Terri Schiavo's mom still cites power of prayer after week of denials

Less than an hour after Judge George W. Greer ordered the March 18 removal of their disbled daughter's feeding tube, Bob and Mary Schindler talk to reporters Feb. 25 outside the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park where 41-year-old Terri Schiavo resides.

CLEARWATER (FBW)-Mary said it has been a mother’s intuition this week that has kept her off the rollercoaster of emotions surrounding her disabled daughter’s case.

Click on image for related coverage

“I knew Judge Greer was going to turn the motions down,” Mary Schindler told Florida Baptist Witness March 11. “He’s never done anything to help us before.”

Schindler and her husband, Bob, are the parents of Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old brain damaged woman and the center of a debate over what some say is the most definitive case yet for legalized euthanasia in the United States.

Terri’s husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, nearly a decade ago petitioned the court to halt the dispensing of nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube to his disabled, but otherwise healthy wife.

In 1990 Terri suffered brain damage after her heart stopped. Since then, some doctors have said she is in a persistent vegetative state, but her parents and supporters contend she is in a minimally conscious state. She could improve were she provided rehabilitation services, her supporters say, but Michael Schiavo has refused to do so in recent years.

Although Michael Schiavo says his wife would want to die, no written request from Terri exists and only he and his relatives have testified saying she would not wish to live. Terri’s parents and supporters have cited a conflict of interest in an ongoing court challenge to his continued guardianship of their daughter on several points--one of which is that Michael has lived with his girlfriend, with whom he has fathered two children, for 10 years.

Sixth Circuit Judge George W. Greer ruled Feb. 25 that Terri’s nutrition and hydration be discontinued March 18, and in a flurry of decisions since that time also has ruled Terri cannot undergo more medical testing and cannot be fed by mouth. Greer also rebuffed a request by Florida’s Department of Children and Families for a 60-day stay of his motion to begin the starvation process, so that they could investigate allegations that Michael Schiavo has abused and neglected Terri.

Greer also refused to move forward a motion challenging his ruling that a witness who testified about Terri’s end of life wishes was not credible.

The motion asked Greer to vacate his original Feb. 11, 2000, order that Terri’s feeding tube be withdrawn. The tube has twice been withdrawn and reinserted at the direction of the court and Florida’s legislature. [For more information, go to www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com and go to the Special Reports section and look for the timeline in: “Terri Schiavo: A Life at Stake.”]

Barbara Weller, an attorney with the Gibbs’ Law Firm which represents the Schindlers, told the Witness March 11 she understands the Schindler’s disillusionment with Greer, but had expected that the legal motions filed in the case would be taken more seriously.

“We, being lawyers, actually did expect that, since we have all of the lawyers and doctors on our side, like as in any other court in the nation … we should have been taken seriously by the judge,” Weller said.

Weller said none of the 33 doctors who have said Terri should be medically reevaluated have been paid, and all of who themselves initiated contact with the firm, would appear to outflank zero doctors produced by Michael Schiavo’s attorneys.

“Any other judge in the nation would have ruled for us,” Weller said. “So, from the legal side, we were very surprised.”

What she can’t understand, Weller said, is why Judge Greer apparently will not admit a mistake in the case in determining Terri’s end of life wishes, or how he fails to see that refusing Terri food and water by mouth after her feeding tube is pulled would be like holding a pillow over Karen Ann Quinlan’s face after turning off the respirator. Quinlan is the woman whose parents fought the court in the late 70’s to take their disabled daughter off of a respirator. Ironically, she continued to breath on her own for another nine years and died in 1985.

Weller said the firm will wait until next week to see what needs to happen next. The Second District Court of Appeals is set to issue a ruling by March 17 on whether they will issue a stay and hear an appeal connected with a motion Greer has denied challenging whether Terri has received her constitutional right to due process.

Pending the resolution of that appeal, either the 2^nd DCA may order a stay in the case, which would in Weller’s words, “be like a tsunami hitting New York,” or the firm might quickly file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on an appeal related to her right to religious freedom.

“We are pretty much ready for any direction,” Weller said. “Our decisions on what we will do will be based on how these things move along.”

Weller said she is confident that the American people are outraged and confused about what she said are Greer’s actions in the case, but also said people may be ambivalent about taking a stand because of personal decisions they may have had to make about a loved one’s end of life choices. Terri, however, Weller said, is an otherwise healthy 41-year-old brain damaged woman who is not hooked up to breathing or heart machines, but depends on nutrition and hydration through a tube—and at one point was fed jello and pudding until her husband stopped all efforts at rehabilitating her.

“This case is so far out of the ballpark of anything that has happened in America,” Weller said. “We need to make sure we don’t do these kinds of things in America, where a judge would starve a perfectly healthy woman to death because her husband wants her dead.”

Bob Schindler told Florida Baptist Witness that in a letter he told Michael as early as 1993, three years after Terri’s collapse, that he and Mary would understand if Michael gave Terri’s care back to them. Michael and Terri had been married about five years at the time of her collapse. She was 26.

“We understood that he was a young man and he had his whole life ahead of him,” Bob Schindler said. “We gave him permission to move on so that if he had any thought that he was compelled to stay, that he would know how we felt.”

Over growing concerns that Terri was not getting the care she needed—and an inkling that Michael was either pursuing or wished to pursue other romantic interests outside of his marriage, Bob Schindler said he had hoped to free Michael from any kind of perceived commitment on his part that he was obligated to stay with Terri.

“This was sad,” Bob recalled thinking over a decade ago. “We said we want to free you to move in on your life. For him to do with his life as he pleased—that was the general idea.

“You can lead your life and we can take care of Terri,” Bob Schindler said the family told Michael. Terri’s younger siblings Bobby, Jr. and Suzanne also agreed taking care of Terri would be a family matter, Bob said.  Although it is unclear whether Michael Schiavo stands to gain financially by his wife’s death, the Schindler family has said publicly they would waive any and all rights to any financial benefits related to the case.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told Florida Baptist Witness March 11 he believes Terri Schiavo “is the human face of the life-and death struggle between those who believe in the sanctity of all human life … and the culture of death.

“It is a disgrace to our culture and to our legal system that a husband who has abandoned his wife to cohabitate with another woman whom he has introduced as his fiancée and fathered two children with should be able to retain guardianship over against Terri’s parents, who have loved her and been dedicated to her from before birth until this very moment,” Land said. “How a court system can be so blind as to allow this pathetic excuse for a husband to retain guardianship instead of transferring it to her loving and dedicated parents is symbolic of how our legal culture’s moral compass has been grievously demagnetized.”

February 23, in front of the Clearwater Courthouse, George Felos, Michael Schiavo’s attorney told Florida Baptist Witness his client “cares deeply” about Terri and wants to keep his “promise” to her to make sure she does not continue to live in her present physical state. Comparing her condition and Michael’s living with another woman what might happen if one’s spouse has Alzheimer’s or is in a catastrophic accident, he said that to question Michael Schiavo’s fidelity to his wife, Terri, and their marriage vows is “cruel-hearted” and that to think that way is to make a “moral judgement.”

Mary Schindler, told the Witness March 11, the family has believed Michael’s judgment related to Terri’s care has been clouded by his extra-marital relationship, but that so far not many are listening, especially Judge Greer.

“We have been screaming it from the mountaintops,” Mary Schindler said. “Nobody cares. I guess the morals of the country have fallen to the wayside.”

Sharing her disillusionment with the court proceedings in the case, Mary Schindler said in order to get through each day she prays earnestly, seeking God’s intervention.

“I say [to God], ‘I know you are going to help me, but I wish you wouldn’t wait until the very last minute.’ He usually comes through, but sometimes He waits,” she said hopefully.

Mary credits the prayers of Christians with sustaining hope that Terri will survive this next round of uncertainty in the battle to save her life.

“Right now, that the only thing we have left at the moment, and that’s very powerful,” Mary said.

Both Bob and Mary Schindler will be present at a vigil and press conference in front of the Woodside Hospice where Terri resides in Pinellas Park Saturday, March 12; and at a “Rose Rally” at 3 p.m. EST at the State Capitol in Tallahassee Sunday, March 13.

Meanwhile at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., said March 10 a new bill to aid the disabled Florida woman is on an expedited route and has the potential for immediate Senate passage. Senators are being asked if they object to the bill, the Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act, with the hope that a unanimous consent agreement might be reached on the bill, he said.

The House of Representatives has a similar consent mechanism, Brownback said, but it is uncertain how quickly it will act on the measure.

The legislation would give Schiavo and other incapacitated people the legal protections often associated with death row inmates. The measure is based on the “writ of habeas corpus,” which provides the effected person the opportunity for a court review to determine if his/her due process rights have been protected.

The bill is S. 539 in the Senate and H.R. 1151 in the House. Sen. Mel Martinez, R.-Fla., and Rep. Dave Weldon, R.-Fla., are the lead sponsors.

State legislators in Florida also are considering a bill that could aid Schiavo. That bill would prevent similar people in Schiavo's condition from having their feeding tube removed, unless they had stated their wishes beforehand in writing.

Florida’s lawmakers can be reached via the Internet at www.flsenate.gov or www.house.gov, respectively.

U.S. senators and representatives can be reached via the Internet at www.senate.gov or www.house.gov, respectively, or by telephone through the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

[With Baptist Press reporting]