Tampa Tribune. (The law establishes the conditions under which food and fluids could be removed.) Their lawsuit accuses the husband "of acting to deprive his wife of her rights to equal protection and due process under the Fifth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution," the Tribune reported.

In a three-page order Judge Lazzara set a hearing for October 10 to consider whether to block Greer's order. In addition, Judge Lazzara wrote that because the state statute has been called into question, Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist may wish to present "argument on the question of the constitutionality" of the law.

However, on October 3, in a 19-page order Crist wrote, "The Attorney General takes no position on the merits of the action or on what should be done in this tragic case, and appears for the limited purpose of defending the statute as constitutional," according to the Miami Herald.

But there have been several very encouraging collateral developments. For the first time there has been a very vigorous back and forth in some local Florida papers. The British Broadcasting Corporation did a story as did an Austrailian newspaper.

The New York Times magazine ran a remarkable story September 29 reporting that more and more research is showing that brain-injured patients have many more cognitive abilities than thought. That much more encouraging conclusion includes patients diagnosed in various states of "impaired consciousness," including PVS patients and those said to be in a "minimally conscious state."

Only time will tell whether they can help save Terri Schindler-Schiavo. (See also page 2.)

Editor's note. As NRL News goes to press, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush filed a brief on behalf of Terrri. The brief asks the U.S. District Court to "give careful consideration" to the distinction between removing life support "and the deliberate killing of a human being by starvation and dehydration."