| Terri Schiavo  AKA Theresa Marie Schindler
Born: 3-Dec-1963
Birthplace: Philadelphia, PA
Died: 31-Mar-2005
Location of death: Pinellas Park, FL [1]
Cause of death: Euthanasia
Remains: Cremated, Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park, Clearwater, FL
Gender: Female
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Victim Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Human vegetable, 1990-2005 Terri Schiavo entered a vegetative state in 1990 after adopting an "iced tea diet" (related to her bulimia), likely resulting in a disastrous potassium deficiency that caused irreversible brain damage. In this persistent vegetative state she remained the last fifteen years of her life. Both Schiavo's doctors and her court-appointed doctors expressed the opinion that there existed no hope of rehabilitation. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, contended that it was his wife's wish that she not be kept alive through unnatural, mechanical means.
More than twenty times the Schiavo case was heard in Florida courts. Every time, the court ruled that the Terri's fate was under her husband's control, upholding the sanctity of marriage long respected by legal precedent. Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, refused to accept this verdict, feeling in their hearts that their daughter would somehow recover. Of this struggle, Schiavo's attorney George Felos told the Associated Press, "The real grievance is not they [the Schindlers] did not have a day in court, that they did not have due process. The real grievance is they disagree with the result."
The Schindler family videotaped Schiavo for extended periods of time, discarding nearly all of the footage, and prepared a short but disingenuous "highlight" video featuring only the occasional moments when her facial expression looked vaguely like a smile, or when family members were posing where Schiavo seemed to be staring, giving the illusion of "eye contact." Despite such illusion, at the time Terri was totally blind.
In 2003, a court-appointed guardian for Schiavo wrote that during the protracted legal struggle, her parents had "voiced the disturbing belief that they would keep Terri alive at any and all costs", even if that required amputation of her limbs. "As part of the hypothetical presented", the guardian's report stated, "Schindler family members stated that even if Terri had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it."
Politicians inserted themselves into the fray. The case was the catalyst for Florida's controversial "Terri's Law", which gave Gov. Jeb Bush the authority to have Schiavo's feeding tube re-inserted when a court ruled that her husband could have it removed. The U.S. Congress quickly passed legislation allowing federal courts to intervene, and President George W. Bush flew back to Washington to sign the bill into law. It should be noticed that this is the same George W. Bush who, as Governor of Texas, signed into state law the power of hospitals to remove a patient (in identical situations as Terri's) from life support -- a critical factor being the family's ability to pay the hospital bills -- even if such removal was against the family's objections.
As the insanity moved to the federal level, Schiavo's feeding tube was finally removed on March 18, 2005, and her heart stopped beating 13 days later.
In a final postscript to Schiavo's short life, the autopsy conducted after her death established that her brain damage was even worse than experts had said while she was alive, and that virtually everything the "save Terri" activists had said was incorrect. Schiavo's brain weighed about half what a healthy human brain weighs, damage that left her unable to think, feel, see, or interact in any way with her environment. There was no chance she could have recovered, and no evidence she had ever been abused.
[1] Hospice Woodside, Pinellas Park, FL.
Father: Bob Schindler (d. 2009)
Mother: Mary
Brother: Bobby Schindler
Sister: Suzanne Carr (stockbroker)
Husband: Michael Schiavo (m. 10-Nov-1984)
High School: Archbishop Wood Catholic High School, Warminster, PA
University: Bucks County Community College, Newtown, PA
Coma 25-Feb-1990, several weeks
Heart Attack
Tracheotomy
Autopsy
Risk Factors: Bulimia, Blindness
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