Food and water are not "life support"

For over ten years, Michael Schiavo has been trying to use the judicial system to kill his wife Terri by denying her the food and water provided through a feeding tube. Every judge from Florida's Greer to the US Supreme Court has accommodated him, repeatedly ruling that Terri would not have wanted to be kept alive using "life support" in her brain-damaged condition.

Her feeding tube was removed for a third time on March 18, restarting the countdown to her slow and painful death by starvation and dehydration. As I write, the final appeal by Terri's parents has just been rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court.

Because much of the mainstream media are being deliberately obtuse about some facets of the case, it is important to clarify two things. First, Terri is not a "vegetable," or in a "persistent vegetative state." Her parents and many medical personnel over the years have protested this diagnosis, noting that she laughs, cries, responds to pain and the anticipation of pain. Now the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) has officially proposed that she may really be in a "minimally conscious state."

Second, Terri is not on artificial life support. Her heart, lungs, kidneys and other systems work just fine. She receives normal medical care (at least the minimal care that her husband has allowed), including providing sustenance through a feeding tube. To call this "life support" is deceptive. More on this later.

By the time you read this, Terri's life may have been saved by Florida's governor sending in a SWAT team, or at least the DCF, to rescue her. Or perhaps Michael Schiavo will be celebrating her death by finally marrying the woman with whom he's had two children during Terri's incapacitation. Either way, we will be left with some important issues to settle.

First, what about federal involvement in the case? "Right to die" liberals are lamenting the actions of Congress in moving jurisdiction to the federal courts. Apparently those courts themselves agree, since they have all declined to intervene. I would be sympathetic to their argument if they had any real commitment to the principle of federalism.

Since liberals don't have any such commitment, they use the federal courts to bully the states whenever it serves one of their causes. Their protests in this case thus ring hollow. If the courts followed the same reasoning they do in death penalty, "wall of separation," and so many other types of cases, Terri's nutrition would have been restored by now, enforced by federal marshals.

We need to re-examine the use of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply Constitutional protections selectively against actions of state and local governments. Do we have such protection or not? It is no part of a "republican form of government" (as guaranteed to each state in the Constitution) to let appointed magistrates decide that on a case by case basis. It is in fact a "government of men" rather than of laws.

Floridians are left with the revelation of their spectacularly corrupt state judicial system. How the obvious conflicts of interest in this case, to say nothing of the multiple allegations of abuse against Terri by her husband, could have been ignored by the courts is mind-boggling. Florida needs to take a close look at the people who are wearing the black robes in their state's courtrooms.

Those are thorny issues that I have little confidence will be resolved in my lifetime. Terri's saga does leave us with one problem that we ought to be able to solve in short order: that providing simple nutrition and hydration (food and water) to a sick person is treated as "life support."

I have no problem with turning off true artificial life support for a person who has no desire for it. In fact, I'll go on record here to say that my wife is authorized to decide for me on the use of life support if I'm incapacitated. But if, like Terri, I'm breathing, and pumping and filtering blood on my own, I expect to be fed unless and until I can do that for myself.

Providing food and water is not artificial life support. It is basic medical care, which should never be withheld. To do so is murder (call it euthanasia if it feels better to you); to consent to have it done to oneself is suicide.

Section 9 of Congress’s recent bill to save Terri contains these words, "It is the Sense of the Congress that the 109th Congress should consider policies regarding the status and legal rights of incapacitated individuals who are incapable of making decisions concerning the provision, withholding, or withdrawal of foods, fluid, or medical care." This "sense of Congress" should rapidly be transformed into a federal law to protect other Americans from the nightmare experienced by Terri and her family.