Finally, vindication for Michael Schiavo

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: June 17th, 2005 12:01 AM

When she mercifully died, Terri Schiavo’s brain had withered to half its normal size. She was blind. She had been dead to the world for years.

The doctors who had advised Michael Schiavo that his wife was in a persistent vegetative state were right.

The medical experts who had said the same in all the courts involved in the trumped-up legal fight over removal of Terri’s Schiavo’s feeding tube were right.

The many judges who ruled in Michael Schiavo’s favor were right. His wife was fully incapacitated, with no hope of recovery. Whether to let her die was for Michael Schiavo alone to decide.

An exhaustive autopsy on Terri Schiavo confirmed what seemed obvious all along: That her parents and many others who insisted she was responsive were deluded by hope and wishful thinking.

The same can’t be said for most of the Republican politicians in Florida and Congress who tried to make political hay out of the battle between Michael Schiavo and his wife’s parents.

For people like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, it was cynical political opportunism that drove them into a fight where they didn’t belong.

Frist, who had declared after seeing videotape of Terri Schiavo that “she does respond,” was left Thursday to weakly insist he had never made a formal diagnosis. DeLay, who had declared that she “talks and she laughs and she expresses happiness and discomfort” and said she only needed speech therapy, had no excuses to offer.

Most Americans thought Congress should not have intervened. Chastened by falling polling numbers, congressional Republicans and the White House are not likely to try anything like it again.

That, and the lesson Americans learned about the importance of living wills, are the only good things to come of this tragic and sordid story.