Ripping Back the Curtain
By Pat Anderson

For three and one-half years, from April 2001 until September 2004, I represented Bob and Mary Schindler in their attempt to save the life of Terri Schiavo, their eldest child. During that time, I filed dozens and dozens of motions and affidavits and appeals on their behalf, nearly all of them unsuccessful.

I decided to become involved in the Schiavo case when a friend called and described what had happened. No lawyer could resist getting involved in a case where a disabled person had been sentenced to death - - albeit on the civil side of the court system - - without even having her own lawyer at the trial that decided her fate. How could this be? I asked myself.

Previously, I had represented civil rights plaintiffs, including disabled individuals and several national disability rights organizations. So I knew that fear of disability can be so deeply rooted and so irrationally powerful as to cause otherwise sane people to do completely insane acts. I figured this was a case that could be easily and quickly straightened out, with a few motions and perhaps an appeal.

Very soon it became apparent to me that Pinellas County Judge George Greer, who presided over the guardianship of Theresa Marie Schiavo, had closed his mind to the possibility - - any possibility - - that he had made an error in granting Michael Schiavo's petition to withdraw life support after a trial in January 2000.

As I dug into the case, I was first dismayed and then horrified to learn that Florida laws define a feeding tube as a "medical treatment" and that, even without a written advance directive, a guardian such as Michael Schiavo can decide a ward, such as Terri, does not want any more medical treatments.

This combination of laws, of course, permitted what happened here: a slow death by dehydration and starvation - - what Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice called the "longest public execution" in the nation's history.

For most of America, I suspect, the feelings of helplessness and horror grew day by day after Terri's feeding tube was removed. Even those who thought Terri ought to die began to get queasy as the days dragged on, and she struggled to live.

Even those who accepted the improbable judicial finding that Terri had expressed a desire to die rather than be sustained on a simple feeding tube did not believe, in their hearts, she had expressed a wish to be slowly tortured to death.

For me, however, I had already had that bitter realization, dreading what was coming and knowing it would come, in June 2003.

In that month, Florida's Second District Court of Appeal issued its fourth written opinion in the Schiavo case, once again affirming Judge Greer's decision to end her life. This followed a six-day medical evidentiary hearing that clearly proved Terri was responsive to her environment and, thus, was not in a persistent vegetative state.

The appellate court chose, once again, to defer to Judge Greer's judgment, despite the clear contradictions in the evidence and testimony and even though an innocent life was at stake. I remember thinking when I read that appellate opinion, "They really are going to kill her." For days, I was despondent that the judicial system, to which I have devoted virtually my entire adult life, was not going to correct this case of manifest injustice.

I believed from the outset that fear of disability is what drove the case. People who made the decisions about the worthiness of Terri's life are all smart people with advanced degrees who fear loss of IQ points the most. If pressed, I'm sure most of them would say they maybe could adjust to living with renal failure or paraplegia, but a traumatic brain injury would take away their very essence.

They looked at Terri and imagined themselves in her condition and decided, "I would not want to live like that. She must die."

At the beautiful Mass her family arranged for her after her death, Fr. Frank Pavone made a different point during his homily. Her life, her suffering are a gift to us, a reminder that all life is precious. Once, I would have thought the law shared the view that all lives are precious and all are equal before the law, no matter status or position or wealth or influence. No longer.

In ending Terri's life, it seems to me we have abandoned that great precept of equality under the law and have crossed a line, sorting people into two categories: those who we consider too injured, or damaged, or too "lacking in quality" to live, and those who are not.

Be assured, however, this line is movable. It will come closer and closer to you and to me as the years go on. Today, it is those who suffered a traumatic brain injury, but tomorrow it will be the elderly with Alzheimer's disease and the day after that cerebral palsy and the day after that...who knows?

Once the law admits of an exception to the rule that all persons are entitled to life - - that it is okay to grade the lives of human beings on a curve - - we are surely on the road to recognizing another exception. And another. And another. That is the way the law works.

Terri's case has ripped aside the curtain and allowed all of us to see the dirty little secrets in how this country responds to the legal and medical needs of the vulnerable. What happens next will be up to us, for make no mistake: the death-dealers believe the very best part of life is death, and they are insatiable.

I know one thing for certain. The next time the U.S. decides to chastise a foreign country for its record of human rights abuses, the name of Terri Schiavo will come up.

Pat Anderson

St. Petersburg