Terri Schiavo IV

Congress finally passed a bill allowing Terri's case to be reviewed by a federal court, and President Bush signed it. Now her case is in federal court, being reviewed by a Clinton appointee.

I couldn't watch much of the news about the case over the weekend, because there was so much misinformation and mis-categorizing of Terri's condition, that I wanted to strangle the TV. The word "coma" was used (she's not in a coma), the word "husband" was used in reverent tones, and one man I didn't recognize (and didn't keep the TV on long enough to find out) said that the facts had been reviewed by 19 judges (Judge Greer is the only judge who has done any fact finding, and all the other judges who handled the case either deferred to his "facts" or did not look at the facts at all, but declared they didn't have jurisdiction).

The person I was most distressed by was Mort Kondracke, because as he said, he went through a somewhat similar experience with his wife, Milly. Just last weekend (March 13 I think) CBS showed a movie based on the book Mort wrote about Milly, and I made sure to watch it because I'd heard about Mort's faithful care of Milly as she suffered from Parkinson's Disease (the disease Michael J. Fox has).

But Mort said this weekend on Fox News Channel's The Beltway Boys that he supports Michael Schiavo's rights as a husband to make the decisions for his wife, in light of her expressed wish long ago that she wouldn't want to live that way.

Mort was absolutely not in the position Michael Schiavo is in. Mort stayed faithful to his wife and never abandoned Milly to go shack up with some other honey and produce two children with this other woman and then declare that he still loved Milly and had her best interest in mind.

In addition, I think Mort is missing a crucial detail about Milly's case. She had made written instructions not to use extraordinary measures, and she also told Mort that when the time came that she had to go into a nursing home, to let her die (this was shown at the end of the CBS movie). What was said in the epilogue was that when Milly went into the nursing home, she changed her mind about being allowed to die and fought on for three more years.

When Milly was well and when she was deteriorating, the idea of being incapacitated seemed like a life not worth living. But when she became incapacitated, she changed her mind. She realized that every precious moment of life, however difficult, is still worth living.

Terri Schiavo may or may not have said that she wouldn't want to live this way. But even if she did, she said it from the academic perspective of a whole, sound young woman. "Gee, that would be awful to have to live like that."

But now, when she still has people who love her and who she still loves, to not allow for her to have changed her mind is criminal. She lights up when her family comes into the room. She deserves to live out every precious moment of her life, because for her life is still worth living.

Mort, you're wrong. Terri deserves the same chance to change her mind that Milly had.