I think the divide is more between people who accepted the doctors' verdict and people who wanted Terri to live, based on the assumption that the doctors were wrong. It's a divide between reason and emotion, a divide between accepting the world and a certain idealism. Unfortunately it appears to be an idealism that required a bad guy.

Thus a husband who for all we know merely insisted that his wives wishes be followed was accused of murdering his wife and having mistreated her when she was still alive and aware.

An article on Foxnews.com appears to describe the two sides fairly well, and I quote:

"An attorney for Michael Schiavo announced earlier this week that there would be an autopsy of Terri's body, to settle once and for all questions over her physical state as well as some recent allegations that Michael Schiavo abused and attempted to kill his wife after she was hospitalized in 1990.

The Schindlers have not objected to the autopsy; they hope the findings will prove their daughter was not in a persistent vegetative state as has been diagnosed by numerous doctors. They and their supporters have said, against all known medical evidence, that Schiavo was able to communicate and respond. In one emergency legal filing last week, they claimed she had said she wanted to live."

Michael Schiavo (I always got the spelling wrong, I think) still believes that making the facts more known would somehow persuade his opponents to believe him and the doctors, while the Schindlers are still arguing against the findings of the doctors.

Well, I don't believe that the autopsy will convince anybody. We have all seen the scans of Terri's brain and read the opinions of her doctors and other medical professionals. At least we all had access to them and could have read them. We have believed of them what we wanted to believe. And whoever didn't want to believe that the scans showed that Terri's brain was almost completely gone and that she was unconscious and unaware and could not have been recovered, will still not believe it after the autopsy. The only point of the autopsy seems to be to avoid having people to take its absence as another "proof" for the great evils of Michael Schiavo.

As for the question of whether her parents should have been her guardians rather than her husband, there seems to be some confusion regarding why a guardian even came into it. It was to make Terri's wishes known to the hospital so that Terri could die or not, depending on what she would have wanted. And given that her husband accepted what the doctors said while her parents still don't, I'm afraid it seems that Michael was probably better suited to make the decision. A human life should not end as a media spectacle, and her parents had no right to make it one. (And in fact they seemed to have tried to convince their supporters to keep a lower profile.)

"President Bush opened a press conference by offering his condolences to Schiavo's "families," perhaps an intentional departure from other lawmakers' statements that exclude mention of her husband, Michael."

I must thank President Bush for being including both "families" of Terri's in his condolences. Intentionally excluding the dead woman's husband is despicable,

"His heartless cruelty continued until the end,"

These were Terri's parents comment when Michael wanted to be alone with his wife at the end. Michael's whereabouts are now unknown.

In only a few weeks we have now managed to make him fear for his life, just because his wife's wish as told by him happened to be not what we would have hoped for, even when we must have known that she could not have recovered. We blame him for continuing his life, while we all lived ours in the last ten years, we call him a murderer because we had the arrogance of claiming that what the courts believed was Terri's wish was really Michael's lie.

We must be really proud of ourselves as a society.

"An attorney for Michael Schiavo announced earlier this week that there would be an autopsy of Terri's body, to settle once and for all questions over her physical state as well as some recent allegations that Michael Schiavo abused and attempted to kill his wife after she was hospitalized in 1990.

And your doctors have already stated that it will not establish anything except the fact that she was brain damaged.  It will not determine if she was brain dead.

If i'm not mistaken the original award was in the millions, but it was later reduced because the court felt that T.S herself had been mostly to blame for her state because it resulted from an eating disorder.

I'd have to agree with the original premise here. I am a completely, totally different person than I was before I became a parent. I don't know if it is instinct, something chemical, who knows.

Dr Guy,

nobody said she was brain dead. It was determined that she was in a persistent vegetative state. Judging from the fact that most of her brain was physically destroyed (the tissue was actually gone) the doctors concluded that a) she could neither think nor feel and she could not possibly recover.

Keeping the body alive didn't help Terri because the part of the brain that was Terri was at that point already gone. You have been fighting for a goal that could not have been achieved and have therefor condemned Terri to not die in dignity when it was first determined that she could not recover but rather to be the central point of a media spectacle.

If you want to do something for human life, concentrate on supporting a patient who can actually be helped.

Some other Bloggers and I have been working to help an Illinois mother who is in a guardianship case where the sister simply paid lawyers ($211,000.00 so far)and the mother can not even talk with her childern. I have never seen anything like it. Don't be fooled, Judges, not you parents, are in control of your children. The Amy Joan Schneider case is a shameless example of our court and the law being in the hands of deal makers and the like. Money is the fuel that drives the court system. Mike S. had to give so much of that money back to lawyers regardless of the outcome. Nothing should be more important than human life and the right to have our children.

nobody said she was brain dead. It was determined that she was in a persistent vegetative state. Judging from the fact that most of her brain was physically destroyed (the tissue was actually gone) the doctors concluded that a) she could neither think nor feel and she could not possibly recover.

You would also conclude that my nephew is in a PVS based upon the stupid definition. Yet he responds and is a joy. He will never be a productive member of society, nor be able to feed himself, so maybe we should just starve him now.

You constantly bob and weave yet you never hit the mark. You won. Your side was able to do to a living breathing human being what others get jail terms for when done to stupid animals. So quit trying to justify your beliefs to yourself.

You won, but not every victory is a true victory.

be careful what you wish for, for you may get it. You got it.

Some other Bloggers and I have been working to help an Illinois mother who is in a guardianship case where the sister simply paid lawyers ($211,000.00 so far)and the mother can not even talk with her childern. I have never seen anything like it. Don't be fooled, Judges, not you parents, are in control of your children. The Amy Joan Schneider case is a shameless example of our court and the law being in the hands of deal makers and the like. Money is the fuel that drives the court system. Mike S. had to give so much of that money back to lawyers regardless of the outcome. Nothing should be more important than human life and the right to have our children.

I know and I fully support your cause as I have stated already. That judge should be impeached, but that is for another blog.

Baker Street,
I agree with you on the Parent comment. Something just takes over. Suddenly there is pitter patter and little voices about that are much more important than me. Life's greatest gift. Of course that is if you can avoid the family courts and the country's 50% divorce rate.

Am I the only one who doesn't consider being starved to death over a period of 14 days to be "dying with dignity"?

The fact is, they really don't know for certain what her state of mind is. And even if they did, so what? There is no way to know for certain what she wanted and her parents wanted her kept alive. So why the angst to have her starved to death? 

Am I the only one who doesn't consider being starved to death over a period of 14 days to be "dying with dignity"?

And to me, IF they really had her permission to do this, it is assisited suicide, which is illegal. This was not a dying woman being kept alive artificially. I bet there are some of us here that wouldn't last 13 days without food or water.

Either she wanted to die and the doctor helped facilitate it, or she didn't and it was imposed. Either way, food isn't "life support".

From parent's perspective, I'd deal with a terminally ill child in pain much differently than a handicapped child in terms of their "suffering". To the pro-death folks, they seem to be the same thing.

Well the law states that you can remove feeding if someone is in a persistent vegatative state. The court ruled that she was. So it wasn't in violation of the law.

There's been enough doctors that have come forward to say that it wasn't clear she was in such a state and that a remarkably slight amount of medical examination (not even an MRI for crying out loud?) was done to determine that.

But EVEN if they did know she was in a persistent, vegatative state, then they have to figure out what the will of the patient was. And that too is foggy.

To me, though, they could have done the usual Supreme Court cop-out and said that since no one could say for sure if it was a vegitative state, that they couldn't make an informed decision and opt not kill her. Instead, they just basically did that, and made the default death.

I think if any law should be passed, it should be that a feeding tube alone is not life support. No one on "life support" should be able to linger 13 days.

"You would also conclude that my nephew is in a PVS based upon the stupid definition. Yet he responds and is a joy. He will never be a productive member of society, nor be able to feed himself, so maybe we should just starve him now."

Do you realise that I didn't define anything but merely mentioned what the doctors said?

It seems to me that you really don't know that Terri was in a PVS and somehow thought that this was just my silly idea based on some definition I made up. I certainly understand why your opinion is what it is based on that information.

"To me, though, they could have done the usual Supreme Court cop-out and said that since no one could say for sure if it was a vegitative state,"

I strongly reject the idea that courts should decide over medicine. The state of a patient should be determined by medical professionals, not by judges.

A court can and must refer to medical professionals to find the state of a patient, not decide that "no one could say for sure" after the medical professionals gave their opinion.

Pi is not 3.

What happens if medical professionals disagree as they did in this case? Someone has to judge.

The PVS argument was weak though.  No MRI and not PET scan? Incredible.