In the debate over a sick patient's right to die, there has rarely if ever been a case like the one in Florida. In 2003, America watched as a private family struggle became a very public feud. Terry Schiavo's husband and her parents in Florida have been fighting for a long time about whether her feeding tube should be disconnected. And a personal battle eventually sparked a political firestorm.
I'm asking you, isn't she being murdered? An extraordinary session here on Capitol Hill. Tonight this Congress is about to commit a travesty. Today, we're still grappling with end-of-life issues. But will scientific advancements help to clarify them, or only make them more complicated?
Some patients who appear to be entirely vegetative are actually quite the opposite. Teri Schiavo's case started long before the cameras appeared. It was February of 1990 when the 26-year-old suffered a cardiac arrest. She went several minutes without oxygen from her collapse and experienced a profound brain injury.
The first couple days, doctors didn't know if she was going to live or die. Lack of oxygen left Shivo with severe brain damage, and in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, a condition in which the parts of the brain that control thinking and awareness are damaged or destroyed. Only the brainstem, which controls basic reflexes like breathing, remains.
Initially, Terry's husband and parents cared for her together. Exploring potential treatments and rehabilitation. But four years after her collapse, Michael Schiavo says doctors gave him a grim prognosis.
It was to a point where Terri wasn't going to function. There was nothing more, and they told us. Her mother was sitting right there at the time. There was nothing more they could do for Terri.
In 1998, Michael Schiavo petitioned to have his wife's feeding tube removed, saying she had told him and others she wouldn't want to live in this condition. Her parents... Bob and Mary Schindler, fought desperately to keep her alive, insisting that removing her feeding tube would be tantamount to murder.
People think Terry was in a coma, she was brain dead, that she was terminal. Terry was not dying. Terry had a profound brain injury, and our family wanted to care for her just the way she was. With no living will expressing her wishes, it was up to the state courts to decide Terry's fate. They went to court.
more than anybody has ever gone to court, in my experience, in fighting about an end-of-life care case. This was probably the most litigated case that I can think of. We were up and down the federal court system, the state court system, many, many times. At least 19 judges heard the case through various appeals, and the decisions were all ultimately in Michael Schiavo's favor, going back to the original court ruling that said that there was clear and convincing evidence that Terry would not want to be kept alive. and that her feeding tube should be removed.
She told me what she wanted, and the courts heard it over and over and over again. For Terry's parents, the legal decisions were devastating. They appealed to the media and the public. Please, Save my little girl.
They became a cause. They got picked up by talk radio. They had religious groups weighing in on their behalf.
Spare this innocent child. There was a fear across the board of euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, and abandonment of the disabled, if you will. That's what a lot of the motives were that drove those who rallied to the side of Terry's parents. To deliberately starve her to death is an act of cruelty and ultimately it's murder itself. Terry touched a nerve with so many people because they saw a family that was willing and willing to care for her.
They didn't understand why they weren't being allowed to do that. On both sides, Let Terry live! emotions ran high.
No one would want to live this way. 20 times in court, 20 times. This is the Roe versus Wade.
I used to say, what are these people doing? Why Terry? People's feeding tubes are removed every day.
To this day, I don't know why. But it was very surreal. Should Terry Schiavo live or die? What evidence is there that this woman has any brain function or not? Michael Schiavo believes the media fanned the flames.
Especially after the Schindlers released a series of videos that they said proved Terry was conscious and aware. But Kaplan says the videos were misleading. It was irresponsible beyond belief that it was run unchallenged and unexamined.
It was too attractive to the media not to use. Here she is. But it was assembled selectively, and it was staged, and it did not indicate what she could do.
Kaplan says that what looked like intentional responses in Terry were just reflexes that are common in people in a persistent vegetative state. A lot of our bodily systems are run off that part of the brain that Terry still had. That tape used that fact and made it look as if she was thinking and feeling. While most of the doctors who examined Shivo believed she was in a vegetative state, not everyone in the medical community agreed. There's a total of about 14 specialists in brain injury and stroke, which is her situation, who have come out to point out that she's not in PVS, not in a coma, does respond, is alert, and actually has even the ability to communicate.
With each side entrenched, arguments turn to threats. It's no fun getting up in the morning and looking under your car. Before you start the engine to see if there's a device because you've had people contact you saying that they're going to blow you to bits if you keep working on this case.
My house is invaded day in and day out and these are people pushing their views on me and I don't I don't understand that. You have your view on things and you have your beliefs on that's great but don't stand outside somebody else's house and push that on them. It's very fun!
And the more the fight played out in public, the more political it became. Who's going to look out for this girl's rights? We have to. In 2003, Florida legislators passed Terry's Law, which gave Governor Jeb Bush the authority to reattach Shivo's feeding tube. The tube had been removed by court order six days earlier.
We did what was right, and I'm proud of the legislature for responding. The state law was eventually found to be unconstitutional. But in 2005, the fight moved to Capitol Hill. There are extraordinary events happening in Washington tonight as the U.S. Congress and President move toward passing a law before morning to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo.
By then, Schiavo's feeding tube had been removed again. If we do not act, she will die of thirst. Conservative lawmakers led the charge to pass a law that would give Terri's parents the chance to continue their fight in federal court. These are extraordinary circumstances that center on the most fundamental of human values and virtues, the sanctity of human life.
Opponents argued that politicians had no place interfering in personal medical decisions. Do we really want to insert ourselves in the middle of families'private matters all across America? This Congress should respect the law and the rulings of courts and not trample the Constitution. After a late-night emergency session of Congress, for the relief of the parents of Teresa Marie Schiavo, the bill came to a vote.
203 yeas, 58 nays, the bill is passed, and without objection, the motion reconsidered is laid up on the table. The bill was then rushed over to President Bush, who signed it after midnight. But the law wasn't enough.
A federal judge refused to order the feeding tube reinserted Because he found the arguments were unlikely to succeed in federal court, the Schindler family kept appealing to no avail. And on March 31, 2005, the long, painful public struggle was over. The end came this morning for Terri Schiavo, and her husband's lawyer says she died peacefully 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. Terri, we love you dearly, but we know that God loves you more than we do.
We must accept your untimely death as God's will. Shivo's autopsy eventually confirmed what had been so hotly contested for years in court proceedings. The damage to her brain had been massive and irreversible.
Today, nine years after Shivo's death, while we are still struggling with end-of-life issues, advanced brain imaging is helping scientists better understand the minds of people who are unable to communicate. and they're finding some surprising and unexpected results. It might be possible in some of these cases that what you see is not what you get.
Dr. Adrian Owen is a neuroscientist who is using brain scans to search for glimmers of consciousness in patients who've been diagnosed in a vegetative state. He says it wouldn't have worked with Terry Shivo, but his method has shown promise with some patients. Owen puts them in a high-tech scanner.
and asks them to imagine doing certain activities, like playing tennis or moving around their home. We're trying to get the patient to do something when we ask them to do it. But of course they can't move, because that's part of the diagnosis of vegetative state.
Now, our question was, well, can some of these patients do it with their brain? I want you to imagine playing tennis, only if the answer to the question is yes. Does your sister, Jen, have a daughter?
We're going to start the scan now. Imagine. He looks to see if his question will activate a specific part of the brain.
That's pretty good. I mean, he's got this whole band of activity. Steven, we can see your brain lighting up when you're trying to answer the question.
Even though the sample size is small... Owen's work has garnered attention from the scientific community. He found that nearly 20% of the patients he's tested, patients who meet the criteria for being vegetative, have shown signs of awareness, including some, like Stephen, who seem to answer simple yes or no questions using only their minds.
For now, Owen is avoiding the toughest question of all. We really haven't got to the point of asking really tricky ethical questions like, do you want to live or die? And...
In part that's because the appropriate ethical frameworks aren't yet in place for deciding what we would do with that information. Almost all of the patients who've shown evidence of awareness have suffered from trauma or blows to the head, not oxygen deprivation like Shivo. But Bobby Schindler says the extent of her injuries wouldn't have made a difference to his family.
I think it's important to also understand that none of this mattered to my family in this battle. It didn't matter to us. If Terry never improved from her condition, we loved her unconditionally.
We loved her that way. The family of a little girl left on life support after tonsil surgery goes horribly wrong gets a really powerful ally. Today, Schindler and his family remain in the public eye.
They run a non-profit in Terry's memory to help families facing similar issues. We have a team put together and we're doing everything we can to get Jahai out of the situation with the hospital. In one way or another.
Terri Schiavo's plight continues to leave a mark on the nation. It inspired an initial increase in living wills and advance directives just after she died. And in 2007, she ranked just below Mother Teresa and Oprah on a list of people who moved us most in the last quarter century. I think the country have learned something. I hope they say, remember the Terri Schiavo story.
What do you want me to do if something happens to you? And I'm hoping that's Terry's legacy. So now she's at peace. She has what she wanted.
And as her gravestone says at the bottom, I kept my promise. I kept my promise.