If Terri Schiavo had been shot

THE TERRI Schiavo case has struck a raw nerve in America. One would have to be either dead or numb to all feelings not to empathize with the sorrow and the agony of her parents, the Schindlers, and of her husband, Michael.

But we cannot move with our hearts alone; we also have to use our minds. The medical testimony is that Terri has been in a "persistent vegetative state" since 1991. Yes, she can look you in the eye, smile, move her head, close her eyes but there is nothing else there. There is no functioning brain that can feel pain or that can direct orders to any of the muscles.

When she was still conscious, Terri Schiavo told her husband Michael that she would not want to live in a vegetative state, she did not want to be kept artificially alive. Michael relayed his wife's wishes to her parents who either did not believe him or did not feel that Terri had the right to make that decision. Since it wasn't written down in a living will, it wasn't worth the paper it wasn't written on.

For the last seven years, Terri Schiavo's parents have sought to keep their daughter alive by whatever means necessary, by prayer, respirator or feeding tube. Over the years, the parents have been frustrated by the state courts which have consistently sided with Terri's husband.

After a state court issued an order on March 18 removing the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, the politicians entered the picture.

The US Congress met in an emergency session on March 19 and 20 and passed a bill, quickly signed into law by President Bush, transferring jurisdiction over Terri Schiavo from the local state court to the federal court, affording Terri's parents another opportunity to seek a favorable court ruling after exhausting the state court process.

But the federal court turned down the Schindler's motion for a temporary order to reinsert the feeding tube after the Schindlers could not prove that they would likely prevail in a court proceeding. The Schindlers appealed the Federal Judge's decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals which affirmed the lower court's decision. The US Supreme Court similarly declined to take the matter up on appeal.

As of Easter Sunday, the Schindlers have given up on any hope of obtaining a favorable court ruling. The countdown is now on for Terri's last breath which may come this week.

But I believe Terri died a long time ago and her soul is already with God. I believe that what separates human beings from animals or androids is our brain. It is our ability to think and analyze. We recognize that with modern science, people's bodies can remain artificially alive for years, long after the brain stops functioning. But for all practical purposes, there would be no "life" left in the body even though "it" still breathes, once the brain dies.

The most powerful man in the US Congress, Majority Whip Representative Tom DeLay (R-Texas) spearheaded the congressional effort to interfere in the Schiavo case after a Republican strategist had written a confidential memo that was circulated to the Republican members of Congress: "The pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue… This is a great political issue…and this is a tough issue for Democrats."

In a press conference surrounded by his Republican colleagues, DeLay denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as state court judges, for committing what he called "an act of barbarism" in removing the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo.

But what DeLay advocated for Schiavo, he did not espouse for his own father. Like Terri Schiavo, DeLay's father was also severely brain-damaged, incapable of surviving without medical assistance. Both had similarly expressed a desire to be spared from being kept alive by artificial means. Like Terri Schiavo, DeLay's father also did not have a living will.

But Tom DeLay had no reservations in 1988 about joining in his family's unanimous consensus to let his father die. "Tom knew -- we all knew -- his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way," recalled Maxine DeLay, the Majority Whip's 81-year-old widowed mother.

DeLay wasn't the only hypocrite.

In 1999, then Texas Governor George W. Bush signed the Advance Directives Act, which lets a patient's surrogate make life-ending decisions on his or her behalf. The law also gives Texas hospitals the right to disconnect patients from life-sustaining systems if a physician, in consultation with a hospital bioethics committee, concludes that the patient's condition is hopeless.

If the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected in Texas.

In the same week that Bush signed the Schiavo bill, a black mother in Texas was fighting to keep her critically-ill infant on the breathing tube after the hospital had disconnected it after determining that continuing life support would be futile. The hospital did this with the permission of a judge who followed the Texas law signed by Bush.

But while Bush had lot to say on the Schiavo case, he had little to say to the families of the 10 Native American schoolchildren and adults in Red Lake, Minnesota, who were massacred by Jeff Weise, a Nazi-loving high school student on March 21, the day after Bush signed the Schiavo bill. As in Columbine, one student was asked if he believed in God before the assailant shot him dead.

Bush's response or non-response was based on his assessment of his core constituencies.

Conservative Christian groups pressured Bush to support the Schiavo bill, while the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups pressured Bush to "minimize the relevance of political responses to mass shootings."

"The bottom line is the gun lobby is too important a constituency to the Republican Party for them to do anything," observed Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy group.

"The sad reality is if Terri Schiavo had been shot, the administration would not have lifted a finger to help her," she said.

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