William Fisher

NEW YORK, Apr 7 2005 (IPS) — Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged woman whose plight riveted the nation for weeks, is now dead after her husband won the legal right to disconnect her feeding tubes.

But her case has already moved on to a much larger – and even more acrimonious – stage, as she becomes a poster child for the religious right.

The curtain opened in Washington on Wednesday, when the Senate Health Committee held the first in a series of hearings on end-of-life issues.

Chairman Mike Enzi, a Republican from Wyoming, told witnesses, who included experts in neurology, disabilities and hospice care, that “the national dialogue that began with Terri Schiavo must continue so that many more American families will discuss and document their beliefs and desires about what healthcare measures they would want following a catastrophic injury or illness.”

Earlier, however, Sen. Enzi had been among the contingent in Congress seeking to keep Schiavo alive – by inviting her to testify before Congress.

While Schiavo was clearly incapable of doing anything of the sort, the move triggered witness protection laws in a bid to delay delay a Florida court order to remove her feeding tubes.

That final act was fought tooth and nail for 13 years by Terri’s parents, who insisted that their daughter was more conscious than she appeared.

The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, lost no time in expressing his anger at Congress’ interventions in the case.

“Republican leaders abused their positions of power to play politics with Terri Schiavo’s life,” he said Wednesday.

“They ignored the detailed findings of the neurologists who had extensively examined Ms. Schiavo in person, numerous experts, five different courts, and three legal guardians – one of whom was appointed by (Florida) Governor Jeb Bush himself.”

Kennedy charged that the House of Representatives Republican Leader, Tom DeLay of Texas, had “even threatened the judges who acted in this case, just as extremists were threatening their lives. That’s reckless and irresponsible.”

For weeks before Wednesday’s hearing – motivated by reasons ranging from heartfelt religious conviction to political opportunism – politicians, clergymen and others who opposed the removal of her feeding tubes were expected to move the focus to the U.S. Congress as well as to a number of state legislatures.

Their goals are nothing less than redefining “life” and the independence of the judiciary.

As many right-to-life advocates trumpeted during the media circus accompanying Terri’s tragic death watch, they believe that life begins at the moment of conception and should end by natural means, unless the person involved has unequivocally made his or her end-of-life preferences known.

Proponents hope this will present a backdoor means of reversing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

The outlines of the Republican strategy were unambiguously laid out by DeLay, who served as the tip of the spear in the battle to save Terri’s life.

The House majority leader said he wants to “look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president.”

“The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour,” he said, suggesting that Congress was already exploring responses, including impeachment of the judges involved.

DeLay’s position was echoed by others like Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family, who said the judges who would not stop the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube were “guilty not only of judicial malfeasance but of the cold-blooded, cold-hearted extermination of an innocent human life.”

The Congressional fallout from the Schiavo case will likely manifest itself in the issue of judicial nominations, especially if a vacancy opens on the Supreme Court.

Democrats in the Senate have already blocked a dozen or so of the names Pres. George W. Bush has sent up for confirmation as judges of lower courts. For the most part, their reasoning has been that the nominees are too doctrinaire.

The Democrats’ position was laid out by the Centre for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning Washington think-tank. “Congress has no place intervening in the private medical decisions of any American. The shameless 11th hour intervention in the Schiavo case by right-wing leaders is a disgrace to all Americans,” the group said.

It was referring to the DeLay-led law hurriedly passed by Congress giving federal courts jurisdiction to review state court decisions on Terri Schiavo’s fate. Pres. Bush had flown back to Washington from his Easter vacation in Texas to sign the new law.

However, the Florida courts declined to conduct such a review, a decision upheld by federal appellate courts and ultimately by the Supreme Court.

Ironies abound in the Schiavo case.

For one thing, Republicans have traditionally been the party that opposes “activist judges”, and fought to preserve and increase the power of the states over the federal government. Their current position on the judiciary appears to reverse both positions.

Interestingly, most of the 19 judges who reviewed the Schiavo case were conservatives appointed by Republican presidents. Now some Republican lawmakers are discussing the imposition of term limits on what have always been lifetime appointments to the bench.

Meanwhile, state governments have also been energised by the Schiavo case, and 10 have already introduced new end-of-life legislation.

All the courts that reviewed the case agreed that Schiavo was in a “persistent vegetative state” from which recovery was not possible, and all affirmed that Terri’s husband, Michael, was her legal guardian and able to make life-or-death decisions on her behalf.

But many Democrats, out of conviction, political expediency, or fear of the religious right, voted with Republicans to pass the 11th hour legislation.

A wide majority of U.S. citizens appeared to disagree with the law. Most opinion polls found that some 80 percent opposed Bush and Congress getting involving in the Schiavo matter.

“Competent adults (or their authorised decision-making agents) have the right in Florida to make their own decisions about end-of-life care involving extraordinary measures,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida ACLU, “including the right to refuse treatment even if the consequences of that decision is to hasten death.”

“Politicians have no business interfering in these intensely personal decisions that are faced by families every day,” he told IPS.

Dr. Linda Emanuel, the founder of the Education For Physicians in End-of-Life Care Project at Northwestern University, agreed, telling IPS, “I believe that moves to advance mandatory application of unwanted interventions for the sake of an ideology-driven agenda will serve to polarise people at a time when polarisation is one of the greater dangers to our civilisation.”

“I hope that, in the cause of the greater good of peace between people, they will desist.”