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That’s when a judge in Florida has given Schiavo’s husband permission to remove the feeding tube that has been keeping her alive for the past 15 years.
Schiavo, who grew up in Bucks County, Pa., as Terri Schindler, had been a ballerina at age 9, a happy teen and a dedicated wife before suffering a severe heart attack in 1990 as a woman in her mid-20s.
She now faces near-certain death with the removal of the feeding tube, following years of legal fights between her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, and the Schindler family.
The controversy came to a climax when Florida judge George Greer ruled in favor of Schiavo.
As part of the Schindlers’ last-ditch effort to get the judge to reverse himself or another court to step in, Schiavo’s only brother, Bobby Schindler, spoke at Princeton University last week of the legal wrangling with broader plight of the pro-life movement against euthanasia.
Schindler accused his brother-in-law of repeated neglect and questioned his motives, pointing to how he is positioned to inherit Terri Schiavo’s trust fund in the event of her death.
Schindler has impugned Schiavo’s conduct over the past 10 years, from his apparently unconvincing admission in 1998 that Terri Schiavo did not want to be kept artificially alive to his 10-year relationship with another woman, with whom he lives and has two children.
"Even before her disability, Terri came to me and said she wanted to divorce Michael," said Schindler. "Michael was not only controlling but also emotionally abusive. Their marriage was slowly deteriorating," Schindler informed an audience at McCosh Hall on Wednesday night.
The dispute over whether Terri Schiavo should be euthanized has revolved largely around whether she is indeed in a permanent-vegetative state as her doctors contend.
While court-ordered doctors have labeled Terri Schiavo permanently vegetative, Schindler insisted he had spoken to speech therapists and doctors who attested to the contrary.
"One of the biggest mistakes we made was in arguing whether or not Terri was in PVS, which exposed us to how insidious this euthanasia movement really is," he said.
"I truly believe we’re engaged in a cultural battle between life and death. But society is moving from a sanctity of life mindset to a quality of life mindset."
Prior to Schindler’s speech, Christopher Tollefsen -- an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina -- maintained that Schiavo is still a repository of intrinsic human worth.
"There’s a crucial separation to make between losing things such that you’re no longer a human being -- which boils down to losing your life -- and losing things such that you’re not flourishing as well, which all of us experience at some point," said Tollefsen.
Princeton philosophy professor Michael Smith saw the metaphysical question differently.
"The question, here, is what is a person?" he said. "If a person is a thing with psychological potentialities, then, without a permanently functioning brain, those psychological potentialities no longer exist. The person is dead."
Schindler contended that both the philosophical and raw results borne out of the Schiavo case would have implications for the disabled.
"This is also a civil rights issue, concerning the defense of the defenseless," noted Christian Sahner-- a managing editor for Princeton University’s Tory -- after attending Schindler’s speech.
"The results of the case will speak to how the country handles others with disabilities, from people with Alzheimer’s disease, to the elderly, to those with autism."
