Schiavo Case: Verdict by autopsy

Friday, June 17, 2005

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Medical examiners in Florida have delivered the ultimate verdict in the Terri Schiavo case.

The cause of death was dehydration, not starvation. There was no evidence that she had been strangled or otherwise abused, by her husband or anyone else. The 41-year-old woman was blind and in a persistent vegetative state from which she could not recover, her brain shrunken to half the size of a healthy woman.

It was not a condition, as her husband, Michael Schiavo had been arguing for years, in which his wife would have wanted to live.

Would anyone? But such intensely personal decisions are best left to individuals, spouses and families. In the worst case, courts may step in where there is dispute over the ill person's wishes.

Politicians who sought political gain by intervening in this sad case are now seeking cover, including Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the former heart surgeon who raised eyebrows in his profession by second-guessing court-appointed doctors' diagnosis in the Schiavo case. In March, Frist and other Republicans passed and President Bush signed unprecedented emergency legislation to push the case into the federal courts.

The politicians played on what seems a classic case of science vs. ideology.

Religious fervor over the "sanctity of life" insisted on overriding scientific evidence that life as most people -- including Terri Schiavo -- would define it, no longer existed for her.

It's appropriate, then, that science settled the argument.


Will the Terri Schiavo case leave politicians more reluctant to insert themselves into this kind of family conflict?
83.2% Yes, the Republicans suffered a big loss in public opinion over this case even before the autopsy confirmed the hopelessness of the woman's condition.	12.2% No, there are profound issues involved in such cases in which our elected representatives should not be afraid to be involved.
4.6% Don't care.
Total Votes: 781