Deathbed demagoguery

Schiavo, 39, has been in a vegetative state since 1990, when she went into cardiac arrest from a suspected potassium imbalance. For the past five years her husband, Michael, acting as her guardian, has been seeking removal of her feeding tube so she might die. He maintains that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means -- a directive that unfortunately she did not put in writing and that is disputed by her parents.

In the long, bitter legal battle, physicians and the courts have consistently stood with Michael, who no doubt thought the dreadful saga was ending on Oct. 15 when the tube was finally taken out following the order of a circuit court judge.

That ruling, and those preceeding it, were rendered after careful consideration of the opposing views on either side of this agonizing divide. Judges reviewed the medical history and listened to the assessment of court-appointed doctors as they weighed what should never be a snap decision.

Yet the Legislature moved in an eyeblink, rushing through what it dubbed "Terri's Law," giving the governor authority to order Schiavo reconnected to the feeding tube removed six days earlier.

The ill-considered action mocks the judicial process. Anti-abortion leader Randall Terry told The New York Times he was proud of politicians who had "the courage to stand up to judicial despots."

The US Constitution is apparently the enemy, too. the Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe noted in a phone interview that a 1990 US Supreme Court ruling in a Missouri case nearly identical to Schiavo's upheld a person's "right of bodily integrity," allowing the removal of life support from someone in a vegetative state if a fair determination could be made of that person's wishes.

Certainly the extensive examination of the Schiavo case by the Florida courts has allowed for that fair determination.

"There is nothing clearer in US constitutional law," said George Annas, professor of public health law at Boston University, referring to a person's right to reject medical treatment. He expects the Florida political gamesmanship to be declared unconstitutional.

But the family dissension may never end, and their anguish is sadly instructive on why people should arrange a health care proxy or living will. Losing a loved one is hard enough without a grueling court fight -- or the intrusion of a political circus.