In the debate over a sick patient’s right to die,
there has rarely, if ever, been a case like the one in Florida.
In 2003, America watched as a private family’s struggle became a very public feud.
Terri Schiavo’s husband and her parents in Florida have been fighting for a long time
about whether her feeding tube should be disconnected.
And a personal battle eventually sparked a political firestorm.
I’m asking you, isn’t she being murdered?
An extraordinary session here on Capitol Hill
Tonight, this Congress is about to commit a travesty.
Today, we’re still grappling with end of life issues.
But will scientific advancements help to clarify them or only make them more complicated?
Some patients who appear to be entirely vegetative are actually quite the opposite.
Terri Schiavo’s case started long before the cameras appeared.
It was February of 1990 when the 26 year old suffered a cardiac arrest.
She went several minutes without oxygen from her collapse -- and experienced a profound
brain injury. The first couple of days, doctors didn’t know if she was going to live or die.
Lack of oxygen left Schiavo with severe brain damage and in what doctors call a persistent
vegetative state, or PVS -- a condition in which the parts of the brain that control
thinking and awareness are damaged or destroyed.
Only the brain stem, which controls basic reflexes like breathing, remains.
Initially, Terri’s husband and parents cared for her together, exploring potential
treatments and rehabilitation. But, four years after her collapse,
Michael Schiavo says doctors gave him a grim prognosis.
It was to a point where Terri wasn’t going to function. There was nothing more.
And they told us, her mother was sitting right there at the time,
there was nothing more they could do for Terri.
In 1998, Michael Schiavo petitioned to have his wife’s feeding tube removed,
saying she had told him and others she would not want to live in this condition.
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, fought desperately to keep her alive,
insisting that removing her feeding tube would be tantamount to murder.
People think Terri was in a coma, she was brain dead, that she was terminal.
Terri was not dying. Terri had a profound brain injury
and our family wanted to care for her just the way she was.
With no living will expressing her wishes, it was up to the state courts to decide Terri’s fate.
They went to court more than anybody has ever gone to court, in my experience,
in fighting about an end of life care case.
This was probably the most litigated case that I can think of. We were up and down
the federal court system, the state court system, many many times.
At least 19 judges heard the case through various appeals and the decisions were
all ultimately in Michael Schiavo’s favor, going back to the original court ruling
that said there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Terri would not want to be
kept alive, and that her feeding tube should be removed.
She told me what she wanted and the courts heard it over and over and over again.
For Terri’s parents, the legal decisions were devastating.
They appealed to the media and the public.
Please, please, please, save my little girl.
They became a cause. They got picked up by talk radio.
They had religious groups weighing in on their behalf.
Spare this innocent child.
It was a fear across the board of euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, and abandonment
of the disabled, if you will. That’s what a lot of the motives were that drove those
who rallied to the side of Terri’s parents.
To deliberately starve her to death is an act of cruelty and ultimately its murder itself.
Terri touched a nerve with so many people because they saw a family that was willing
and wanting to care for her. They didn’t understand why they weren’t being allowed to do that.
On both sides, emotions ran high.
No one would want to live this way.
Twenty times in court. Twenty times.
This is the Roe v Wade of euthanasia.
I used to say, “What are these people doing? Why Terri?” People’s feeding tubes are
removed every day. To this day I don’t know why. But it was very surreal.
Should Terri Schiavo live or die?
What evidence is there that this woman has any brain function or not?
Michael Schiavo believes the media fanned the flames, especially after the Schindlers
released a series of videos that they said proved Terri was conscious and aware.
It’s Mommy.
But Caplan says the videos were misleading.
It was irresponsible beyond belief that it was run unchallenged and unexamined.
I was too attractive to the media not to use. Here she is. But, it was assembled selectively
and it was staged and it did not indicate what she could do.
Caplan says that what looked like intentional responses in Terri were just reflexes that
are common in people in a persistent vegetative state.
A lot of our bodily systems are run off that part of the brain that Terri still had.
That tape used that fact and made it look as if she was thinking and feeling.
While most of the doctors who examined Schiavo believed she was in a vegetative state,
not everyone in the medical community agreed.
There’s a total of about 14 specialists in brain injury and stroke, which is her situation,
who have come out to point out she is not in PVS, not in a coma, does respond, is alert,
and actually has even the ability to communicate.
With each side entrenched, arguments turned to threats.
It’s no fun getting up in the morning and looking under your car before you start the
engine to see if there’s a device because you’ve had people contact you saying
that they're going to blow you to bits if you keep working on this case.
My house was invaded day in and day out. And these were people pushing their views on me,
and I don’t understand that. You have your view on things and you have your beliefs,
that’s great. But don’t stand outside somebody else’s house and push that on them.
Give Terri water!
And the more the fight played out in public, the more political it became.
Who’s gonna look out for this girl’s rights? We have to.
In 2003, Florida legislators passed “Terri’s Law,” which gave Governor Jeb Bush the authority
to reattach Schiavo’s feeding tube. The tube had been removed by court order six days earlier.
The state law was eventually found to be unconstitutional.
But in 2005, the fight moved to Capitol Hill.
There are extraordinary events happening in Washington tonight as the US Congress and
president move toward passing a law before morning to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo.
By then, Schiavo’s feeding tube had been removed again.
If we do not act, she will die of thirst.
Conservative lawmakers led the charge to pass a law that would give Terri’s parents
the chance to continue their fight in federal court.
These are extraordinary circumstances that center
on the most fundamental of human values and virtues: the sanctity of human life.
Opponents argued that politicians had no place interfering in personal medical decisions.
Do we really want to insert ourselves in the middle of families’ private matters all across America?
This Congress should respect the law and the rulings of courts and not trample the Constitution.
After a late night emergency session of Congress, the bill came to a vote.
203 yeas, 58 nays. The bill is passed and without objection,
a motion to reconsider is laid up on the table.
The bill was then rushed over to President Bush who signed it after midnight.
But the law wasn’t enough. A federal judge refused to order the feeding tube reinserted because
he found the arguments were unlikely to succeed in federal court.
The Schindler family kept appealing to no avail.
And on March 31st, 2005, the long, painful public struggle was over.
The end came this morning for Terri Schiavo and her husband’s lawyer says
she died peacefully 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.
Terri, we love you dearly, but we know God loves you more than we do.
We must accept your untimely death as God’s will.
Schiavo’s autopsy eventually confirmed what had been so hotly contested for years
in court proceedings. The damage to her brain had been massive and irreversible.
Today, nine years after Schiavo’s death, while we are still struggling with end of
life issues, advanced brain imaging is helping scientists better understand the minds of
people who are unable to communicate. And they’re finding some surprising and unexpected results.
It might be possible in some of these cases that what you see is not what you get.
Dr. Adrian Owen is a neuroscientist who is using brain scans to search for glimmers of
consciousness in patients who’ve been diagnosed in a vegetative state. He says it wouldn’t
have worked with Terri Schiavo. But his method has shown promise with some patients.
Owen puts them in a high tech scanner and asks them to imagine doing certain activities,
like playing tennis, or moving around their home.
We’re trying to get the patient to do something when we ask them to do it.
But, of course, they can’t move, because that’s part of the diagnosis of vegetative state.
And now our question was, well can some of these patients do it with their brain?
I want you to imagine playing tennis, only if the answer to the question is yes.
Does your sister, Jen, have a daughter? We’re gonna start the scan now.
He looks to see if his question will activate a specific part of the brain.
That’s pretty good. He’s got this whole band of activity.
Steven, we can see your brain lighting up when you try to answer the question.
Even though the sample size is small, Owen’s work has garnered attention from the scientific
community. He found that nearly 20 percent of the patients he’s tested -- patients
who meet the criteria for being vegetative -- have shown signs of awareness, including
some, like Steven, who seem to answer simple yes or no questions using only their minds.
For now, Owen is avoiding the toughest question of all.
We really haven’t got to the point of asking really tricky ethical questions like "Do you
want to live or die?" In part, that’s because the appropriate ethical frameworks aren’t
yet in place for deciding what we would do with that information.
Almost of the patients who've shown evidence of awareness have suffered from trauma,
or blows to the head - not oxygen deprivation like Schiavo.
But Bobby Schindler says the extent of her injuries wouldn’t have made a difference to his family.
I think it’s important to also understand that none of this mattered to my family in
this battle. It didn’t matter to us if Terri never improved from her condition.
We loved her unconditionally. We loved her that way.
The family of a little girl left on life support after tonsil surgery goes horribly wrong
gets a really powerful ally.
Today, Schindler and his family remain in the public eye.
They run a non-profit in Terri’s memory to help families facing similar issues.
We have a team put together and we’re doing everything we can
to get Jahi out of the situation with the hospital.
In one way or another, Terri Schiavo’s plight continues to leave a mark on the nation.
It inspired an initial increase in living wills and advance directives just after she died.
And in 2007, she ranked just below Mother Theresa and Oprah
on a list of people who moved us most in the last quarter century.
I think the country has learned something. I hope they say, "Remember the Terri Schiavo
story. What do you want me to do if something happens to you?" I’m hoping that’s Terri’s
legacy. So now she’s at peace. She has what she wanted and as her gravestone says at the bottom,
I kept my promise.