"Terri's Law" raises questions in Florida court

By John-Thor Dahlburg
Los Angeles Times

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During a hearing of oral arguments about the law, Chief Justice Barbara Pariente suggested it was an unlawful grant of "unfettered discretion" to the governor and a political encroachment on the judicial branch.

Justice Charles Wells seemed to disapprove that the Legislature had "set aside the final judgment of the court." His colleague, R. Fred Lewis, asked if any civil-case judgment might now be reversed by another vote of Florida's lawmakers.

Terri Schiavo, now 40, has spent the past 14 years in a persistent vegetative state after suffering cardiac arrest. Florida lawmakers and Bush intervened last year when Schaivo's feeding tube was removed under court order, the result of a protracted legal battle that her husband, Michael, won against her parents.

Ken Connor, one of the lawyers representing Bush before the court, argued that "the courts do not possess exclusive domain to protect the rights of disabled people and make sure their health-care choices are respected." Connor also said the results of the law and the governor's action weren't necessarily irreversible.

"It wasn't like an order that said so-and-so shall be hanged by the neck until dead," Connor said.

George Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, called the law an unjustifiable intrusion into a defenseless woman's privacy.

"The essential question here is: Who is entitled to make a decision on something so personal and private as whether to use life support?" Felos said. "Does that power reside with the patient? Or does that power reside with the state?"

In 1990, an eating disorder temporarily caused Terri Schiavo's heart to stop and cut off oxygen to her brain.

Eight years later, Michael Schiavo filed a petition to disconnect his wife's feeding tube, saying she had told him that she would never want to be kept alive artificially. A state court last year gave him permission to have the tube removed, an action that would have led to his wife's death.

Seven days after the feeding tube was removed, "Terri's Law" was hastily adopted by the Florida Legislature on Oct. 22. The law, in effect for just 15 days, empowered Bush to order a one-time resumption of nutrition and hydration to anyone in Terri Schiavo's precise circumstances. Bush had Terri Schiavo's tube restored within hours of the law's passage.
 
Medical specialists who examined Terri Schiavo diagnosed what is called persistent vegetative state, where all areas of the brain except the stem have ceased functioning.

"My own view is that there is nothing resembling human life there. It's just respiration and metabolism," said Allan Meisel, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Michael Schiavo sued to challenge the law bearing his wife's name, and a trial judge in May ruled the measure unconstitutional on privacy and separation of powers grounds. An appeal by the governor put the case on an accelerated track to the seven-member state Supreme Court. The justices gave no indication yesterday when they might rule.