Terri Schiavo

From Menletter April 2005

By Tim Baehr

After a heart attack presumably caused by a potassium imbalance brought about by bulimia, Terri Schiavo lay in a "persistent vegetative state" for over fourteen years. She was kept alive by a feeding tube. Her other bodily functions - breathing and digestion - continued without medical intervention.

For the first seven years, many attempts were made to provide physical and other therapies, in the hope that she could somehow recover at least some awareness. For the last seven years, two families feuded about whether to continue to keep her alive.

Michael Schiavo, her husband, had guardianship and was legally entitled to make decisions regarding Terri's care. He felt strongly that Terri would not have wanted to continue to exist as a human shell - awake but unaware. He was in favor of withholding feeding and letting Terri die what he was apparently convinced would be a dignified, painless death. Terri's parents and siblings disagreed and fought to keep her alive.

Science and politics intervened. Physicians determined that the part of Terri's brain that controls thought and cognition had atrophied and been replaced with spinal fluid. Politicians, including the Florida governor and the president of the US, along with senators and congress members, weighed in with much fanfare, turning the case into a right-to-life issue. Some pundits even thought the political involvement was a stalking horse for anti-abortion advocacy.

The courts refused to go along. At various levels, up to and including the US Supreme Court, judges maintained that Michael Schiavo was the legal guardian and solely responsible for making decisions on Terri's behalf.

Religious figures got involved, too, from Jesse Jackson all the way to Pope John Paul II. In a nutshell, some clergy thought it would be playing God to keep Terri alive; others thought it would amount to murder to withhold food and water and let her slip away.

Michael and the courts finally prevailed.

So much for the bare facts.

What's in a name?

The most common pronunciation for the Schiavo family name in the media was SHY-voh. I find it puzzling how the spelling produced that pronunciation. As my wife (who speaks Italian) and I were watching one of the endless news accounts, she noted that in Italian the pronunciation would be more like SKYAH-voh. Moreover, the word means "slave" in Italian.

Wow.

You may or may not believe in mystical coincidences or Karma, but the name got me to thinking about the many people who have been enslaved by this case and the conditions surrounding it.

Kinds of enslavement

Whatever the motivations behind Terri's bulimia, one way to look at it is that she starved herself to death. Ironically, the starvation did not become fully effective until food and water were withdrawn fourteen years later. She was enslaved twice: once by an uncontrollable urge to be thin coupled with a dangerous method to achieve thinness, and again by a body that simply would not let die what remained of her.

Michael was enslaved. For seven years his life revolved around trying to revive his wife. For seven more years his life revolved around finding a way to release her from her earthly existence.

The Schindler family was enslaved. Whether Terri's physical actions were volitional or reflexive, they gave her family the hope, or perhaps the illusion, that there was some hope for recovery - or at least that there was some flicker of cognition left in Terri's brain. Despite medical evidence that Terri would never wake up, they clung to their desire to keep Terri alive.

Second, the Schindlers may also have been enslaved by an idea: that life is to be preserved at all costs. In this they were joined by well-meaning people and clergy who shared their view, and often their religion. This idea was so strong that the medical facts meant nothing or were interpreted as wrong.

Politicians were also enslaved in multiple ways. Some sincerely believed that Terri's life or death represented an issue of national importance. They were enslaved by this idea at the expense of two families' privacy. The feelings of some of them may have inclined them personally toward Terri's right to die, but they sided with the Schindlers, further enslaved by both their constituencies and by influential supporters. Independent thought, not to mention moral courage, does not seem to be rampant among today's politicians.

We in the reading and viewing public seem to have been enslaved by, or at least addicted to, the media coverage of this case. Either that, or we found the coverage unavoidable in the newspapers, on TV, and on the Web.

Our own enslavements

I've been wondering about the forms of enslavement in our own lives: physical, psychological, and social. Here's what I've come up with.

Physical. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sex, food, sweets, laziness, exercise, and so on. Where do we draw the line between overuse and out of control or even addiction? Are we slaves to some substance simply because we haven't thought of the alternatives? Is there a physical or psychological dependency? Is some habit interfering with other aspects of our lives? How can we break free? What help might we need?

Psychological. Misperceptions of other people's motives, thoughts of worthlessness, delusions of grandeur, angry outbursts, chronic tardiness, phobias, and so on. Certain thoughts and fears are perfectly valid responses to what's going on around us. But where does reasonableness end and enslavement begin? How can we do a reality check about what's "normal"?

Social. Conviction that something is right or wrong, regardless of facts; contempt for people who are somehow "different"; a sense of moral superiority that puts us above others or above the law; and so on. Religious convictions can be sources of strength but can also become so rigid or orthodox that they put blinders on people, leading them to justify illegal and sometimes patently immoral behavior (bombing abortion clinics, for instance). Political beliefs can also become so rigid or orthodox that they cause great harm, letting ideology or political theories trump common sense and decency in protecting underclasses, or even the middle class. Perhaps the worst aspect of political orthodoxy is the opportunistic adoption of religious principles, as seems to have happened among some politicians involved in the Schiavo case.

Both religious and political orthodoxies are about control; one way to look at this control is that it can enslave the adherents while the orthodox leaders enjoy many freedoms and liberties (the ascetic guru with a harem of girlfriends and a chauffeured limo, for instance, or the advocate of tax reductions that benefit mostly the rich and powerful). When leaders or adherents try to impose their orthodoxy on others, we see another kind of enslavement.

Another form of social enslavement, or the attempt at enslavement, is the influence of mass media through advertising and managed news. Most of us have little awareness of the level of psychological manipulation possible in the marketing of consumer goods or in the decisions of what constitutes "news." I would guess that people's views in the Schiavo case were at least partly influenced by which media they watched, listened to, or read.

Breaking the chains

Physical and psychological chains are hard to break. Sometimes hard work and determination can do the job, but often some form of outside help is required: therapy, community support, medication, and so on. The first step, though, is to recognize that there's a problem.

Social chains may actually be harder to break because we don't see them as clearly. It's just very comfortable for many of us to relinquish pieces of ourselves to some movement, set of beliefs, or guru. We enjoy membership in a group of like-minded folks, and we have a sense of belonging.

I think it’s a good idea, however, to step back every once in a while and ask some questions:

"Do my beliefs, or the organization espousing my beliefs, hurt anybody? Do those people deserve to be hurt? Really? Are other people somehow unworthy as human beings if they disagree with my principles?"

"Is this news account telling all sides of the story? What do other sources say? Who stands to gain or lose if this information is true (or false)? Is there some underlying motive based on privilege, power, or money?"

Getting free of orthodoxy does not mean moral relativism. Principles of decent living - knowing right from wrong, being kind to others, harming no one - these things and more can be strongly held without following a set of rules that oppresses others. Getting free also doesn't mean abandoning all religion and politics. Membership in a community of believers can be gratifying, and many such communities do much good in society.

Adherence to orthodoxy isn't always and everywhere a bad thing, but it's good nevertheless to approach and examine it with an inquiring mind and open, compassionate heart.

One of my favorite phrases in the works of Lama Yeshe is "check it out." He taught about Buddhist philosophy not as a religion to be believed in and followed blindly but as a series of experiences to be lived and checked out to see if they are helpful or make sense. I think one of the most important and powerful things a person can do is to check things out. We don't need to be experts to broaden our perspective, read from different sources, listen to different voices. Even the gut-check is powerful: if something feels bad intuitively, it probably is.

And we have nothing to lose but our chains.

(Lama Yeshe: http://lamayeshe.org/)