At what point is a person dead or alive? More specifically, at what point does a person depend completely and totally on an outside source for life? These are the questions that were debated in the lawsuits surrounding Terri Schiavo and the incidents leading to her physician assisted death. Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband at the time and the man who still had custody over her, said that Terri stated during her life that she would never want to be “kept alive on a machine”(Worldnetdaily.com, 2001). This may have been the case, but at the time of her death, Terri was still a functioning human being who was receiving food through a tube because the muscles that controlled her mouth and gag reflexes were uncoordinated. Terri Schiavo was denied her right to life, not because of her state, but for outside motives related to money and Michael Shiavo’s personal feelings. Her death was labeled a just, physician-assisted death, but in reality it was a violation of the most basic of human rights, the right to life.
Despite all of the objections by Terri’s parents and the repeated appeals and protests by pro-life activists, Michael Schiavo kept pressing and, on March 18, Terri’s feeding tube was removed, and by March 31, Terri Schiavo was dead (Cnn.com, 2001). Her parents were not allowed to be at her bedside and no flowers were allowed in her room. With her shades down, she had not seen the outside since 2000 No music was allowed in her room and no animals were allowed in her room, despite the fact that she was animal lover. These were all rules imposed by Michael at the time of Terri’s death (Worldnetdaily.com, 2001).
This is what our culture has become here in America, the land of the free (if you can talk). The right to life has been lost and people’s choice of whether they can live or not is placed on shoulders of others. Babies, brain damaged patients, the elderly, the case does not matter. If someone not useful, they do not deserve to live. If someone causes hardship on another, they do not deserve to live. All we, as a nation, can pray for is a better understanding of what a life is, where life begins and where life ends before we are the next person in a hospice with no one to care for us.
